Earlier today it was announced that Keith Rabois–a venture capitalist with Khosla Ventures and the former COO of Square–is working on a startup that hopes to make selling your home as easy as a few clicks. The codename for the project is Homerun.
“For most people, homes are their biggest asset and it’s completely illiquid,” Rabois said. “This is a really expensive transaction for many people. What we’re going to provide is instant certainty, liquidity and convenience for normal people to sell their homes.”
Rabois hasn’t shared many details, other than a pretty basic flow:
“I’m not going to describe the exact flow, but the general point is you’ll tell us what your address is and confirm your identity, then we’ll allow you to sell your home,” he said. “Obviously there’s a variety of ways you could verify your identity that we didn’t have in 2003, when I originally thought of this idea. Like Facebook Connect.”
This, of course, isn’t a new idea. Many companies have tried to improve the process of buying and selling homes by going online. But it’s a space that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation. I’m particularly interested because I work in real estate and it’s always struck me as a lumbering archaic industry.
So when a name like Keith Rabois announces that they’re working on solving a problem in this space, I get excited about what might come about.