• UAE-based proptech houza, has raised $5.5 million in a pre-Series A round from Emirati real estate agencies.
• Founded in 2020 by Abdullah Alajaji, Lewis Allsopp, Ryan Mahoney and Barry Judge, houza provides property listings ranked by several criteria, such as performance and value content, as well as users’ preferences and searches.
• houza will use the newly acquired funding to build out its team and continue expanding its presence in the UAE market. 

Press release:

Dubai’s property portal, houza, raised $5.5 million in a pre-Series A round from UAE’s top real estate agencies. Co-founded in 2020, by CEO Barry Judge, houza.com is on a mission to challenge the fundamentals of the UAE real estate industry by driving down listing costs for agencies, and hosting only selective and carefully screened agencies. 

houza’s ‘by the industry, for the industry’ model, empowers the web portal’s in-depth understanding of the pain points of real estate transactions. The startup ranks listings in accordance with performance and value content. The portal's monetisation model charges agencies per lead delivered as opposed to the industry standard of ‘cost per listing’. houza’s web platform also features an algorithm which ranks listings based on content quality versus paying your way to the top. This benefits property seekers, giving an honest indication of sought-after properties which are ranked based on quality content, number of incoming leads, agent response time, and more.

The startup also announced the appointment of its new CEO, Jean-Pierre Mondalek, as it closed its Pre-Series A round. The CEO shared his thoughts on the future of the company, “I will work closely with our seasoned team and agency partners on ensuring we delight property seekers and real estate agents alike by being focused on building high quality and exclusive-to-houza content and driving leads, respectively.”

houza is set to build out its team and continue expanding its presence in the UAE market. The startup will be doubling down on solving perennial problems related to fake and duplicate listings as well as partnering with real estate agencies to launch a range of ‘first-to-market’ properties on its website. Co-founder, Barry Judge, commented on the investment, “houza has made some fantastic progress over the past 18 months and our 2022 fundraise will allow us to really drive home our value propositions around ‘no-fake-listings’ and ‘first-to-market’ properties."