Houwzer, a tech-enabled real estate brokerage with the industry’s first full-service 0% listing commission model, has announced real estate entrepreneur Jay Minkoff as Chairman, lead investor, and operating partner, and renowned economist Dr. Kevin C. Gillen as Senior Economic Advisor. Driven by 14 new hires made in Q1 2017, the startup has quadrupled in size from 8 to 32 full-time agents and staffers in the past year.
After mentoring Houwzer’s founders Mike Maher and Kevin Baird for two years, Minkoff took on an enhanced role in the company in late 2016. As the first outside investor in Houwzer, Minkoff led the way for other investors, including a $200,000 investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners. In addition to lending support and governance as Chairman of the Board, Minkoff is entrenched in marketing, fundraising, and business development as an Operating Partner.
Minkoff is a third-generation commercial real estate developer and manager with more than 33 years of experience. He has sold or financed more than a quarter-billion dollars of real estate and started three related businesses, including HomeBuilder.com, the first consumer website listing new homes direct to consumers. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Minkoff holds an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management and Real Estate Finance.
“Having spent the past 30 years marketing housing, it was clear that with the advent of online home search engines, it doesn’t cost 6% to list and sell a home,” said Minkoff. The Houwzer team uses marketing best practices, proprietary systems, and innovative compensation models to reduce the cost of selling a home in half. “Salaried agents, who specialize as seller or buyer agents only, have their focus on their clients’ needs thus eliminating what has always been a potential conflict of interest. Houwzer is the modern way of buying and selling a home for savvy consumers,” said Minkoff.
Dr. Gillen has come on as Senior Economic Advisor, applying his market research and analysis to drive Houwzer’s operations. He will call on his experience as a Senior Research Fellow at Drexel University’s Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation whose research has been cited in the Wall St. Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg News, and beyond. With a background in urban economics and real estate finance, Dr. Gillen’s research and consulting work is concentrated in applied economics in the analysis of real estate development and operation of real estate markets, including their fiscal, economic, and financial implications. He also produces regular outlook reports on the housing market, both nationally and specific to Greater Philadelphia.
Kevin Gillen received his PhD in Applied Economics in 2005 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and received both the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Dissertation Award and Lincoln Land Institute Dissertation Fellowship.
“No entrepreneur knows the real estate business like Jay Minkoff, and no economist understands the local real estate market better than Kevin Gillen,” said Maher, Houwzer Co-Founder and CEO. “If we’re going to start a real estate revolution, these are the guys that Houwzer wants helping to lead it.”
For more information, visit http://houwzer.com/.
