During the COVID-19 pandemic, mortgage interest rates dropped to historic lows — as low as 2.5%.
Fast-forward a few years and rates soared — to highs nearing 8% in 2023, with the national average 30-year fixed mortgage APR as of April 1 still at 6.84%.
The whiplash has left many people seeking to buy homes shut out of the market.
But what if there was a way to still get the interest rates of years past? With assumable mortgages, there might be. An assumable mortgage is one where an outstanding loan is transferable to the buyer.
Enter Roam, a New York-based startup with the mission of providing access to “thousands” of homes with assumable mortgages across the country.
CEO Raunaq Singh — who worked in product for three years at Opendoor — founded Roam in September 2023. Roam helped facilitate $200 million worth of home sales for “several hundred” buyers in 2024. And more than 200,000 buyers have registered on its platform in the last 12 months. While Singh did not disclose hard revenue figures, he told TechCrunch that Roam charges each buyer 1% of the purchase price. Doing the math, 1% of $200 million translates to Roam making $2 million in revenue in 2024.
Singh claims that assumable loans can save buyers up to 50% on their monthly payments compared to purchases with current mortgage rates.
A seller’s equity must be cashed out, Singh acknowledges, noting that Roam has built a product that makes it possible “for buyers to bring as little as 5% down so they can get a 5% (or less) blended rate.”
For example, he said, for a home with a $420,000 sales price, where the seller has a 2.25% rate and $135,293 of equity — the buyer doesn’t need to bring the full amount as a down payment.
“You can bring 20%, which is $84,000, and get gap financing for the remaining $51,000 to receive a blended rate of 3.45% to still save hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Singh said. “As long as you qualify for an FHA or VA loan, you’ll qualify to assume a mortgage with Roam. If you can’t qualify for a home with Roam, it is unlikely you can buy a home at all.”
Today, the startup operates in 17 states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. It has plans to be nationwide by year’s end and Singh expects that Roam will see $1 billion worth of home sales facilitated by its platform in 2025.
It might sound ambitious but Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures, who led Roam’s new $11.5 million Series A financing, believes that the startup is the “future of the housing market.”
“There’s an affordable housing crisis in America, and Roam is the best-positioned company to address it,” Rabois told TechCrunch.
The investor, who is joining Roam’s board as part of the Series A round, noted that he knew Singh and other members of Roam’s team from the founder’s time at publicly traded proptech company Opendoor, which Rabois co-founded with Eric Wu in 2014. (Wu is also an angel investor in Roam, and is also joining its board as part of the Series A.)
“Having worked with them previously, I was excited about their potential to mitigate the housing affordability crisis by reducing buyers’ monthly payments and bringing sellers with low-rate mortgages on the market,” Rabois said. “While most companies that offer to help consumers save money help them to save a couple hundred dollars a year, Roam can save 30% of Americans more than $200,000 over the life of their loan.”
Also participating in Roam’s Series A is existing backer Founders Fund. Notably, the round came together one week after the startup started the raise process, according to Singh.
“We had a pitch meeting on Monday, term sheet in hand on Tuesday, and had signed by Friday,” he told TechCrunch exclusively.
Since its inception, Roam has raised a total of about $16 million across three rounds. The latest round represents a tripling-down on Rabois’ part. In September of 2023, Roam raised $1.25 million in a pre-seed round led by Rabois when he was at Founders Fund. Wu, Culdesac CEO Ryan Johnson, and #ANGELS Founding Partner Jana Messerschmidt also participated in the round.
Then in May of 2024, it raised a $3 million seed round — also led by Rabois, while still at Founders Fund. Other investors in that round included DoorDash founder Tony Xu, Figma founder Dylan Field, and Upstart founder Paul Gu. The startup is not disclosing valuation.
How it works
Historically, according to Singh, if buyers searched on Zillow for assumable mortgages in a city like Houston, they’d likely find little to no results.
“Very few sellers or listing agents know they have an assumable mortgage, so they don’t think to advertise it,” he said. With Roam, he claims buyers can find more than 2,000 assumable mortgages in Houston alone listed for sale today.
And even if buyers were aware that a seller had an assumable loan, getting approval for an assumption could take up to 45 days, according to Singh.
“Fall-throughs for not being approved were extremely painful for the seller since they’d have to re-list the home, and this made listing agents skeptical of accepting assumable offers,” he said. “With Roam, buyers can get a pre-approval before submitting an offer, which has dramatically increased the acceptance rate of offers made by Roam buyers.”
Singh also claims that Roam speeds up the process of becoming a homeowner.
“Without Roam, it takes 180 days to close an assumable mortgage,” he said. “With Roam, it’s 45 days.” And if Roam doesn’t close in 45 days? It’ll pay a seller’s mortgage until it does.
The company also works to ensure all sellers are released from liability, and any subsequent payments the buyer makes or doesn’t make will not impact the seller’s credit.
Presently, Roam has 12 employees. Singh said the startup has aimed to not grow headcount linearly — with staff increasing about 2.5x year-over-year compared to revenue increasing by about 5x year over year.
“We’ve found that the product allows revenue growth without linearly increasing variable costs,” he told TechCrunch.
The opportunity is there, Singh believes.
“$1.4 trillion of fully assumable FHA/VA mortgages originated in 2020 and 2021,” he said, citing documents from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). “One of three homes that were originated or re-financed during those low-rate years were eligible for the opportunity.”
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