Hurdlr makes play for real estate agents with business management app

Another startup company has taken aim at the real estate business, to provide “front office” services to agents still using excel spreadsheets and paper to track their finances.

Hurdlr, a Washington D.C.-based startup that provides an app for freelancers to monitor finances, mileages, taxes and other “back office” needs, revealed that it would shift the company’s attention to real estate, where it will provide agents with goal-setting features paired with its original income-tracking service.

The company won Realogy’s annual startup competition last year, and recently picked up $3.2 million in a venture funding round led by TTV Capital. The app allows agents to track business expenses and can illustrate profitability for each closed deal. It uses “real-time income tax calculation” that supports all 50 states and D.C., and also connects about 15,000 banks to track a user’s deposits and expenses. It can flag transactions that might be tax deductible.

The company’s recent announcement, first reported by Inman, comes from a push by Hurdlr’s co-founders, who previously developed another real estate tool, VisualHomes, a service for public housing agencies to use for business management services.

“To be successful and profitable we think they need to have a core tool,” Hurdlr co-founder and CEO Raj Bhaskar told Inman. “We want to work with all the franchisors to get this out there to help make agents more productive and profitable.”

For those who opt-in, Hurdlr will be able to track desired after-expenses income and can break finances down to monthly and weekly goals. Agents will only receive access to the real estate service if their brokerages or franchisors sign up to Hurdlr. Bhaskar did not disclose which firms had already signed up. [Inman] — David Jeans