Homeownership is the American Dream; it always has been, and it likely always will be. As an immigrant himself (from Latvia), Andrew Borovsky knows that buying a home can be a defining moment in a person’s life. The 43-year-old chief executive of Visible says that in this current housing market, “that’s kind of threatened right now.”
As Fortune interviewed Borovsky, mortgage rates were just hitting the staggering heights of 8%, something unthinkable during the 3% average of much of the Pandemic Housing Boom as home prices rose substantially. But as rates climb, prices aren't falling, and the two have resulted in deteriorated affordability that’s pushing homeownership out of reach. With that, more people seem to be renting, and renting for longer. Borovsky’s Miami-based startup is building a financial network and operating system for real estate with the goal of making every transaction more efficient and less expensive, while leveling the field for smaller players.
Despite entering a turbulent housing market and an even tougher fundraising environment as a startup, Visible has now raised $15 million, Fortune is the first to report. The funding consists of $9 million in seed funding that was raised at the company’s founding last year, plus, as of a few months ago, an additional $6 million in a seed extension round led by Thrive Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures.
“Small homeowners just don’t have access to the same data, to the same sort of legal construct, certainly not to the same capital,” he says, adding that Visible’s focus is to bring some of the innovation that exists almost everywhere else to smaller-scale real-estate investors, “bring them all together, aggregate them, and give them the tools to fight back.”
This isn’t Borovsky’s (or his cofounders’) first rodeo, either. Aside from previously holding executive roles at CashApp, Cadre, and Square, he has started two other companies—one of which, a design firm called 80/20, was acquired by Square. Before that, Borovsky was a lead product designer for Apple. Visible’s founding team holds similar accolades.
Throughout his career, he says, he’s found himself returning to the same mission of empowering the smaller player or entrepreneur. Square focused on payments, particularly for small businesses that didn’t have access to the tools available to larger businesses—a mission he was happy to be a part of. When he joined Cadre, he noticed similar problems, as the company worked to build a platform that gave small investors access to commercial real estate. “Democratization of access, giving the little guy access to what the big guys have, is a common theme,” he says.
Now he sees a “giant, untapped space” in the U.S. around homeowners or, more specifically, mom-and-pop landlords. With Visible, he wants to start by helping the mom-and-pop rental property owners who are being squeezed by institutional investors, after instantly recognizing a mismatch of tools.
‘This feels like the right moment’
Visible’s first product, Rent App, is focused on rent payments. Its marketing claims that “paying rent has never been this easy.” Rent App claims it is safer than cash, easier than wires, and faster than checks, but it also helps renters build credit, Borovsky says, adding that this unique feature finally gives some measure of power to renters.
He mentions the example of all the renters out there, currently locked out of the housing market. Where homeowners build equity, renters "don’t get credit for it. The bureaus don’t know it exists. If you pay using Rent App, we automatically report on-time payments to the three credit bureaus, so you’re actually building towards that first home, which is really, really important.”
Borovsky says the tough housing market makes this the right time for his product. “This feels like the right moment to release Rent App,” he says, because home prices and mortgage rates are up, we’ve found ourselves in a severely unaffordable housing market, and the propensity to rent has risen in unison. Not to mention, if you own a home and have locked in a 3% mortgage rate, you’re probably not going to sell unless you absolutely have to, triggering a wave of so-called accidental landlords. Its other feature, Property App, is positioned to be Visible’s umbrella product to serve as an operating system for homeowners. Eventually, Visible’s goal is to enable investing, borrowing, refinancing, and renting, all of which will live in Property App.
Real estate is cyclical, Borovsky says, and his business model is set up to be long-term, so it won’t only cater to landlords and renters. Visible’s focus is to cut the fat around real estate transactions that shouldn’t exist, he says, and to build and consolidate sorely needed data. “I don’t think that it should take you days and cost you hundreds of dollars to prove that you own a home, right?” Borovsky asks, noting that even a title search “just seems really crazy.” The same can be said for appraisals—you shouldn’t have to schedule an appointment for someone to take photos of your home with their iPhone, when you can do that yourself, he says.
“At the end of the day, I just want to drive those transaction costs to effectively zero,” Borovsky says, adding that as technologists, Visible is set up to carry this out. “Cheaper, faster transactions benefit everyone and is maybe one of the steps that's necessary in order to unfreeze the market.”
