Theo K. Browne: Meet the Real Estate Tech Founder: Tyler Forte from Felix Homes

In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Tyler Forte from Felix Homes.

Without further ado…

What do you do?

I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Felix Homes. We’re based in New York City and will be launching in Nashville, Tennessee within the next two weeks!

At Felix we don’t want to be your agent, we want to be your home selling partner. Felix is the only platform that combines key benefits of the direct buyer model with advantages that stem from working with a traditional real estate agent. We give owners the certainty of a guaranteed sale, an upfront cash payment to help with expenses and an incentive structure that gets them the highest price.

I was motivated to start Felix Homes after experiencing how broken the current selling process is and hearing other ‘horror stories’ from friends and family. I started Felix to help reduce the stress of selling a home by creating the most consumer friendly model.

My day-to-day role includes managing the launch of our Nashville operations, as well as working with my team to ensure we’re effectively getting our value proposition in front of consumers so that we can help as many home sellers as possible.

What problem does your product/service solve?

Our basic premise is that home sellers are not compensated for the uncertainty that stems from selling their home. Prior to Felix, owners had two options, working with a traditional agent and hoping that their home will sell or working with a direct buyer and paying a commission fee that’s as high as 12%.

At Felix, we pay homeowners up to 2% of their home’s value just for listing on our platform. If Felix is unable to find a buyer within 90 days, we’ll purchase the home at an agreed upon price, so the seller can have the certainty of a guaranteed sale from day one. Instead of taking a traditional 5-6% commission, we’ll list your home at market value and if we can sell it for more, we earn the difference capped at six percent. This means that we only make money when the home seller does.

What are you most excited about right now?

We’re really excited about our launch in the Nashville market! We’ve talked to sellers, buyers, and brokers in market and all of them were enthusiastic about our product offering. In fact, based on a customer survey we conducted, over 73% of respondents would either use or recommend Felix over a traditional agent.

Additionally, it’s great to see the amount of innovation in prop-tech and the growing acceptance of new, disruptive models.

What’s next for you?

Our goal is to launch and scale in the Nashville market and then expand nationwide. We’ll be raising additional capital come Q4 with the intent of using the financing to expand our offerings to other markets.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

I’m passionate about social equality. My two co-founders are both immigrants and I believe the current environment really discounts the amazing talent and varying perspectives that made America great. I think we should be more open to people from all over the world and should work on attracting the best talent to the United States.

Thanks to Tyler for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.

We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).

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