TheMReport

TH E M R EP O RT | 19 COVER STORY Paul Wehrley COO "I've operated and grown com- panies of all sizes and through all phases, and I'm excited to apply my background in strate- gic partnerships, go to market, and creative problem-solving to get us growing faster. Our opportunities are many in a market that is ripe for transfor- mation—and I am enjoying the process of building the opera- tions and infrastructure to meet this demand." with the tasks that land on your desk. Making data more than just dry facts, but something that business can use to help them make decisions about their specific properties or loans is where HouseCanary comes in. "I have made 'ease of use' one of our core tenets," says Jim Adams, the company's CTO. "As a company, we are incredibly good at gathering, cleaning, and modeling really complex data sets, but all this great analysis would have limited value if our custom - ers couldn't easily use, access, or understand it. One such "ease of use" product is HouseCanary Pro, which allows users to view real estate trends by ZIP code. "What we really wanted to do was to be able to look at every market in the same consistent way," Sicklick explained. "There are 381 metro areas, and I can see through one lens how the prices changed at the overall level across these markets over time, and how they are predicted to change into the future. I can understand a lot about the risk where people are moving, so as a lender you might want to think about, 'how do I balance my portfolio and lend in some areas with high beta, as well as some areas with lower beta to manage my overall portfolio?'" Being able to drill down into data like this has a multitude of practical uses for mortgage professionals. Want to know what markets are attracting milllennials? Or understand the housing cycle in a city like San Francisco? HouseCanary can not only help you with that, but make the process simple and easy for even the most tech illiterate out there. This is what makes Hou- seCanary different, Sicklick ex - plains. "We're not just providing raw data. We're doing analytics, and then we're applying it into software that allows people to actually make a set of decisions for investment, for lending, and for purchasing." The Future W hat started as a nagging interest in learning more about the forces moving the housing market, has grown to a robust company that has grown to 50 employees. Since its inception, HouseCanary has had a focus on scaling up its business. "In 2014 we took over $20 million of venture and private equity capital in order to invest in our growth. We've got a number of clients who are at the top of their industry and we're obsessive about helping these companies and all real estate professionals make better and faster business decisions," Sicklick promises. Beyond that though, the HouseCanary team is excited about the multitude of problems its data can continue to solve for mortgage professionals. "The people we've talked to are at a loss of how to actually implement data," explained Stroud. "There is a desire that that we are trying to serve, through both our strong team and prod - ucts. What humans are good at is interpreting data. What comput- ers are good at is taking that and doing calculations that have to be done a million times a minute." ≥HouseCanary Pro, the company's freshman product, empowers users to systematically analyze housing market risk and identify growth opportunities down to the zip code, nationwide.

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