homeownership
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PennyMac
PennyMac grew from a crisis-era mortgage buyer into a $731 billion servicing machine. Its next act is more ambitious: turn the software and operating muscle behind that machine into a product for the rest of the industry.
Holo
Holo is a Dubai-based digital mortgage platform that lets home buyers and homeowners compare, apply for and track mortgages across 20+ banks in one place. Founded in 2020 by mortgage veterans Michael Hunter and Arran Summerhill, it pairs proprietary automation software with human advisors to cut the paperwork and opacity out of home financing. The company is profitable in the UAE, has helped tens of thousands of clients, processes over AED 1 billion in applications monthly, and raised a $22M Series A in 2025 to expand across Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC.
PrimeLending, A PlainsCapital Company
PrimeLending, A PlainsCapital Company, is a Dallas-based national residential mortgage originator founded in 1986. A wholly owned subsidiary of PlainsCapital Bank (part of Hilltop Holdings), PrimeLending offers a broad menu of home financing options - conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, jumbo, construction and renovation loans, plus refinancing - through a network of loan officers, retail branches and builder joint ventures across all 50 states. The company has ranked as a Top 10 purchase lender every year since 2012 and pairs a bank-affiliated balance sheet with digital origination tools to serve homebuyers and builder partners nationwide.
Made Card
Made Card is a New York fintech building a credit card designed specifically for homeowners. Its Made Essential Visa Signature Preferred Card - issued by Lead Bank - rewards the ordinary spending of owning a home: mortgage payments, home improvement, maintenance, utilities, gas and groceries. Points can be cashed out the usual ways or redeemed for less usual ones, like buying down the card's own APR. Founded by Ashin Shah, Christophe Van and Alex Song, the company raised $8M+ in seed funding in November 2025 and launched a nationwide distribution partnership with Fairway Home Mortgage.
Oro
Oro is a Los Angeles social fintech that turns housing into a workplace benefit. Its B2B platform lets employers offer housing wellness to every worker - renters, buyers, and owners - through concierge housing assistance, rent-to-credit reporting, homebuyer education, down payment savings programs, and housing loans. Founded by former Big Law partner George Fatheree, Oro is a Delaware public benefit corporation that raised $3 million in seed funding in January 2026 to make housing the next standard employee benefit.
Jeffrey Walker
Jeffrey Walker is the co-founder and CEO of CredEvolv, a fintech SaaS platform that turns declined loan applicants into mortgage-ready borrowers by connecting lenders, consumers, and HUD-certified nonprofit credit counselors in a single ecosystem. A four-decade mortgage-industry veteran who held senior roles at Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, CitiMortgage, and SunTrust, Walker left the corporate ladder to attack a problem that kept him up at night: hundreds of thousands of creditworthy Americans denied home loans every year. Under his leadership CredEvolv has served 36,000+ consumers, earned him a HousingWire Vanguard Award, and landed him on Inman's Best of Finance list four years running.
Nestment
Nestment is a San Francisco-based proptech startup that helps first-time and co-buying homebuyers navigate the path to ownership. It pairs 1:1 human coaches with AI-powered affordability, analysis, and matchmaking tools, and connects buyers to a vetted network of real estate agents and lenders - including a notable model for buying homes with friends and family.
George Fatheree
George Fatheree is the founder and CEO of Oro, a Los Angeles public benefit corporation that brings housing support into the workplace as an employee benefit. A former Big Law real estate partner at Sidley Austin, Munger Tolles & Olson and Skadden, he is best known for engineering the historic return of Bruce's Beach to the Bruce family in 2022, the first time in U.S. history that land seized through racially motivated eminent domain was returned to a Black family. He now applies the same financial and legal machinery to closing the wealth gap at scale, raising $3 million in early 2026 to launch Oro's housing wellness platform.
Jonathan Chao
Jonathan Chao is the co-founder of Haven, a mortgage servicing technology platform built to engage the 53 million U.S. homeowners with a mortgage. A UC Berkeley applied-math grad who started his career as an actuary, he became one of the earliest employees at Credit Karma, led consumer product at Plaid, then launched Haven in 2020. He served as CEO through the company's $8M Series A before stepping into the Chief Product Officer seat in 2023 to focus on the product he set out to build. He was named a 2024 HousingWire Rising Star.
Valon
Valon is a New York-based fintech rebuilding the plumbing of the U.S. mortgage industry. Through ValonOS, a modern end-to-end servicing platform built in-house, it replaces decades-old legacy software with a single integrated system and is layering in AI agents that make auditable decisions in a highly regulated market. Founded in 2019, Valon has serviced more than $65 billion in mortgages, become the first fintech servicer licensed in all 50 states and approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA, and raised about $258 million in venture funding.
Niles Lichtenstein
Niles Lichtenstein is the CEO and Co-Founder of Nestment, a San Francisco-based platform helping first-time homebuyers purchase property through co-buying and expert coaching. Shaped by watching his immigrant mother rent rooms in their Berkeley home to stay afloat after his father's death, Lichtenstein spent a decade quietly co-buying properties with friends and family before formalizing the model into Nestment in 2021. The company has since raised $3.5M in pre-seed funding and facilitated over $200M in real estate transactions, with 74% of buyers being first-timers and 62% identifying as BIPOC or immigrants. Before Nestment, he founded The History Project (later Enwoven), a digital storytelling platform backed by The New York Times Company that powered Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's history into an HBO documentary.