A new startup advertising itself as a tech-enabled real estate brokerage launched this summer to help people more easily sell their homes.
Called AnyCurb, and founded by Danyal Ali, the startup has built a home-selling platform that can identify homeowners who may be willing to put their homes on the market.
AnyCurb identifies potential home-sellers using algorithms that know things like how many years someone has lived in their home, when a parent or couple has become an empty nester, and if other homeowners in the neighborhood are selling their homes.
“An individual street will get built around the same time and what happens is everyone is kind of going through that same lifecycle on the street,” Ali said.
Once identified, AnyCurb helps homeowners ready their homes for the market by appraising homes, and creating virtual tours and staging. Once ready to be sold, AnyCurb helps clients figure out the best time to put their home on the market, down to the hour of a certain day, Ali said.
AnyCurb also works with homebuyers by connecting them with potential homes. On its website, anyone can search for homes on and off the market that are owned by someone working with AnyCurb. The startup says its approach helps homeowners sell homes they’re ready to leave, and gives buyers more options than just what’s already on the market, Ali said.
Research conducted by AnyCurb found that 40% of homeowners would sell their home for market price, even if they haven’t officially put it up for sale. To AnyCurb, that metric shows that the number of available homes for purchase is much larger than what’s on the market, and they’re willing to help homebuyers connect with these ready-to-sell homeowners.
“Realtors are going to homes and asking, ‘Do you want to sell your home?’” Ali said. “And that conversation is a lot different than ‘I have a buyer for your home.’ And that’s where AnyCurb is really different.”
Ali got the idea for AnyCurb after watching his father struggle to put his Naperville home on the market. Fixing up a house to market standards, appraising it and putting it on the market all take time and resources, and finding someone who actually wants to buy it is a whole other task of its own.
“My dad wanted to sell his house for four years and the fact that nobody knocked on his door for four years is just crazy,” Ali said.
Prior to launching AnyCurb, Ali worked in corporate retail at brands like Gympass, Toys “R” Us, United Airlines and Groupon.
AnyCurb mainly lists homes from Naperville, Illinois, on its website, but Ali said he wants to expand to other areas of Illinois, as well as other states.
Other real estate and brokerage startups in Chicago have been gaining traction. In July, Buildout, a commercial real estate startup that makes software for brokerages, raised $8 million. And Obie, a Chicago startup that's building a commercial real estate platform, raised $2.8 million in February.
