When a homeowner decides to sell, a fresh coat of paint or new kitchen countertops can mean the difference between a bidding war and a stale listing.
The problem: not everyone has the cash on hand to make those updates before putting their house on the market.
That’s the gap Stamford-based Notable Finance aims to fill. The fintech startup provides short-term lines of credit to help sellers cover pre-sale costs — including painting, landscaping, staging and minor renovations — with repayment due after the home closes.
Now, armed with a recently raised $6 million Series A funding round — led by Greenwich-based insurance giant W. R. Berkley Corp., and joined by Second Century Ventures, the venture investment arm of the National Association of Realtors — Notable plans to expand its reach. The company will more than double its seven-member sales team and ramp up training for the more than 100 brokerages, stagers and vendors that already offer its financing tool to clients.
Max Khul
“The product itself isn’t very complex, however, people are really weird about financing, and people are really weird about money,” said Chief Growth Officer Max Khul. “Even though the product itself is really clear, inexpensive, lightweight and transparent, people are predisposed to be freaked out by anything that sounds like a loan product.”
Khul said educating agents and service providers is key to breaking that barrier. By helping Realtors and stagers understand how the product works — that it’s short term, relatively low cost and repaid from the home sale — Notable hopes it can better communicate the benefits to sellers, he said.
Notable was founded in 2019 by Austin Lane, who first explored launching a fintech company in the healthcare sector before realizing real estate offered a clearer need. Khul said Lane made the pivot after speaking with contacts in the housing industry who believed financing pre-sale improvements could be a valuable niche for a fintech platform.
According to the company, homes prepared with the help of Notable’s financing sell 31% faster and for 9% more than comparable listings. Sellers usually spend about 3% of a home’s listing price on costs related to preparing it for sale, according to Zillow.
Teaching the upside
Notable’s expanded workforce will train its partners on how to show home sellers that its line of credit offers a low-interest option for covering home-preparation costs — one that, unlike credit cards, doesn’t affect their credit scores. The company’s sales team plans to conduct the training through one-on-one and group sessions at partner locations.
“The biggest learning over the past year has been that each of our partners has their own unique sales process, and so we are working with them on their sales approach,” said Khul, who joined Notable in May 2023. “As a (business-to-business-to-consumer) company, it’s imperative that we support and empower our partners within the structure of their system and language and process.”
A key goal of the training is to help partners integrate Notable’s line of credit into their broader strategy for assisting homeowners preparing to sell, Khul said.
Notable will also invest part of the Series A funding in developing content for the training sessions, some of which will be conducted virtually.
Notable’s line of credit allows sellers to borrow up to $50,000 at a 1% interest rate that compounds monthly. The balance is repaid as part of the closing costs, drawn from the proceeds of the home sale.
Khul declined to disclose revenue figures, but said the company has lent more than $1 billion to over 35,000 home sellers to date.
As part of the recent fundraise, Notable sold an undisclosed equity stake to W. R. Berkley Corp. and Second Century Ventures.
Notable also appointed to its board of directors Clare Tokheim, a venture capital investor with Berkley Ventures, the insurer’s early-stage investment division.
“Notable is exactly the kind of business we look to back: one with real adoption, embedded distribution and the discipline to scale sustainably,” Tokheim said in a statement. “They’re building something with staying power — and we’re excited to be part of the journey.”
‘Purely financial’
Notable differentiates itself from other companies offering lines of credit for home-sale preparation — such as Curbio, Zoom Casa, Free Model and Revive Concierge — by allowing home sellers to choose their own vendors and contractors, Khul said.
“The thing that’s unique about us is that we are purely the financial piece,” he said. “We enable the agent and the client to work with whoever they want to work with, do whatever work they want.”
Notable’s line-of-credit product has helped California-based Vanguard Properties secure higher home prices by enabling sellers to make repairs and improvements before listing, said Nina Dosanjh, a Realtor and Vanguard’s chief technology and operations officer. She said Notable’s upcoming training will help Vanguard agents show more sellers how using the financing tool can boost a home’s market value.
“Training and education are critical when introducing a financial service that integrates with the agent-client experience,” she said.
Khul said Notable expects demand for its line of credit to grow in the current U.S. housing market, which saw home sales rise 3.8% in August from a year earlier and 4% since July, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“The investment we have taken recently … has a view towards that growth, and a view towards investing in the right kind of people to lead the effort,” he said. “We’re incredibly bullish … and expect to be able to significantly increase our revenue, both from our existing partners as well as new ones that we’re bringing on.”
