Dallas tech startup for real estate investors secures $35 million in funding

A Dallas-based startup targeted on serving to small actual property buyers has secured $35 million in funding.

The corporate, Backflip, landed an $8 million fairness seed spherical and $27 million in devoted debt funding. It should use the cash to develop its product improvement workforce and launch to the general public in Texas and Colorado on June 16.

The startup’s cellular app permits its members to seek out residential properties of as much as 4 items to purchase and renovate. The app consists of information and instruments to assist buyers discover properties to spend money on, analyze the alternatives and get financing via in-house lender Backflip Capital.

“We consider that Wall Road, Opendoor and these different large firms which might be doing this at scale shouldn’t be the one firms which have entry to this sort of expertise, this sort of information, not to mention this sort of capital,” mentioned Backflip co-founder and CEO Josh Ernst. “You really want a platform that may combination and scale the entry level for the little guys, so to talk.”

Since launching in a non-public beta take a look at final 12 months, the app has been used to research about $2 billion in properties.

Backflip just isn’t focusing on or working with people who reside within the properties, simply entrepreneurs them as investments and to promote or lease them to tenants. The buyers might be folks investing in actual property as a aspect hustle or ones who’ve made it a full-time job.

“It’s been very attention-grabbing and superior to look at the evolution of the beta members and actually the range of various kinds of folks, totally different backgrounds and totally different experiences,” Ernst mentioned.

Ernst mentioned for probably the most half, its members usually are not competing with homebuyers for low-priced properties. Most of the properties they’re want work and are solely getting demand from buyers.

“Provide has a basic drawback. We’ve underbuilt for the final decade-plus as an business, and we additionally haven’t completed a superb job of reinvigorating the prevailing housing inventory,” Ernst mentioned. “There’s a chance right here to actually improve provide, which is the place Backflip could be very targeted.”

Ernst, a Dallas native, lived in New York for greater than a decade and has labored as an funding banker, an investor in numerous companies and because the co-founder of an actual property startup within the space for storing. Earlier than beginning Backflip, he was chief working officer of one other Dallas actual property funding firm.

His co-founder, Jake Rome, comes from a background of actual property personal fairness and institutional capital.

“The 2 of us carry totally different however deep backgrounds in institutional capital mixed with expertise and information and enterprise constructing, and it actually helps us take into consideration bringing one thing that’s really totally different, distinctive and revolutionary to the market,” Ernst mentioned.

The fairness seed spherical is co-led by Austin-based LiveOak Enterprise Companions and Vertical Enterprise Companions, based mostly within the Silicon Valley. Revel Companions, Nice Oaks VC and Greg Waldorf — a former board member of Trulia and Zillow — are additionally collaborating.

LiveOak founding companion Krishna Srinivasan is becoming a member of Backflip’s board of administrators alongside Brad Corona, managing director of Vertical Enterprise Companions.