The Mighty “Mom-and-Pop” Landlord
While institutional landlords dominate most real estate conversations, individual owners and operators of either a single rental property or a small portfolio actually comprise a major portion of the market. In 2018, so-called ‘mom-and-pop’ landlords were responsible for 60% of all investor home purchases, and as of 2020, this class of landlords owned a collective 22.7 million units across 16.7 million properties — making up a majority of rental residences in the country.
Despite their size, this group of investors has historically been underserved by the technology resources that streamline operations for institutional owners.
A One-Stop Shop for Financial Operations
As the leading VC for multifamily and single-family real estate technology, servicing the entire range of residential property owners and operators has always been one of RET Ventures’ most prominent goals. With this in mind, we have kept a keen focus on technology that has the potential to improve operations across the industry at-large; as we have expanded our portfolio, this has led to investment in platforms such as TurboTenant and TurnoverBnB. We are now expanding our focus on mom-and-pop operators as we announce our latest investment in Azibo.
Acting as the financial hub for small-scale owners of rental property, Azibo offers landlords a one-stop shop where they can complete necessary financial transactions — such as free rent collection and bill payments — while also efficiently managing, organizing, and analyzing payment and expense data. The platform also enables full-service banking services through free checking and savings accounts with cashback and offers nationally licensed insurance, as well as lending solutions such as mortgages and short-term loans. By collecting a wide array of property-related financial data, Azibo is able to generate powerful analytics that provide landlords with data-driven insights relating to operations, potential renovations and more.
Through our partnership with Azibo, we hope to democratize the sort of full-stack financial services and analytics currently utilized by large-scale institutional owners to the mom-and-pop market. The application of RET’s detailed expertise with tools for the institutional multifamily and single family rental market — combined with Azibo’s sophisticated team and robust suite of fintech products and licenses — has established the foundation to improve financial management for all landlords.
The Future of Rental for Non-Institutional Owners
With this latest funding round, Azibo will be expanding its team, accelerating product innovation and expediting its rollout to the entire rental property ecosystem, from landlords and renters to property managers and vendors.
Azibo is a valuable addition to RET’s current portfolio of investments supporting small landlords, and we are eager to continue backing technologies that meet the needs of this important yet underserved group of owners.
We are excited to kick off 2022 with this new partnership, and we look forward to supporting Azibo’s immense potential to better the rental management process in the years to come.