The Latin American PropTech La Haus has announced a new product which will allow users to buy, renovate and rent out a home all through the platform. The product is being trialled in Mexico City and Guadalajara and is run through a partnership with home decoration firm GAIA.
La Haus operates a marketplace for new build properties which also serves as a transaction platform for users to progress the sale and ultimately sign everything online. The new model being trialled is an extension of its end-to-end offering with professional renovators from GAIA and a third party property manager brought in to round out the service.
The offering comes in response to a trend that the company was seeing in its Mexican markets where some 30-40% of homes it sold were being renovated and put back on the market as rentals. La Haus hopes that by aggregating renovation and property management services it can offer value with economies of scale and generate new revenues.
La Haus is one of a new generation of real estate marketplaces in Latin America that, perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, are disrupting local housing markets. Companies like Quinto Andar, Loft and AoCubo in Brazil, Houm in Chile and Aptuno and La Haus from Colombia have made big strides and attracted big venture capital.
These startups all have slightly different models but all use technology to simplify real estate transactions in markets where antiquated bureaucracy and a lack of trust often significantly slow the process. Many of these companies have looked to the attractive Mexican market in recent years as a catalyst for growth. La Haus expanded from its native Colombia to Mexico City in 2019 and has since expanded to Guadalajara, Monterrey and Querétaro.