Bowery Valuation, a tech-enabled appraisal startup, has raised $8 million in a funding round led by real estate firm Lightstone Group.
The New York-based startup, run by former appraisers Noah Isaacs and John Meadows, has raised $27 million since its founding in 2015. Nine Four Ventures and Greenspring Associates also participated in the firm’s latest round, which follows the company’s $12 million Series A earlier this year. Lightstone Group, led by David Lichtenstein, has dabbled in investments lately and launched its own debt platform.
Isaacs said that his firm’s platform is like TurboTax for appraisers, and allows them to complete appraisals twice as fast as traditional services.
“It just means they’re not spending time formatting docs, looking up taxes, finding zoning,” he said. “We just thought, ‘let’s automate that.’”
The firm has 50 employees, including 20 appraisers and eight software engineers, the co-founders said. It has also hired a third-party software development based in Belarus to contribute to building out its platform. It opened a second office in Washington D.C. last month, and operates in New York, Florida and six other states.