New REACH Class Announced: Is RealX Real Estate's Next Juggernaut?

Second Century Ventures, the strategic investment arm of the National Association of Realtors, announced its 2020 REACH class. Second Century Ventures has grown to become the most active global venture fund in real estate technology, working with more than 100 firms worldwide.

Eight companies comprise the REACH Class of 2020, including:

• Earnnest: secure, electronic escrow fund transfer platform
• Kangaroo: affordable, DIY smart home and small business security solutions
• RealX: America's first online property rights exchange
• Ylopo: end-to-end, cross platform, digital marketing
• PunchList: all-in-one closing repair solution
• Transactly: simple, streamlined platform for real estate professionals and transaction coordinators
• CartoFront: software-as-service (Saas) based flood insurance tool for Realtors®
• Modus: secure, modernized title and escrow platform

Discovering which hot young startups made the list each year is fascinating as it always reveals innovations and newcomers with exciting ideas.

But you need a lot more than innovation and clever ideas to survive as a new business.

Research shows that three-in-four startups that receive venture capital funds fail. We also know startups that have proven leaders fare better than one with less experience.

Yet each year, Second Century Ventures assembles a class that is stacked heavily with potential long-term winners. A few firms have both proven leaders and an exceptional, scalable business model.

This year, one firm worth watching is RealX and its new property rights platform. Co-founded by Luke Glass, RealX has changed how surface, subsurface, and air rights can be bought, sold, and leased.

This opinion has been nurtured since we have spent the last few months at WAV Group getting to know all about RealX and the property rights industry that Luke has organized and digitized.

Like us, you probably already know Luke Glass from his days as a top executive at Move's realtor.com and ListHub. Luke is a real estate change agent. He grew ListHub into the nation's largest online real estate listing syndicator.

Luke's background is what makes his leadership of RealX so interesting. His success as an entrepreneur is enhanced with his background as an investment banker and a big company leader. With his experience with ListHub, Luke also understands the importance of being able to scale. That's a hard lesson that has killed many startups and even 10+ year plus businesses.

With RealX, Luke has already built America's first and largest online property rights exchange. And his timing could not have been better, as an entire transaction on his platform can be done by real estate and land agents from the safety and comfort of their homes. That means RealX offers a new source of virtual-based commissions for real estate agents.

Most impressive, perhaps, is the size of the sandbox that Luke is playing in: property rights is a $100 billion annual industry. It's also an industry that until RealX, has been fragmented, decentralized, unorganized, and technology challenged, at best.

The property rights marketplace is ripe for disruption and stands to yield enormous benefits from going digital for both buyers and sellers.

That's why RealX is one firm in this REACH Class of 2020 that could become a juggernaut. Going from zero to dominating an entire marketplace doesn't happen overnight in real estate, but RealX, being at the right place at the right time with the right leadership, could be an exception.

You can read the complete news release from the NAR about its Second Century Ventures class here.

To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.