Houm Sees Mexico as Its Next Destination in Latin America
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Houm Sees Mexico as Its Next Destination in Latin America

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Alessa Flores By Alessa Flores | Senior Journalist and Industry Analyst - Tue, 07/07/2020 - 12:32

Houm’s housing platform has been a success in Chile, which is why the startup is seeking an investment of more than US$1.3 million to enter another country in Latin America to continue growing. Among the candidates are Mexico, Colombia and Peru, explained Benjamin Labra and Nicolás Knockaert, Founders of Houm to Forbes México.

Houm is a startup that emerged from the need of people in Chile to find affordable housing. The platform makes this process easier with the help of technology. "Our goal is to make the leasing experience much easier and more pleasant for both the tenant and the owner. We are in a very inefficient and fragmented industry where processes did not have much transparency and technology," said Benjamín Labra, CEO and Co-Founder of the company to Forbes Mexico. Houm is in charge of leasing your property, it recommends the optimal rental value, takes professional photos and videos and publishes them on the most important real estate portals. It also shows your property to interested parties and evaluates them commercially. Once the property is leased, Houm manages it, while the landlord only worries about receiving their payment on a monthly basis.

In times of pandemic, Houm has managed to revolutionize real estate processes. Currently, the company arranges digital visits to properties through streaming. In just over a year of operations, the company has managed to earn a little more than a US$1 million in turnover, explains Forbes Mexico.

If Houm were to arrive to Mexico, the startup would encounter several companies that provide very similar services, Homie, for example, which is a platform to rent apartments safely and without a guarantor. "Homie is a platform that connects two parts of the real estate marketplace and offers security and speed for each party," Jordie Greenham, CEO of Homie, said in an interview with Bloomberg. Homie’s differentiator is in the Lost Rent Insurance, which ensures tenants always receive the rent payments. 

Mexico, like other Latin American countries, has a complicated real estate system that demands guarantees when leasing a property. “The use of a guarantor or guarantee is not an efficient for lessors, however,” says Greenham. Homie's technology replaces these guarantees with an algorithm that considers different variables, such as payment habits, payment capacity, credit history, to give certainty to the tenant about who is renting the property.

Houm was selected as one of the eight most disruptive companies in Latin America along with Griky, Moova, Ramper, The Eye Inc, tuGerente Privacy Tools and NILUS.online, which will give it a competitive edge should it decide to enter the Mexican market.

Photo by:   Whatwolf

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