Techstars LA: Fabrica
Fabrica’s first real estate transactions are closed online in minutes with their proprietary blockchain technology.
Real estate is the largest asset class in the US, yet one of the slowest industries to modernize. Traditional title and escrow companies used in sales of properties are outdated. Additionally, closing on a home is a painstaking process filled with manual paperwork and multiple parties that takes on average 49 days. Fabrica set out to change this.
Five years ago, Co-Founder Federico Pomi moved from Italy to San Francisco to start his family. As a young home buyer, he searched online. After looking at sleek websites, online brokers, and modern apps, he quickly found his dream house online and made the largest investment of his life.
Once he began the closing process, he felt like he was transported back to the middle ages. He discovered a world built on paper and rubber stamps. They got his fingerprint, then got his name wrong, and then misspelled it on all the documents he signed. Behind the scenes, these crucial documents were processed by an army of people and sent over fax machines to the county recorder to be safely stored on microfilms. Finally, they were stamped and mailed back to him one month later. After this experience, Federico decided this process had to be updated.
Fabrica is revolutionizing how real estate transactions are performed, with smart tech enabling transactions to close online, in minutes, without any paperwork. Fabrica’s modern buying experience aims to displace title and escrow companies, in a $16B market. Their proprietary technology makes title digital and uses blockchain to record every transaction.
With Fabrica, a buyer can see all the property information / legal documents online and once the payment clears, the title is transferred digitally and the transaction settles instantly. To make this possible, they’ve completely redesigned how the title is held and recorded. Land investor Willie G. from WGlands.com is one customer to take advantage of this tech: “The Fabrica platform is pretty sleek! It made the transaction easier, especially the auto-deposit at the end.”
Fabrica has adopted a radically different approach from their competitors. All of their competitors, including Reasi, FlareAgent and Modus Closing, manage the closing by relying on the traditional title and recording system. Because of this dependency, their transaction still requires weeks to close and a lot of manual work. Fabrica provides the same outcome, but the transaction is operated entirely via software and settles in minutes digitally. Their is also no manual work required. This allows for a seamless digital experience, that is quick and stress free.
Federico Pomi is a serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped a company in Italy from an idea to millions of users. He then worked as an Innovation Manager at Vodafone. His Co-Founder Andrea Ballarini is also a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded Eight Sleep, which is backed by Y Combinator and Khosla ventures. Together they’ve built a digital title company that is already powering a segment of the market. If you would like to be one of the first people to buy or sell land online click here.
