Buying and renting is becoming increasingly difficult and many buyers can’t even afford the required minimum 20% down payment for a house. In our opinion, this poses a problem for real estate investors, most of whom find it too risky to put all of their money into one property. It is very difficult to invest in properties and earn a steady rental income, as there are often significant fees and carrying costs to buy & sell properties.

Zeehaus makes buying a home more affordable through a process called equity sharing, which connects homebuyers with investors who buy shares of the property and collect ‘rent’ from the homebuyers. To solve the complexity of buying, funding, and managing a significant number of co-owners, Zeehaus has developed a proprietary fractional ownership platform, helping buyers achieve homeownership by putting down 5% and sharing expenses with investors. Investors are able to claim ownership of a property by buying tradable shares virtually (at $100 increments), as each property is registered, tokenized and titled, and each investor’s ownership is recorded on the blockchain.

Millennials, who now represent the largest group of homebuyers today, struggle to afford the down payment required to purchase a home. With the changing market dynamics and the number of investors looking for stable investment options, Zeehaus is poised to meet the needs of today’s residential real estate market.

Sources: i. Statista ; ii. Pew Charitable Trusts; iii. Fund Managers Survey 2018 ; iv. National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts ; v. National Association of Realtors ; vi. Rental income based on minimum rental payment buyers are required to pay investors, as set by the Zeehaus portal

Before the COVID-19 pandemics, new home sales had been expected to average to a seasonally adjusted 764,000, while existing home sales had also been expected to average around 5.77 million units (seasonally adjusted) in 2020 (source). According to the National Association of Realtors, roughly 15% of new properties in the US have a price greater than $500K. The median price for properties in California is $615K, which means more than half of the properties sold for more than $615K. While the market is expected to slow down significantly in 2020, economists are expecting a rebound in 2021. 

With our last equity crowdfunding campaign in 2018, we captured over $260,000+  from hundreds of  investors. Zeehaus has created a virtual platform that enables a simple “Click & Purchase” model for investors to purchase “shares” of residential properties, distribute rental income, and trade “shares” on the blockchain securely at a very low cost. 

We have developed our initial platform, and it is currently available only for users to sign up and explore. We expect to launch the platform for beta in late July, 2020. We then expect to roll out a total of seven digital real estate dashboards: Agent, Buyer, Issuer, Investor, Homeowner, and Admin in late August, 2020, with the Seller Dashboard being deployed in September 2020.

Right now, we are ready to launch our digital 'Agent platform’ that integrates the property listing, referral, digital calendar, and transaction platform with our proprietary Equity Sharing ownership platform. 

*Image is from actual Zeehaus Agent platform currently in beta testing.

We are also ready to launch our equity sharing platform, which will enable homebuyers to buy a home with 5% ownership and share equity with investors, while the platform takes care of complexities such as legal documents, funding, management of ownership, and property sale.

*Image is from actual Zeehaus Investor platform currently in beta testing.

Zeehaus is an easy-to-use web platform designed to pair homebuyers who do not want a mortgage, with investors hoping to profit from future home appreciation. This type of arrangement is called equity sharing. Zeehaus also provides the organizational structure and legal documentation for the relationships between homebuyers and investors, and manages these relationships throughout the equity share.

We have created a way to lower the barrier to homeownership for young buyers, so that they can buy a home with only 5% equity. Anyone seeking funds for a home purchase may post an equity sharing opportunity on Zeehaus if he/she supplies all required information and follows Zeehaus’ guidelines. 

We operate utilizing the following streams of revenue:

• Referral fee: 

  • Agent platform enables Zeehaus to make money from referrals

  • We plan to charge a 'finder's fee' when introducing buyers & sellers to real estate agents while providing rebates of the closing costs to buyers. 

• Funding and application fee:

  • Each property public-funded as equity sharing will generate a processing fee between $800 to $2,000, depending on the amount of the funding and property price.

• Trustee fee:

  • A service fee will be charged to the buyer for the Trustee's service, and this job will be performed by a Zeehaus affiliate.

• Management fee:

  • Our primary source of revenue will be a management fee, based on a percentage (10-15%) of the monthly rent a homebuyer pays to the investors.

We plan to keep our operating expenses low, with the majority of platform operations being automated online or via email. This will enable Zeehaus to launch with low overhead without a large team, and we believe allow the company to weather the economic cycles better than most startups.

