• VAUNT, the Romanian sales and marketing platform for residential real estate, reported over EUR 210M of transactions in H1 2024
• The platform is rolling out VAUNT Market – its European property marketplace offering carefully selected apartments along with expert guidance for buyers
• The startup also announces the revamp of its VAUNT Developer app

VAUNT is a Romanian B2B SaaS startup focused on transforming residential real estate sales. The platform provides a range of user-friendly modules for sales and marketing, tailored to simplify these processes and drive growth for partner businesses while enhancing the experience for their customers.

VAUNT identifies as a compound startup, dedicated to developing a suite of interconnected products. Rather than providing a single solution, the platform has aimed from the outset to serve as the backbone of the residential sales process, offering comprehensive infrastructure for every stage.

VAUNT’s Progress in Recap

The platform enables clients to monitor customer interactions and inquiries, manage housing portfolios and inventory, launch newsletter and SMS marketing campaigns, showcase apartments in 2D, handle financials, and access real-time analytics, among other features. VAUNT supports each client with comprehensive tutorials and resources to foster business growth, actively incorporating feedback to continuously expand and enhance its functionalities.

ITKeyMedia follows VAUNT’s progress as the company launched its new Client Portal and announced a set of ambitions, including US expansion earlier this year. Client Portal provides home buyers with real-time data on the market value of their properties. It delivers up-to-the-minute property valuations and insights into market trends, offering an instant snapshot of current property worth. Previously, such data was only available to end customers through expensive market analyses.

As for the US expansion, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Irina Constantin reports spending most of her time this year in the US and working closely with the team to build out the VAUNT Market platform and forge strong connections with the local community of entrepreneurs and investors.

VAUNT Market is a European property marketplace offering carefully selected apartments along with expert guidance for buyers. Interested investors can join a waiting list now, gaining priority access to European properties and professional support with their apartment purchases once the marketplace officially launches.

In addition, VAUNT made steady progress integrating AI. The platform added a global search feature that helps teams quickly find keywords they’ve used before, and it improves with each search. 

‘So if you want to find that you talked about something super specific with a client but can’t remember, the system still finds it for you,’ Ms Constantin explains.

VAUNT’s developers also built an ID card reader that automatically scans images for details and fills out the info. The team has been additionally experimenting with content generation to give users a head start in creating marketing ads for their properties. Now, a beta version where it helps create descriptions for online ads of properties.

Fewer Transactions with Higher Value

Overall, VAUNT reports around EUR 210M of transactions with more than 70 clients that manage over 20,000 properties for sale or rent through the platform in the first six months of the year. Interestingly, the platform observes a decrease in the number of transactions, but at the same time, a notable growth in their value.

According to Ms Constantin, the reason has more to do with the market and less with the platform. Increasing prices, inflation and of course the geopolitical situation have a say in the evolution of the residential market. Nonetheless, seeing how the value of transactions has increased in value, the statistics are also optimistic, pointing at a growth rate of 2,9% annually from 2024 to 2029.

‘Romania’s entry into the OECD brings benefits for the residential market. It will show that we are a stable country from an investment point of view, we will enter economic statistics, we will become much more attractive for new projects both residential and commercial or mixed,’ the CEO comments.

Constanța Spotlight

Another noteworthy tendency that the startup points out is the development of the city of Constanța as the next real estate hub, both for the residential market and for the other verticals. With 260,000 of population, Constanța is not only one of Romania’s major cities but also the country’s largest seaport and a top destination for inbound tourism.

‘Constanta is Romania’s largest port and an important touristic destination in our country. Improvements in infrastructure, and it being one of the main holiday spots for locals and foreigners, the airport and the competitive prices – compared with Bucharest – make it an interesting city for developers and buyers alike,’ Ms Constantin explains.

Peeping into the Nearest Future

‘Over the past six months, we’ve conducted extensive user research to ensure the platform meets real needs, and we’ve been actively negotiating exciting partnerships and deals. There’s been tremendous growth, and we’re looking forward to announcing the fruits of our efforts very soon. This is just the beginning, and we’re incredibly energized by the journey ahead,’ Ms Constantin tells ITKeyMedia.

She shares that, besides working on launching VAUNT Market soon and raising investment, the team is also planning to relaunch the VAUNT Developer app in its improved incarnation. VAUNT Developer is already known for its ability to facilitate the management of real estate projects by centralizing information and simplifying processes. Now, the app will be re-introduced to give real estate developers the opportunity to take advantage of all its advantages in a mobile format, adapted to their everyday needs.