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50 Best Workplaces of the Year 2021

Life at HomeLight, The Award-Winning PropTech Company Building the Future of Real Estate

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HomeLight is building the future of real estate — today. Our vision is a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying for all.

The last decade of innovation in real estate has focused entirely on helping clients find the home of their dreams. HomeLight's technology is powering the next decade of innovation: transforming how agents and their clients actually buy and sell homes.

More than 28,000 of the top real agents across the United States rely on HomeLight's platform to deliver better outcomes to homebuyers and sellers during every step of the real estate journey, whether that's enabling an all-cash offer, unlocking liquidity of their existing home to buy a new one, or creating certainty through a modern closing process. Each year, HomeLight facilitates billions of dollars of residential real estate business on its platform for thousands of agents.

Q. What is it like to work at HomeLight?

HomeLight has over 600 employees located throughout the world, with offices in Scottsdale, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Tampa. Together, HomeLight employees come together to build, market, and support products that directly impact the world: helping to make the dream of homeownership a reality for thousands of people.

HomeLight is dedicated to finding talented people from all walks of life to join the company as it rapidly expands to meet surging demand from homebuyers, sellers, and agents across the United States.

We're committed to creating a welcoming, well-represented, and understanding workplace where our team members feel they belong. HomeLight's team breaks barriers every day while staying committed to company goals and core values.

Q. What products are HomeLight building that improve the way people buy and sell homes?

HomeLight Cash Offer and HomeLight Trade-In are two of HomeLight's flagship financial products that are revolutionizing the way people buy and sell homes.

In today's housing market with low inventory and high buyer demand, the competition for a home is fierce. One tool proven to help average homebuyers compete and win in today's seller's market is the ability to make an all-cash offer. A true all-cash offer means a buyer has the means to purchase a home without taking out a mortgage – something only 12% of Americans are able to do. While out of reach to the vast majority of Americans, 22% of all home sales so far in 2021 were all-cash deals, up from 15% a year ago. This option, however, is impossible for everyday people struggling to just save up for a 20% down payment.

HomeLight Cash Offer is the new way well-qualified buyers can make an all-cash offer, even if they need a mortgage, allowing them to compete and win in today's competitive housing market. These all-cash offers have real value: offers powered by HomeLight Cash Offer have saved home buyers up to 4.4% compared to offers with a loan and allowed buyers to compete and win in bidding wars.

HomeLight Trade-In solves another important issue that agents and would-be sellers face: the ability to buy before they sell while still capturing the full market value of their home. HomeLight Trade-In homes have sold for 5% above valuation, closed five times faster, and helped clients save 3.5% on the purchase price of their new home, compared to the traditional method of listing on the market. HomeLight Trade-In is built for the majority of homebuyers: those who own their home and need to unlock liquidity to make an offer on a new one.

These products allow buyers and sellers to move with efficiency and certainty, crucial for those transacting in particularly competitive markets or on fast timelines due to life events, including jobs, divorces, and more.

Q. Share an example about how HomeLight Cash Offer and HomeLight Trade-In have helped home buyers and sellers succeed.

Take one of our customers, Nancy — a retiree in the San Francisco Bay Area who was hoping to move closer to her family right when the pandemic hit. When the perfect house hit the market three doors down from her daughter’s family outside of Sacramento, Nancy made an offer — only to lose out to an all-cash buyer.

Nancy’s contingent offer was simply too risky for the sellers, even after the original all-cash offer fell through. Nancy was not able to host open houses and sell her home the traditional way. It also wasn’t financially feasible for her to vacate her home without a bridge loan.

Enter HomeLight Trade-In, which helped Nancy receive an above-asking offer for her home after only two days on the market. Nancy was able to purchase her dream home down the block from her family with an all-cash offer. She’s now happily watching her grandchildren as the entire family works and learns from home.

Or, consider the Swaminathan family who, after 15 failed offers, learned about and used Cash Offer to ultimately win their dream home and close in 8 days. When the Swaminathan family set out to buy their first home in Fremont, California, they faced a market filled with cash buyers offering quick closes. After submitting offers unsuccessfully on 15 homes over four months, it seemed the Swaminathans couldn't win. When they finally found their dream home, they worked with their agent and HomeLight Cash Offer to break the frustrating cycle. Powered by HomeLight Cash Offer, the team made an all-cash offer with an 8-day close and won against eight other buyers to close on the home of their dreams.

Q. What is a recent milestone HomeLight achieved on its journey to build the future of the real estate industry?

Buying a home is one of the most emotional and biggest financial decisions someone can make in their lifetime. Homeownership is also known as a crucial way to build long-term financial wealth and stability. Considering just how significant the home buying journey is, it's shocking that the $1.7 trillion real estate industry – one known to be plagued with unnecessary complexity, risk, uncertainty, and stress – hasn't changed in decades to meet the needs of today's home buyers and sellers.

This is exactly why HomeLight was founded in 2012: to create a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying for all. At HomeLight, we believe that everyone deserves to be provided with equal opportunities, tools, and resources to own a home. We're building the technology to empower all homebuyers and sellers with the ability to achieve homeownership – and to make the transaction as frictionless as possible along the way.

In 2021, HomeLight raised $363 million in new fundraising to achieve a unicorn valuation of $1.6 billion and crossed the monumental milestone of serving more than 1 million homebuyers and sellers across the country. These are more than just impressive numbers on a screen — this means there are now more than 1 million individuals and families across the entire United States who have turned to and trusted HomeLight to help them during one of life's most important moments: buying or selling their home.

Since day one, HomeLight has had a singular goal: to root out every moment of friction, pain, and uncertainty in the real estate transaction process and to transform it. To replace complexity with simplicity and frustration with satisfaction. To deliver better outcomes to buyers and sellers everywhere by partnering with top agents nationwide. With our new $1.6 billion valuations and $363 million in new funding, we are doubling down on our commitment to homebuyers, sellers, and real estate agents across the country by building the tools and technology to power the businesses of local agents and help everyday people achieve their homeownership dreams. We're devoted to continuing to expand to new markets to bring us one step closer to fulfilling our mission: building a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying for all.

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