Addressing not one, but two problems
If you are a professional landlord, at any time, you are dealing with multiple properties and tenants. For the tenant, paying rent is a one-time action taken every month. Whether done via direct debit or a manual payment, the tenant had to deal with it once a month. However, things are not that straightforward for landlords.
The average professional mid-tier landlord in Germany manages about 800 apartments. You may think that with that amount of real estate, a landlord would have a technical solution to manage all properties in real-time and have a clear visibility of the income. A manager should be able to see who has paid rent on time, whose payments are pending and who needs to be chased for the last month’s payment. Having a view of how much money has come in and how much is outstanding allows a landlord to make business decisions, plan expenses and communicate with tenants accordingly. The reality can’t be more different: landlords are dealing with excel reconciliations and managing 100s of tenants and payments every month in spreadsheets and banking apps.
Deposits are painful too. Like any other business, landlords need to protect themselves against unforeseen events, and even though insurance products and bank guarantees are present in the market, historically 3rd party claim management processes have been inefficient and lengthy. That is why a tenant would typically be asked for up to 3 months of rent in cash to be put up as a deposit upon moving in. However, rising rents mean that more cash is locked away, landlords face significant operational complexities because they need to manage big amounts of cash, and tenants deal with a large one-off liquidity event.
Two markets, two products – one solution
Getmomo is a payment platform and no-deposit protection for both landlords and tenants.
The payment product – Momo Pay – allows landlords to raise, process and receive monthly rental payments across tenants at the same time. Meanwhile, tenants can adjust their payment schedules in line with their incomes. Getmomo eliminates the timing mismatch for landlords and the need for manual chasing of outstanding invoices, which today consumes ~30% of landlords’ time. Approximately €20bn per annum is received in late payments in Germany alone—all that whilst providing flexibility to tenants to pay their rents whenever they want.
The deposit product – Momo Deposit – is a no-deposit protection that offers up to 3 months of rent coverage to landlords. Landlords are getting the same protection but without dealing with cash and with a guaranteed payout within 48 hours; tenants have an instant release of liquidity and can move houses more freely. Instead of paying a deposit, annual rent is increased by a small percentage to compensate over the course of the tenancy.
Getmomo sits in the largest untapped market in Europe for rental payments. 50% of all the apartments in Germany are assumed to be rented, which results in a market with more than 20 million units. Germany accounts for over €160bn in annual rental payment volume in the EU, making it the country with the largest share of market (31%). In comparison to the US market, where there are 4-5 dominant RE software players, a professional RE manager in Germany is very fragmented, with over 100 professional landlords. In addition to that, today ~€30bn is tied up in traditional cash deposits in Germany, which opens another huge potential addressable market for Getmomo.
Getmomo has relationship with 200.000 residential units in Germany
Effective and scalable go-to-market
Instead of going after millions of tenants, Getmomo decided to go directly to landlords, thus pursuing a B2B2C go-to-market strategy. By locking-in institutional landlords, Getmomo gets access to the population of tenants and units under management. In just over a year since its inception, Getmomo has already gained access to more than 200 thousand units across 150 landlords.
Visionary founder
The answer wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Getmomo’s visionary founder – Marcel Meitza. It is true that, like any company, Getmomo has competitors in the market. It competes with existing software management and CRM tools (although they can be integrated) and with traditional guarantee providers. However, Marcel had the vision to solve two major existing pain points with one solution. By embedding the payments function within the software and by addressing the deposit problem, Marcel built a unique product: no other solution in the market today offers these two services within one platform. Marcel’s unparalleled experience within real estate and financial markets in Germany perfectly positions him to deliver on the vision.
GetMomo’s CEO and Founder – Marcel Meitza signing the term sheet
The adjacency of fintech and real estate
Getmomo operates at the intersection of fintech and RE, with the latter being one of the largest undigitized markets globally. It is the first payment platform of its kind in Germany. The uniqueness comes from the ability to solve two problems for both sides of the value chain simultaneously. Getmomo is transforming the RE landscape and is building a multibillion-dollar company along the way, and we are here for the journey.
