Knox Financial, the year-old Boston startup that turns homes into investments by renting them out for the owners, is setting up shop in Providence.
On the heels of a successful pilot program in Boston last year and a seed round it completed in January, Knox began offering its flagship product, the Knox Frictionless Ownership platform, to homeowners in Providence on Monday.
"Providence is obviously right down the road. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone at the company who doesn't have a tie to Rhode Island and Providence," Dave Friedman, Knox's co-founder and CEO, told Rhode Island Inno. "When you look at markets mathematically, Rhode Island makes sense. Strong rent, strong property values, strong economy in the state."
Knox's platform automates aspects of generating passive income through rental properties, including financing and refinancing, accounting, tax, legal, insurance, tenant sourcing and communication and property maintenance. Essentially, Knox handles the piles of paperwork behind the rental process for a cut of the returns.
To build out the Rhode Island market, Knox is hiring two new team members locally with some of the money it raised in its seed round. The startup may bring on more Providence-area employees as it scales up.
The startup has so far seen blazing success. Knox was one of our sister publication BostInno’s 50 on Fire in 2019 and was an Inno Blazer in the early-stage startup category. And although the coronavirus slowed the real estate market significantly earlier this spring, Friedman isn't worried about making sales, which he expects to increase as the economy begins to reopen and consumer confidence goes up.
"There's some latent demand in the market. People need to move," Friedman said. "I don't have a crystal ball, but we don't hear people tell us, 'Oh, not now because of Covid,' or 'We're not willing to make these purchases because of the recession.'"
Along with Providence, Knox has also expanded into Worcester, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine.
