Lofty (YC S19) — Building the NASDAQ for real estate
Lofty is a marketplace that let's anyone sell a house to investors online. Instead of the typical real estate transaction where one seller sells to one buyer, Lofty is much more flexible.
Lofty is a Y Combinator company in the Summer 2019 batch. Its directory entry describes it as: Building the NASDAQ for Real Estate. The founders listed are Max Ball (Founder), Jerry Chu (Founder) (Y Combinator directory entry, April 23, 2019).
Get an email when Lofty changes status, grows its team or files a funding notice. One email first to confirm; nothing else until you click it. At most one a day, one click to stop. Free for up to 3 companies.
Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “In March 2026, Target announced a planned incremental $1 billion operating investment” Source: Target Corporation (press release)
Lofty is a marketplace that let's anyone sell a house to investors online. Instead of the typical real estate transaction where one seller sells to one buyer, Lofty is much more flexible.
Sellers fractionalize their equity ownership in the property into smaller units, so that anyone can buy a portion for as little as $50, allowing access to one of the best asset classes for people who have previously been locked out. Sellers can also sell a portion of their equity (starting at just 10%) instead of the entire property or create customized HELOC structures.
Investors can browse a variety of individual real estate properties ranging from commercial strip malls, a HELOC in someone's house, Airbnbs, to a single-family rental properties, and directly purchase ownership in these properties in under 5 minutes. There is no lockup period. Users can constantly trade these ownerships with others on the marketplace.
Investors truly legally own the properties they invested in and co-manage it with other investors through an online governance program. Owners have so far voted on how to handle various repairs, delinquent tenants, the sale of the underlying property, and much more.
Lofty never custodies or handles user funds or assets. Through smart-contracts on the blockchain, all transactions are directly peer-to-peer.
If we succeed, we'll have built the NASDAQ for real estate and transformed how real estate is bought and sold in the USA.
Max Ball
Founder
Jerry Chu
Founder
Founders, titles and bios as the company published them. Photographs are our own copies of the ones on that record, so they do not break when the original link expires.
No investor is drawn from a Form D — the form states how many invested and never who. The one investor on this graph is named because a batch has exactly one.
Want the whole picture on Lofty?
Example from a real report (our sample on Target): “In March 2026, Target announced a planned incremental $1 billion operating investment” Source: Target Corporation (press release)
A Full Report on Lofty: verified, sourced, every claim cited, ready in a few minutes. See pricing.
What the Full Report on Lofty covers
The Short Answer
Which Company This Is
What They Do, And How The Money Works
Who Runs It, And How To Reach Them
The Money: Funding, Valuation, Runway
Who Pays Them, And Who They Are Up Against
Warning Bells
Sources
1 cited source found
Plus the sections for what you are deciding, which you pick after ordering.
You get an alert in MentionFox the next time this company shows up.
Is this you?
If you're behind Lofty: acceptance into a YC batch is one of the few weeks a young company gets looked up by people who matter — investors, other founders, press. FoxPlug turns the commits, deploys, and releases you're already making into that story automatically, so anyone who looks finds something current. GetFoxChat puts a guide on your own site so the people YC's own page just sent you don't read one line and leave.