We believe Zeehaus is the first and only platform to invest in residential properties virtually like stocks, with an end-to-end platform. We think we are the first to market and the only ‘true’ equity sharing platform with “published patent,” that helps both investors looking for real estate and homebuyers looking for more affordable options. Our platform's goal is to solve the housing crisis, enabling young millennials and others to buy a home with just 5% equity. Because our platform is entirely online, it also allows investors to sell property shares completely remotely and with the click of a button. We believe Zeehaus presents an economically viable option to support homebuyers by lowering housing costs for homebuyers and providing a solution to the housing crisis, without the constraint of government funding, subsidy, or complex process.

• Homebuyer needs a smaller amount of capital for down payment, starting at 5% of property value.

• Lower monthly payment than mortgage loan, by sharing the cost of property taxes and insurance.*

• Eliminate closing costs through partnerships and reimbursements from real estate agents.

• Eligible for buy-out using a traditional mortgage in three years.

*The homebuyer is required to pay rents and property expenses. However, the monthly payment does not include any additional amount towards buying equity from investors. The homebuyer can purchase property shares from investors, which will reduce the monthly rent according to the percentage of property shares.

• Diversification: Low minimum investments allow investors to potentially diversify across multiple properties and locations.

• Transparency: High degree transparency into real estate ownership compared to typical real estate funds.

• Tax benefits: No transfer tax when transferring fractional ownership.

• Liquidity: Investors could potentially transfer fractional ownership by trading it on the Zeehaus platform without having to sell the whole property.

• Coins backed by real properties: All proceeds from the coin sale are used to purchase real estate only, so all coins are guaranteed to purchase shares of a property.

• Flexible & low-volatility: Zeehaus Coins can be used to purchase shares of any available properties on Zeehaus, based on latest exchange rate.

• Help homebuyers achieve homeownership: Support homeowners by lowering housing costs for homebuyers and providing a solution to the housing crisis.

• Invest in rental properties virtually: Coins can be used to purchase property shares on the Zeehaus portal or sold freely at latest coin price.

In addition to our proprietary real estate platform, we plan to launch a digital currency used to enable investors to buy property shares. Coin holders can also sell the coins at exchanges. ** Investor fundings for real estate purchases will initially come from sales of Zeehaus Coins, which is a digital currency that integrates with the proprietary platform and enables investors to buy shares of properties on Zeehaus.

** We aim to get Zeehaus coins listed on digital currency exchange but there is no guarantee that would occur. Zeehaus coins are not investment of Zeehaus stocks. When the coins are sold back to Zeehaus, the coin price is determined by the average price deriving from the total assets backing the Zeehaus coins, not the market price on any exchange.

Our goal at Zeehaus is to be the one-stop shop and data-driven platform for all things related to residential real estate, including property listings, rehab/flip properties, agent advertising and mortgage referral. 

Zeehaus will launch its Equity Sharing platform and start the purchase program in September 2020 for properties in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Next, we plan to expand to the Dallas, Phoenix, and Seattle areas in mid-2021, and New York, Oregon, Nevada, and Colorado in late 2021.

To launch Zeehaus Coins, we will work with our partner financial institution holding money exchange licenses and start accepting Zeehaus Coins as payment tools for buying property shares on the Zeehaus portal.

One future opportunity that we are considering is blockchain ownership, as we hope to record the entire property title on the blockchain, in order to further streamline and lower the costs of property transactions when governments start to recognize blockchain as a legal way to hold real assets.

Zeehaus was founded by Justin Lee, with the help of advisors and experts in equity sharing ownership and real estate laws, Andy Sirkin and Lisa Swanson. Justin has over 15 years of experience developing large-scale enterprise applications and platforms and working as a real estate agent in California. The tight-knit team consists of highly devoted top engineers who are experts at web development and blockchain, as well as experts in real estate and fractional ownership. Our team has been hard at work for the past several years ensuring that all support and operation resources are ready and in place, as soon as we hit go.

We believe Zeehaus represents the future of real estate, providing an innovative new way to both solve the housing crisis and allow investors to profit virtually. We understand the challenges that homebuyers face today and we have made it our priority to offer the younger generations a better, safer way to buy their future homes.

Our virtual platform, which enables investors to buy and sell shares of properties in multiple locations, we believe will present a huge business opportunity for the Zeehaus fractional ownership model. Digital assets backed by residential properties can completely revolutionize the way that homes are purchased and sold. The real estate market has never seen anything quite like this and we are ready to make our mark!