An online marketplace for homeowners and renters is the latest company to depart the Golden State for South Floirda.
Property management platform Belong will move its headquarters from San Mateo, California to Miami, CEO Ale Resnik announced this week. Founded in 2019, Belong is backed by $138 million in investor capital, including an $80 million series C funding round that closed in May. Contributors to that round included Boston-based Battery Ventures and Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
In a statement, Resnik said Miami could be a model for a "multicultural, more pragmatic, and less ideological" future for the United States.
"This is an ecosystem where consumer tech can blossom," he said.
Belong's Miami headquarters is located in Brickell, General Manager Sparsh Mehta told the Business Journal. The company has 15 employees in the area, but is not hiring. It could add more hires "very soon as the business in Florida grows," he said. Belong has 300 employees globally.
Belong reports its home management service makes owning a rental home easier: Its in-house maintenance team takes care of reconditioning and renovations, and then the startup lists the home and handles all tours and showings. On the resident side, Belong says it enables renters to work toward homeownership by putting a small percentage of each on-time rent payment in an account that can eventually be used as a down payment for a home.
The startup operates in metro areas across California, Florida and Washington, with plans to expand to new locations over the next year.
Skyrocketing rents and housing shortages are making it more difficult than ever for renters to become homeowners in South Florida, one of the most expensive markets in the country. Lofty AI, a startup that makes it possible for users to purchase fractional shares of a rental property, and rent-to-own platform Divvy are among the proptech ventures that proclaim they can create a path to homeownership for users.
"Miami is one of the fastest-growing rental and real estate markets in the country, so it makes sense for Belong to set up our HQ in the center of the action," Belong general manager Salomon Horowitz said about the move.
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