The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2020–2026
Huspy's mortgage-first bet: 30% of UAE mortgage market, then Spain
Dubai's Huspy bets mortgages, not listings, are the wedge into real estate: 30% UAE market share, $7B in transactions, $59M Series B.
Huspy
What the business is
Huspy is a UAE-headquartered proptech that digitizes home buying: mortgage pre-approval and rate comparison from partner banks, verified property listings, and a network of freelance agents with CRM and transaction tools — earning fees from banks and agencies.
Starting capital：$37M Series A led by Sequoia Capital India (June 2022), with Founders Fund's first Middle East investment plus Fifth Wall, Chimera Capital and Breyer Capital; $59M Series B led by Balderton Capital (July 2025).
How it started
Jad Antoun, a former Beco Capital investor who had watched Property Finder scale, launched Huspy in Dubai in 2020 with Khalid Ashmawy after seeing buyers engage five-plus agents and wait up to eight weeks for mortgages, with 25–30% fake listings on classified portals. The founding insight: fix the transaction, not the search.
What happened
In June 2022 Huspy raised a $37M Series A led by Sequoia Capital India — one of MENA's largest rounds at that stage — with Founders Fund making its first Middle East investment; by then it processed $2B in annualized GMV. In July 2025 it closed a $59M Series B led by Balderton Capital, after capturing 30% of the UAE mortgage market in three years and expanding to Spain, where it reached top-three transaction volume in Valencia within a year and grew 20x+ year-on-year; Saudi Arabia was next.
How it ended up
Scaling: as of mid-2026 Huspy runs in the UAE and six Spanish cities with 25,000+ homebuyers served and $7B+ in facilitated transactions, and in May 2026 signed a partnership with Dubai Holding Real Estate (Nakheel, Meraas, Dubai Properties) to embed mortgage guidance directly in the developer-buyer journey.
Background
Huspy's founding bet, made in Dubai in 2020 by Jad Antoun and Khalid Ashmawy, was that UAE homebuyers would start with financing rather than listings. Antoun had watched Property Finder scale while working at Beco Capital and saw the real friction: buyers engaged more than five agents before closing, mortgages took up to eight weeks of fragmented paperwork, and a quarter of classified listings were fake. His answer was to fix the transaction — mortgage quotes and pre-approvals in minutes — and let everything else hang off it.
The wedge was deliberately narrow: Huspy scraped partner-bank rates weekly, gave buyers rate visibility and locked loans, and charged banks 1% per mortgage transaction. The trust from the financing step then carried into a verified-listing marketplace and, later, a network of freelance agents using Huspy's CRM and transaction tools. By the June 2022 Series A — $37M led by Sequoia Capital India, with Founders Fund's first Middle East investment — the company claimed $2B in annualized GMV and 25% month-on-month revenue growth.
The model proved out in the UAE first: within three years Huspy captured 30% of the country's mortgage market (25% in Dubai), one of the world's most active real estate markets. That share and the exclusive banking relationships it built became the springboard for Europe. In 2022 Huspy began scaling into Spain's fragmented market of over 100,000 registered agents; within a year it claimed top-three transaction volume in Valencia and operated in six Spanish cities with more than 20x year-on-year growth.
In July 2025 Balderton Capital led a $59M Series B, after Huspy reported $7B+ in facilitated transactions, 25,000+ homebuyers helped and revenue up more than 10x since 2022, with Saudi Arabia next. The company describes its model as Uber-for-real-estate rather than Zillow: low overhead, no inventory, network effects from agents and banks. In May 2026 it signed a partnership with Dubai Holding Real Estate to embed mortgage guidance in the buyer journey for Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties customers.
What has to be true
- Huspy bet that financing, not search, is where UAE real estate was broken — buyers had portals but no visibility on mortgages, so it attacked the 8-week, multi-agent closing process.
- The wedge compounded: owning the mortgage gave Huspy exclusive bank relationships, verified listings and high conversion, which pulled agents onto its platform.
- The unit economics worked early — $2B annualized GMV and 25% MoM revenue growth by June 2022 — attracting Sequoia India and Founders Fund's first Middle East check.
- The playbook is repeatable by design: enter mid-sized cities with high transaction volume and low agent efficiency, then layer mortgage distribution on top, as proven in Spain.
What can be applied
Fix the highest-friction step of a high-ticket purchase first: Huspy won the UAE mortgage as its wedge, let listings and agents hang off that trust, then replayed the playbook city by city in Europe.
Aftermath
As of September 2, 2026, Huspy is scaling as one of the largest proptechs in the UAE and Spain: 30% of the UAE mortgage market, $7B+ in facilitated transactions, 25,000+ homebuyers helped, six Spanish cities and a planned Saudi launch. It raised a $59M Series B led by Balderton in July 2025 (following the $37M Sequoia-led Series A in 2022) and in May 2026 partnered with Dubai Holding Real Estate to bring mortgage guidance to Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties buyers. The company's stated goal is to operate in most major cities across Europe and the Middle East over the next four years.
Sources
- Sequoia Capital India and Founders Fund back UAE proptech startup Huspy in its $37M round
- UAE proptech Huspy raises $59M to scale in Europe
- Dubai Holding Real Estate enters into partnership with Huspy
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