HomeTraq just partnered with Beyond Housing, a community development organization. HomeTraq is a three sided marketplace between home buyers, real estate buyers’ agents and banks.
Mark Gorman, HomeTraq Chairman
“What we had found is that most down-payment assistance programs, over 70 percent of the grant money that’s out there goes unused every year,” HomeTraq co-founder and chairman Mark Gorman told the 4thEst8. “Now, when you use our platform, it’ll immediately let you know that the house may be eligible for a $15,000 down-payment assistance program.”
HomeTraq offers home buyers the ability to get an agent to open up a house they want to see without commitment or being automatically put on that agent’s call list. The St. Louis startup distributes its platform through banks, credit unions and mortgage companies to help them retain customers.
“What we’re doing is helping them solve a mortgage problem with real estate technology. The average lender loses over 93 percent of the mortgage opportunities from their own customer base every year,” Gorman said. “The main reason is because the customers go shopping first… looking for homes. They meet an agent and then that agent refers them to the competition before the bank even knows their customer is shopping.”
Founded in 2019 the platform is in St. Louis, Jefferson City, Columbia, Mo. and since late 2020 Kansas City. Gorman says that in the last 90 days Kansas City has been bringing in a lot of business. HomeTraq has six full time employees and six part time contractors. The company landed an Arch Grant, is in a Capital Innovators cohort, and has won a handful of pitch competitions. Altogether it raised a bit over $100,000 in cash. Gorman says the St. Louis tech ecosystem has consistently helped his company grow.
“Capital Innovators, Arch Grants, ITEN, the Missouri Venture Forum… we were down at CIC Cortex until things shut down, and at T-Rex,” he said. “We’ve been very well embraced and very involved in that community… our focus is to keep all the real estate tech here in the St. Louis area instead of having to go to the West Coast.”
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