Spruce’s Patrick Burns on innovation in title technology

This week, HousingWire’s Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler interviews Patrick Burns, the CEO and co-founder of Spruce, a proptech company powering online real estate transactions. In this episode, the pair discuss heightened investor interest in title technology, innovation and fintech adoption spurred by COVID-19, as well as the rise of M&A and partnerships.

Here is a small preview of the interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Sarah Wheeler: We’ve seen a lot of investor interest in title, including in your company, which has raised about $50 million since 2018. How did you pitch a title solutions company to VCs? What were the particulars that swayed them?

Patrick Burns: I think, first of all, it starts with that personal experience that you alluded to. I think everyone understands that we can do better from the point of view of real estate transactions, and that’s not just those visceral components of a big signing package and long pipelines and high costs, it’s really all the products that are available in the real estate industry. If you think about it, it kind of feels like an anachronism that even the way we go through buying a home, or the way we own our home; where we lever ourselves up with a mortgage, we essentially make this big investment, and that’s one asset where we don’t take similar-sized bets in our other personal finances. I think there’s a lot of investors out there that take the view that the world of real estate can evolve from where we are today, and the way it will evolve is through technology.

The Housing News podcast explores the most important topics happening in mortgage, real estate, and fintech. Each week a new mortgage or real estate executive joins the show to add perspective to the top stories crossing HousingWire’s news desk. Hosted by Sarah Wheeler and produced by Alcynna Lloyd.