Fifty-five percent of people who bought homes during the pandemic regretted it. Enter Localize, an Israeli startup that wants you to actually make informed real estate decisions.
Localize, which serves as a listing aggregator, data company, and broker-tech platform, announced a $25 million Series C fundraise earlier this month, led by Israeli venture giant Pitango Ventures with additional funding from Israeli bank Mizrahi-Tefahot. This round brings the total capital raised by the firm to over $70 million.
Localize's home-search interface should look familiar - especially to those confined to cramped apartments who have turned to scrolling listing websites like Zillow as a form of entertainment.
House hunters - only in New York City, for now - can sort their property searches by all of the usual categories, such as price, location and size. But prospective buyers can also look for homes based on a raft of specialized data that Localize has compiled from disparate public sources, from the total amount of direct sunlight to the likelihood that a new skyscraper will get built next door to the condition of the building's elevator.
Another big differentiator is how the company connects home seekers to agents. Instead of other listing sites, which funnel interested buyers directly to brokers, Localize's software handles early-stage communications with prospective buyers to make sure that they're looking at homes that they'd legitimately want to purchase. Only then does it feed them to an agent.
COO Omer Granot walked Insider through the pitch deck that the company used to lead its latest round.