Dongnae, a South Korean rental and home-buying market, announced that it has raised US$ 4.1 million in a seed funding round held in December 2020. The round was led by Flybridge and MetaProp, with participation by Goodwater Capital, Maple VC and a wide diversity of angel investors in both Korea and the U.S. This has brought Dongnae’s total funding to US$ 4.8 million. With this funding, the startup is planning to Digitize the real estate industry in South Korea.
Dongnae is similar to Redfin in the U.S., which brings the buyers and renters under one roof to find their new home. The startup represents the buyer/renter side, co-operating with a large number of brokers in Korea to basically build the country’s first true MLS (multiple listing system). Like Airbnb, Dongnae goes to different establishments and creates the digital inventory for each listing. They take 4K photos, watermark them and pass them back to the broker and also list them on Dongnae.
What Dongnae has to say
The founder of the company, Matthew Shampine said in a press release, “The real estate market in Korea is very different than here in the states. First, most buildings have their own broker with retail space on the ground floor, meaning that there are thousands of brokers in Korea who only represent a limited number of properties. In fact, there are about the same number of brokers in Korea as in the U.S., which has a much bigger population”.
“Secondly, due to the fragmentation across brokers, there is no real MLS in Korea that unifies all available properties. Renters and buyers must work across dozens of brokers and usually have to go see the space in person, rather than browse photos online. This system also means that the brokers are often representing both the buyer/renter and seller, which means they aren’t always negotiating in the best interest of the buyer”, he also added
About Dongnae
The startup was founded by Matthew Shampine and Insong Kim in 2020 and is headquartered in South Korea. The company is an online real estate platform that is intended to give tailored information about houses that are on sale or on rent from local realtors. Its platform helps users to easily locate the right house based on their needs and purpose, which enables users to save time and energy on finding the right location to stay in.
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