This startup has a plan to unlock housing market inventory

ResiDay is next week!!

I’d love to meet you in-person.

On Friday, November 8th, in New York City, ResiClub will host ResiDay, bringing together the brightest minds in the housing market. This will be our first-ever one-day conference.

There will be hundreds of influential housing investors, agents, developers, VCs, lenders, and brokers who are shaping the future of residential real estate, homebuilding, mortgage lending, and build-to-rent at ResiDay. Several prominent business and real estate journalists will also be there.

The ResiClub team will lead a day of insightful discussions on housing market trends and strategies impacting the future of the U.S. housing landscape. ​Expect top-tier speakers, ample networking opportunities, and hours of engaging discussions on the future of the U.S. housing market.

[ResiClub PRO members, our paid tier, can attend ResiDay for free]

Amanda Orson, CEO and founder of Galleon, will be among the many speakers at the event. Back in February, ResiClub wrote an article on how Galleon plans to unlock more housing inventory. In lieu of ResiDay, we’ve updated that story for today’s issue.

This startup has a plan to unlock housing market inventory

Imagine Warren Buffett knocking on a homeowner's door and offering them $1 billion for their home. They'd sell in a heartbeat, wouldn't they?

While there are around 82 million single-family homes in the United States, only 738,000 are currently up for sale, according to Altos Research. However, beyond that active listing figure lies a hidden truth: most homeowners have a price at which they would readily part with their property. And for most homeowners it’d be far less than the Warren Buffett hypothetical up above.

That’s why Galleon launched this year: a platform where homeowners can "name their number." By allowing homeowners to specify the price at which they would be willing to sell their homes, this platform seeks to tap into the vast reservoir of potential inventory that remains untapped in the housing market.

At least that’s how Amanda Orson, CEO and founder of Galleon, sees it.

“What we’re doing is just giving people that have a home, that would be persuaded to sell it at a certain price, the opportunity to list it in as low friction, as fast, and as simple a manner as possible,” Orson tells ResiClub. “We think that being able to list your home, and to do so within a few minutes is the future. That’s the way the world will move… we’ve long been able to list things on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace in a few minutes. The time it takes to sell your home, to actually put something on the MLS system and all of the hurdles in between, is so long and so high friction that the current MLS system is just a reflection of the most motivated sellers… As a result the [active] inventory is not reflective, we believe, of the actual inventory available in the market. Ask any broker who has pocket listings, or anyone who has purchased anything off market, or any homeowner who has ever received unsolicited direct mail [from an iBuyer like Opendoor].”

For the time being, Galleon is in its beta phase, and they’re busy collecting “name your number” submissions from homeowners interested in selling (you can submit here).

In total, there are 14,424 listings on the site as of Monday. That number will get much larger, Orson says, over the coming months as they figure out the marketplace and move beyond the “beta phase.”

“None of the listings on-site are on the MLS. We routinely scan them, actually, and purge on-MLS listings once weekly,” Orson says.

How will Galleon eventually make money?

Orson says they’ll have software license fees, lead generation to real estate attorneys/settlement agents/ mortgage brokers, and value-added services. Orson anticipates the value-added services will be free for the “retail homebuyer” but not for the “investor class.”

Orson added that: “I just want to emphasize that it will always be free to list, free to browse, and free to interact with a home seller/ potential buyer. That's going to be a core differentiator for us forever.”

This startup believes it has the potential to spur more churn in the housing market. As the platform gains traction, Orson says, it could reshape the dynamics of the real estate industry, providing a win-win solution for homeowners and buyers alike.

"The universe of people that would sell is just a magnitude larger than the universe of people who actually sell," Orson tells ResiClub.

On Tuesday, we learned that U.S. home prices as measured by the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index fell -0.1% between the July 2024 reading and the August 2024 reading.

Seasonally speaking, that’s a soft print: U.S. home prices have averaged +0.3% for that month-over-month window since 1990.

Year-over-year: +4.2% (That’s decelerating—it was +6.5% year-over-year in February)

Year to date: +4.5% 

Since March 2020: +51.0% 

Since the 2022 peak: +5.5%