Buying and selling a common residence has become fashionable in Spain. Pacaso, Vivla... and now Suomma. All of these companies have broken into the Spanish housing market in recent months. They brought the new invention of co-ownership in multi-family housing. It is about buying real estate together with other owners, but at a much more affordable price and using the property for a period of time proportional to the share owned by the co-owner.
Until now, such companies as Pacaso have focused on the elite segment, spending around half a million euros per property. But now, Borja Badiola and his partner, Julián Gil, have decided to enter a more affordable market and to turn to the middle class. The middle class cannot afford such amounts and focuses on beachfront properties worth from 400,000 to 600,000 euros that allow for co-ownership at a much lower price, starting at 40,000 to 80,000 euros.
Suomma’s intentions are direct "attacks" on the market niche. According to the company, there are no competitors at the moment. As for the second house, the first line of the beach and up to 600,000 euros are among the popular requirements. This property belongs to the "premium class" due to its location, but, at the same time, it is far from the luxury that belongs to other companies’ profiles, such as Pacaso. This is an excellent market niche. But it should be considered that Spain has about 3.7 million second homes and about 100,000 sales to foreigners are conducted every year. Most properties are purchased by Europeans. It represents a potential high volume of business of about 4,000 million euros in Spain. Borja and Julián saw a business opportunity and decided to leave their CEO positions at Carwow, an online marketplace for buying and selling new and used cars, and Omnio, a travel platform, to start a new business company, a real estate platform. They hope to finish the first year with almost 150 real estate transactions and a turnover of 71 million euros. They also hope to raise these rates in 3 years, exceeding 1,000 sold houses a year and sales of about 660 million euros. The company was launched last February with 1.5 million euros of financial support from an angel investor. But, in order to meet the high growth scenario, they will seek financing in the market once again. They will do this among venture investors with the purpose of receiving 30-50 million euros.