Real estate startup Houwzer raised a $2 million seed round

Real estate platform Houwzer, founded by Benjamin’s Desk cofounder Mike Maher, just raised a $2 million seed round from local investors.

The company has $1.6 million of funding already closed, with the remainder of the round scheduled to close on June 1. The investment was led by Jay Minkoff, announced last January as “chairman, lead investor and operating partner” and with participation from local players like Ben Franklin Technology Partners and StartUp PHL’s angel fund.

“We’re going to leverage on this to penetrate the Greater Philadelphia region and we’ll be expanding to at least one more major metro area in the next twelve months,” Maher told Technical.ly.

The company, currently at 35 full-timers aims to grow to 50 by the end of the year. Though at first it was one of the companies on the seventh floor of Benjamin’s Desk 1701 Walnut St. location (the flagship spot, now neighboring the company’s 1608 Walnut St. space), Houwzer is now the solo resident of the 3,000 square feet space and has a satellite office in South Jersey.

(Another note on the OG Benjamin’s Desk location: the eighth floor is where the 1776/BD joint venture, Benjamin’s Desk Challenge Center Powered by 1776, will operate out of.)

In 2015, Maher stepped down from leading the coworking space to focus on Houwzer. The founder said that, from a business model standpoint the company will “stick to what’s working”: namely, Houwzer’s tech-enabled brokerage service.