Huspy disrupting the home-buying market from Dubai to Spain
Founded in Dubai in 2020, rapidly growing home buying and financing firm Huspy opened its first European office in Madrid this year.
The UAE-born property technology or ‘PropTech’ platform aims to simplify the process of buying homes. It provides users with verified home search listings, the ability to arrange viewings online and access to mortgage products all in one place, and initial mortgage quotes are delivered within 30 seconds.
“We have a platform that streamlines the whole process – starting from search with verified listings, the ability to control the visit, the ability to make an offer on the platform – we give you the financing and we close the transaction on behalf of the user,” explains co-founder and CEO Jad Antoun.
Antoun and co-founder Khalid Ashmawy provided the original funding for the firm, which was born during the epidemic. The company’s original location was Antoun’s residence, and there weren’t many employees there. Currently, Huspy has 300 workers working in both Spain and the UAE. More than 1,400 estate agents and 250 real estate firms are part of Huspy’s partner network in the UAE alone.
Since inception, Huspy has also acquired mortgage brokerages Home Matters, Just Mortgage and Finance Lab, allowing it to build its home-buying ecosystem, addressing the needs of its customers.
“You can have opinions on how to build a product but at the end of the day the users decide,” says Antoun. “We listen to a lot of the problems they’re facing, and we bet on our people to figure out the best solution that they need.”
In its Series A round of funding in June 2022, Hupsy raised €38.1 million from venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital India, and US-based Founders Fund and Fifth Wall. The funding will allow Hupsy to grow its headcount, brand awareness, product range and GMV – gross merchandise value. It currently manages more than €2 billion in GMV annually.
Operating in the expanding real estate market and having achieved more than 20 per cent month-on-month sales growth over the past two years, Hupsy’s future seems as safe as houses, but as history has taught us, nothing is ever guaranteed in the property market.