Dubai’s property portal, houza, is on a mission to disrupt the tenets of the UAE real estate business by lowering listing fees for agencies and hosting only a limited group of thoroughly vetted agencies. The company recently raised $5.5 million in a Pre-Series A round from UAE’s top real estate agencies.
Business model
The business strategy of houza enables the online portal to have a thorough understanding of the problems associated with real estate transactions. The portal’s monetization model bills agencies per lead delivered rather than the traditional “cost per listing” used by the industry.
Property ranking
houza also features an algorithm that ranks properties based on the quality of the content, which is a unique model that benefits serious property seekers by providing honest indications of desirable properties, the number of leads, and the agent response time, among other factors.
The company plans to increase its staff and keep growing its market share in the UAE. The startup will boost its efforts to address recurring issues with fraudulent and duplicate listings.
Technology driving real estate innovation
Besides the top industries like FinTech, Transport & Logistics, and E-commerce, Real Estate has lately become a space that has been emerging with technologies in multi-integrated platforms that are disrupting the traditional Real Estate dealing in the region.
Over the past few months, solutions like Online Property Platform Nawy, as well as property management platform Darent raised sizable investments to raise close to $10 million collectively.
Recently, Dubai’s Huspy closed a Series A round of $37 million to digitally transform the homeownership journey in the region.
