Eric Schmidt-backed HouseCanary raises $33 million

The total U.S. housing market is worth $30 trillion, but the data to value individual properties is still imprecise, according to HouseCanary. The real estate startup thinks it has better analysis and counts believers like Eric Schmidt and Kobe Bryant, who are participating in its $33 million funding round.

“We’re probably 25 years behind the stock market in terms of sophistication,” HouseCanary CEO Jeremy Sicklick says of housing data. HouseCanary wants to be “the most trusted company around accurate home valuations in the United States.”

Using machine learning and comprehensive algorithms, HouseCanary has built up a data business that assesses and predicts the value of 100 million homes. They have built metrics around local schools, the employment market and crime rates.

They target both real estate investment firms and home appraisers for clients, who pay to use the service.

Most real estate data is issued quarterly or in single reports, often forcing real estate investors to make decisions based on lagging, outdated and unconfirmed data,” said Lauren Pressman, who manages the real estate investments for Hillspire, the family office of Eric Schmidt. “I am also hoping HouseCanary can help avoid a repeat of what we saw during the crash by limiting human error and bias in the home valuation process.”

Mark Dyne, an investor in HouseCanary and CEO of Europlay Capital Advisors, saw “enormous potential to disrupt the antiquated real estate industry. It’s not just about amassing data — you have to scrub it, clean it, match it and put it through sophisticated algorithms.”

San Francisco-based HouseCanary was founded in 2014 and raised its seed round from Basepoint Ventures and Bryant Stibel Investments.