‘Stripe For Real Estate’ debuts to fund deals from strong buyers

Setpoint is the latest venture from Ben Rubenstein, a former Opcity and Realtor.com executive.

A new company that sees itself as the “Stripe of real estate” and aims to provide both technology and money to other startups, for example in the Power Buying sector, has gone out of mode stealth Tuesday.

The company, dubbed Setpoint, is the latest venture from Ben Rubenstein, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded leading verification firm Opcity and served as chief revenue officer for Realtor.com.

Setpoint aims to “enable proptech companies to offer their customers frictionless options to buy and sell homes, including quota-free cash offers,” according to a statement. This specifically means that the company provides a software platform that handles document collection and verification, and automates parts of the closing process, among other things.

Additionally, Setpoint provides financing to capital-intensive companies, such as Power Buyers, so they can continue to close deals. In total, the company has secured $615 million in allocated capital that it can provide to other businesses, it said in a statement.

Setpoint originally launched last year but remained in stealth mode until Tuesday. According to the statement, companies such as Homeward, Flyhomes, Reali and Houwzer are already using Setpoint’s platform, and the company expects to help facilitate 25,000 transactions this year.

Ben Rubenstein

Rubenstein is president and co-founder of Setpoint. He previously co-founded digital marketing company Yodle in 2005, then founded Opcity in 2015. Realtor.com later acquired Opcity, and Rubenstein ended up working as chief revenue officer for the News Corp-owned portal.

In a conversation with Inman, Rubenstein explained that as real estate startups in the Power Buying space, among other areas, they need technology to improve their efficiency, as well as more capital to fund their deals. Setpoint wants to help these companies grow.

“It’s a Wild West out there right now,” Rubenstein said. “We want to help them standardize.”

Rubenstein added that by using Setpoint, other businesses can secure the working capital they need faster and more efficiently than if they had to rely on more traditional sources of credit.

Stuart wall

The Setpoint team also includes Stuart Wall, who serves as co-founder and CEO. Wall described Setpoint as the “Stripe for real estate,” likening the company to the widely used transaction management startup that powers websites and e-commerce for other companies.

“We are that layer of infrastructure that other people can build on,” Wall added.

While Power Buyers — or businesses that offer services, such as cash support to buyers — is one of the most obvious applications for Setpoint’s platform, the company can also work with startups focusing on other models, such as fractional ownership.

“Setpoint focuses exclusively on modern real estate transactions such as bridge financing, condominium and real estate capital platforms,” ​​Wall added in the release. “We developed our tools from scratch for proptech companies wishing to offer more innovative services.”

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