See the pitch deck single-family rental startup Doorvest used to raise $2.5 million


Doorvest Co Founder Image

  • Doorvest CEO Andrew Luong showed Insider the pitch deck he used to raise a $2.5 million seed round. 
  • The 2-year-old proptech firm offers a platform for customers to buy, own, and operate a home to rent out — all remotely. 
  • Doorvest plans to use the money to expand into a second market after launching the Houston area.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Doorvest, a single-family rental proptech startup, announced today that it has raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by early-stage experts Mucker Capital, who helped fund a previous pre-seed round.

The company has now raised $3.6 million, other funders include Invitation Homes co-founder Markus Ridgeway, Adam Nash, the former CEO of Wealthfront, and a slew of family and friends.

The company, founded in 2019, allows users to remotely underwrite, purchase, and manage homes as rental properties. Cofounder and CEO Andrew Luong said the idea came from his own experience building a portfolio of investment properties from afar while working at a few different startups. 

“I saw others that were similar to me,” Luong told Insider. “They had the same job title and income as me, had $20,000 to $30,000 saved up, and had the same dreams and aspirations. They traded stocks on Robinhood, invested in crypto, their 401(k), and high-yield savings account — but were thinking about that next level of asset class.”

Bea cause he wasn’t physically on the ground in the markets where he was buying property, he could identify the challenges finding, buying, and managing real estate. Each step in the process, from sourcing and underwriting to property management, required lots of research and knowledge to execute correctly.

Individuals who wanted to invest in rental properties, especially in the most popular locales, also had to compete with increasingly powerful Wall Street-backed institutional landlords, who leverage in-house property management systems and multimillion-dollar budgets.

Luong decided create a dual online and in-person infrastructure that would streamline the process of owning a rental property. With some angel funding from friends and family, Luong and his cofounder Justin Kasad began to build Doorvest.

Doorvest customers start their home-buying journeys online. After a short assessment of the customer’s investment objectives and financial readiness, the customer forks over a deposit. Doorvest’s team then searches for a home that fits the investor’s criteria, purchases it with a mix of equity and debt, renovates it for some $25,000 to $35,000, and then fully sells it to the customer.

Doorvest then handles the day-to-day operations of the property via a mix of in-house employees and vendors who handle property management and repairs, all while using software to track the asset’s performance. Doorvest also guarantees the first year of income. 

The company makes money by charging a premium for their service while purchasing and renovating the asset, and then charging a monthly property management fee. The property management fee is standard for the industry, but the company doesn’t charge anything when the house is not generating rental income. That aligns the company with customer incentives when the home is empty, according to Luong, and is a departure from the industry.

Luong said the newest round of funding will be used to grow Doorvest’s team, to increase the speed at which customers can move through the home-buying process, and to expand to a second market. Right now, the firm only serves the Houston, Texas, area.

The company also announced its Home Renovation Guarantee, which guarantees the home against wear and tear for the first year. If anything — from an HVAC system to microwave — needs repairs in the first year, the company will fix them with no cost to the homeowner.

Luong walked us through the nine-page pitch deck Doorvest used to raise this round of funding. 

The company had an easier time fundraising because of their performance during the pandemic. Doorvest saw a 32% month-over-month increase in customers, according to William Hsu, co-founder of leading investor Mucker Capital.



Doorvest


The company’s mission is to bring financial security to as many people as possible, by making it feasible for them to invest in real estate.



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The company highlighted the team that is backing them up, which is full of industry heavyweights.



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The problem Doorvest is trying to solve is simple: millennials want to buy real estate, but right now, they feel priced out of the largest source of wealth for Americans.



Doorvest


Doorvest’s solution is an end-to-end home purchase and property management platform. They advertise down payments as low as $20,000.



Doorvest


The company decided to focus on full ownership of single-family homes largely because of the tax benefits and government subsidy of mortgages. The cash-on-cash returns and equity build-up doesn’t hurt either.



Doorvest


The company identified three major risks: the challenge of building a trusted, memorable brand; the need to use real estate debt to purchase homes; and the challenges of building an operational network that rivals the size of the institutional players but still includes thousands of owners.



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Luong said he’s “really proud” that a majority of their customers have never previously owned real estate.



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The last slide explains exactly why Doorvest needs to raise money: to grow its staff, to operate in new markets, and to work with a larger customer base.



Doorvest


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