Nada, a fintech company aimed at accessible investments in real estate, today announced completing a $8.1 million seed round led by LiveOak Venture Partners, according to a press release.
The company says the funds will be used to expand the number of investment products it offers, improve its secondary trading platform and launch a mobile application. It also claims to be releasing the first ever real estate-backed debit card, saying it will enable homeowners to access their home equity and spend it via the card.
Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Capital Factory, 7BC Venture Capital, Sweater Ventures, LFG Ventures, Badra Capital and Stonks Fund also participated in the round. Krishna Srinivasan, LiveOak’s founding partner, will join Nada’s board of directors as a result of the funding. Jesse Stein, co-founder of Everyrealm, a metaverse-based NFT innovation and investment company, will also join the board to support scaling investment products.
Nada is led by co-founder and CEO John Green, who previously held roles in the mortgage industry at companies including JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual, along with co-founder and CFO Mauricio Delgado.
“Democratizing access to real estate for investors while enabling homeowners to unlock the intrinsic value in home equity using debit cards is a complex problem that sits at the confluence of many large opportunities,” said Srinivasan in the release. “The founders bring an uncommon combination of specialized skills around mortgage, specialty lending, regulatory compliance, and technology and possess boundless grit and vision to address this ambitious endeavor.”
Nada believes that investing in real estate previously involved gatekeeping, mostly by accredited investors, and says it plans to change that for retail investors. It says this can be accomplished through its “Cityfunds” investment product, which allows acts similarly to an index fund and enables consumers to invest in individual markets overarching home equity market for a minimum of $250.
“Homeowners cannot access home equity without being burdened with more debt and individual investors lack access to real estate investment products,” Green stated in the release.
“Krishna and the LiveOak team are unique given their roles as the lead investors in numerous proptech + fintech leaders such as Homeward, OJO, Opcity, Backflip and others. Partnering with them will enable us to leverage their expertise and relationships and help us fully realize our vision of reimagining how everyone can both unlock and further build their real estate wealth.”
In other proptech news, PunchListUSA raised a $39 million Series A to further digitize the home inspection process. Latchel also raised a $16.7 million Series A for its maintenance workflow and resident experience property management platform.