Digital lender Beeline to issue mortgages for investor platform Stessa

Digital mortgage lender Beeline is partnering with Stessa, a management platform for single family rental investors, to provide mortgages to the proptech’s clients.

Beeline will provide conventional and Debt Service Coverage Ratio mortgages to Stessa, whose parent company is single family rental marketplace Roofstock. The agreement comes at a time when investors have a voracious appetite for single-family rentals, buying a record-18.4% of the nation’s homes for sale in Q4 2021.

“Our platform will fit snugly with Stessa, and our ability to give early certainty, then close quickly will help build confidence with investor borrowers,” Beeline CEO Nick Liuzza said in a press release.

Beeline, which grew from a team split between the United States and Australia, claims it can help borrowers apply for homes in as little as 15 minutes using its technology. The firm, licensed in 26 states, uses artificial intelligence to extract borrowers’ financial data and says it has 97% accuracy in predicting if an automated approval will reach clear to close.

The Providence, Rhode Island-based lender, which says its nearing $1B in mortgage originations, is also developing an onboarding process specifically designed for investors.

“It’s a different transaction and worthy of its own process and technology in order to heighten the customer experience while closing faster and more easily,” Beeline COO Jessica Kennedy said.

Stessa said its users are tracking $45 billion in assets, or more than 170,000 properties, through its financial management software, which is free for individual investors. The San Francisco-based proptech was acquired by Roofstock, a marketplace for single-family rental investors, last year.

Investors spent $49.9 billion on single-family rental properties in Q4 2021 alone, paying cash in just over 75% of the transactions, according to a Redfin analysis. Some lawmakers have blamed the nation’s sharply rising home values on the deep-pocketed investors buying up a larger share of inventory but experts also said diminishing supply remains a significant price factor.