Modus, an escrow and title services startup that operates across Washington State, has nabbed $12.5 million in a Series A funding round co-led by a venture capital firm, NFX, whose partners include Trulia founder Pete Flint.
Flint was wooed by Modus’ founders in a coffee shop beneath NFX’s San Francisco office, TechCrunch reported.
Modus provides a platform where real estate agents, homebuyers and sellers can coordinate closings with title and escrow officers. It purportedly brings more order, transparency and efficiency to a closing process that can sometimes be disorganized and less secure by email. This includes allowing every party monitor each step of the title and escrow process, like Domino’s pizza tracker.
The platform has been designed with input from agents, coming out of the gate working a group of agents from brokerages including Sotheby’s International Realty, John L. Scott Real Estate and Windermere Real Estate.
According to GeekWire, Modus reports having facilitated more than $1 billion in transaction volume and having worked with hundreds of agents across Washington state. In 2020, it anticipates quadrupling its current staff of more than 50 employees, GeekWire reported.
Like so many other startups tackling the real estate space, Modus wants to expand far beyond its original niche. The real goal, according to TechCrunch, is nothing short of powering all real estate transactions.
Modus plans to expand coverage across 15 to 20 states over the next two years and raise a Series B funding round in the second or third quarter of 2020, TechCrunch reported.
Expressing a conviction held by many real estate tech investors these days, Flint said in a statement that, “The first revolution in online real estate was transforming the research experience. The next revolution in the industry is transforming the transaction,” TechCrunch reported.
Through Trulia, Flint was a central combatant in the first purported overthrow. Modus, like so many others, wants to be a leader in the next one. How real estate agents will fit into this picture remains to be seen, though most upstarts are playing nice with the old guard at the moment.
Modus’ financing round was also co-led by Niki Pezeshki, according to TechCrunch. Other participating investors, according to TechCrunch, were Liquid 2 Ventures, 500 startups, Mucker Capital, Hustle Fund, Rambleside and Cascadia Ventures.
