SAN FRANCISCO — Playhouse, a company developing a new way to surf real estate, has landed $2.8 million in seed funding from several funds, including Agya Ventures, Gaingels, Goodwater Capital, Nomo Ventures, PKO Investments, and Y Combinator, as well as a number of notable angels and prominent content creators. Funds will be used for ongoing product development for the Playhouse app, which enables users to enjoy TikTok-like videos on active real estate listings while learning more about property details. A beta version of the app is now available for Bay Area properties.
“Hundreds of millions of people view real estate listings every month, but only 6 million homes are sold each year. People love looking at houses, whether they are actively hunting for a new home, thinking aspirationally about where they’d like to be in the future, or simply collecting renovation or decorating ideas, and they deserve a better way to surf,” said Playhouse Co-founder and CEO Alex Perelman. “The most recent consumer innovation in this space was putting pictures of homes on the Internet, and that was 15 years ago. Playhouse completely disrupts this flat, boring experience by delivering fun, educational, and productive content so that people can engage with local real estate on their phones.”
Playhouse leverages the existing behavior of how people explore commerce through video content online and extends it to evolve how they shop for real estate. Playhouse’s short, full-screen videos act like the trailers before a movie, getting people excited about what they could see, depending on their interests. Users quickly and easily scroll through videos of real active listings on the app, just as they would videos on TikTok. They can also browse listings using a map and apply filters if they are looking for something specific. The result is an enjoyable and practical way to discover real estate while learning more about homes and neighborhoods.
Playhouse will offer a personalized experience that keeps prospective buyers and window shoppers coming back again and again. Unlike other sites where users face an empty search box and have to decide what to do next, people open the Playhouse app and instantly see something that grabs their attention.
Debuting with the beta is the Listing Price Game in which anyone can guess if the listing price shown is higher or lower than the property’s true listing price. As players try to accumulate correct answers, they learn more about the values of homes in a particular area and the factors that affect those prices. Playhouse will continue to add interactive content like this as it builds out its platform.
