Localize.city, a New York based real estate tech firm, has recently closed its Series A funding round, clocking out with $8 million in investments. Lead investors include Avigdor Willenz, an Israeli superconductor industry veteran, and Zvi Limon an investor and Chairman at Taboola, among others.
Localize.city just recently launched its website, using AI services to assist New York residents with finding new property. The site's Insight Engine allows users to make informed decisions when renting a home, using datasets analyzed in real time to fit each customer's needs.
This engine allows consumers to get a good sense of how living in different locations would work. Each address has interactive elements and large amounts of information, so consumers can make informed choices.
Investments from Willenz and Limon are not new to Localize.city, as both contributed to the funding of the site when it first launched in 2016, donating around $3 million. Many of those who founded Localize.city were originally from Taboola or another firm, Trusteer. Asaf Rubin, Localize.city's CEO and founder, previously ran the algorithm at Taboola. President Steve Kalifowitz used to head strategic operations in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East for Twitter, and design head Mushon Zer-Aviv also did map design on Waze.
Currently Localize.city has 110 employees, 90 at its R&D center in Tel Aviv and 20 at its New York City offices. The company hopes to increase the entire firm's staff by 20% in the coming weeks at both locations, adding designers, data scientists, software developers and product managers.
Asaf Rubin stated “A family that considers buying a specific real estate asset and is interested to know what it would be like to live in that house or apartment, cannot find full and practical answers on the web. That is why people are forced to make the biggest transaction of their lives without really knowing what they are getting into. This is the biggest consumer problem the internet has yet to solve. Before founding Localize.city, we interviewed hundreds of frustrated homebuyers who talked about mistakes they made due to lack of information. We analyzed forums and social networks, which were (and continue to be) flooded with a wide range of failures in the home-buying process.”
Steve Kalifowitz followed that, saying “People pay a premium to live near a subway station, but only after they move, discover that it is going to be closed for renovations. They choose an apartment for the breathtaking view, without knowing that there is already a building permit in the pipeline for a high-rise that will block it completely, or they rely on an elevator only to discover that it breaks down several times a month, and they will have to walk up to the fifth floor. Localize.city’s technology reveals these and many other insights about every home in New York City. The results to date have been phenomenal: a month from the launch, New Yorkers read more than one million insights that our Insight Engine created.”
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