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Startup with 850 rental houses raises $22M; leases LoHi HQ
New investors — Silicon Valley VCs and mom-and-pop landlords — are flocking to a Denver startup that just leased a new headquarters.
Flock Homes Founder Ari Rubin (Courtesy Flock Homes)Flock Homes, which buys homes that are pooled in a REIT-styled fund, raised a $22 million round last month, according to SEC filings.
That brings the Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm to nearly $50 million raised since its founding in 2020, when it raised $1.7 million. Flock also raised $26 million in 2022.
Though founder Ari Rubin declined to comment on the specifics of this round, he said the company will start buying new types of real estate. The new office at 2930 Umatilla St. in LoHi is an extension of that growth.
Rubin signed a one-year lease for the space, with hopes to grow his 12-person team to over 20 in the coming months.
So far, Flock has amassed a nearly $200 million portfolio of 850 single-family homes, which make up its fund. Homeowners sell their homes to the company in exchange for shares.
Rubin said Flock will begin adding multifamily units this year.
“Our clients are the millions of Americans who have owned real estate for a long time, and they’re just like, ‘I need an exit strategy. I don’t wanna deal with real estate. I don’t wanna deal with the property manager,’” he said.
But the reason most sell to the company is to avoid triggering Uncle Sam. Flock’s process avoids depreciation or capital gains, Rubin said.
“If you just sell the thing outright, you’re gonna pay 20%-plus in capital gains tax,” he added. According to real estate website Orchard, Denver’s median sale price has gone from about $309,000 in April 2015 to nearly $561,000 in February 2025.
“Then you could lose up to 30% of that value to frictions and fees,” Rubin said. “And as a result of this, people don’t sell.”
Flock appraises its homes and then gives sellers shares of its total fund at that value, minus a processing fee Rubin said is comparable to paying a broker. Flock also charges an asset management fee.
Flock manages and collects rent on those properties, managing about half themselves and having property managers for the others. That money is paid out in quarterly dividends to its shareholders.
“Our main goal is not just to generate money. Our main goal is to solve a problem for these people. It’s capital preservation. It’s piece of mind. It’s tax deferral. It’s estate planning. It’s flexible liquidity,” Rubin said. “A lot of funds out there say they’re gonna double your money in two years. But our goal is … low-risk, peace of mind.”
By adding multifamily assets, Rubin is aiming to expose Flock fund shareholders to more asset-types and decrease risk.
“We want to provide people scale and diversification,” he said.
Out of his staff of about 30, a little less than half are in Flock’s Denver headquarters, which was previously in Cherry Creek. Rubin also said he has smaller teams in both San Francisco and New York City.
He said that the fund collects just over $1 million in monthly rent and that Flock posted roughly $10 million in revenue last year, mostly from on-boarding fees.
“When we’re growing, we’re doing a lot of revenue,” he added, saying the 2024 numbers were a 400% improvement on 2023’s.
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Rubin, a Chicago native, dropped out of the graduate business school at Stanford to build the company. The 35-year-old Harvard grad previously worked as an investment manager at Denver-based Ibex Investors.
He has since moved to Palo Alto, California, but said he hopes to be back in Denver after his wife finishes a medical residency.
One day, he hopes Flock’s fund has nearly every type of real estate under its belt, including gas stations, hotels and car washes.
“There’s so much underutilized real estate out there, and people have spent their lives just stacking up these amazing assets and don’t know where to put them,” Rubin said. “The long-term vision is one day to have hundreds of thousands of homes and other assets.”
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Metro Denver housing market remains in holding pattern 5 years after COVID-19 shock
March marked the fifth anniversary since COVID-19 rocked the globe, and despite initial expectations of a pandemic slump, metro Denver’s housing market roared higher for two years and has managed to camp out on an elevated plateau the past three years, waiting for the clouds of high mortgage rates to clear.
Between March 2020 and April 2022, median home and condo prices in metro Denver raced 38.5% higher, an unprecedented surge, to a peak of $616,500, according to a new analysis by the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.
Low mortgage rates and remote work arrangements fueled demand and pushed the supply of available homes to historic lows. That triggered intense bidding wars and fueled even more demand.
A move in 30-year mortgage rates from around 3% in the early days of the pandemic to around 7% in late 2022 has acted as a strong headwind against additional appreciation and pinned the market down. The median sales price in March was $599,000 — 3.9% below the peak in April 2022.
What has changed is the available inventory and the pace of sales, which have provided buyers with more negotiating power.
There were 9,764 condos and single-family homes available for sale at the end of March, a 14.1% gain from February and a 67% increase from March 2024. In March 2021, there were 1,921 properties and by March 2022 there were only 1,221.
Essentially, buyers now have eight times as many options to choose from on the market compared to what was the case three years ago. But the volume of buying hasn’t accelerated, and again that is due to a lack of affordability.
Looking across the first quarter of 2020, there were 12,065 properties sold, while in the quarter that just ended there were 8,697 sold, a decrease of nearly 28%. But that tapering happened early in the pandemic recovery. Buyers closed on 4,889 properties in March 2021 and 3,202 in March 2022. Last month they closed on 3,515 properties, according to DMAR.
“Five years later, the Denver Metro is experiencing the ‘after’ — a market returning to balance, though shaped by high interest rates,” said Amanda Snitker, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee, in comments accompanying the report. “This market stabilization has come with lower buyer demand, higher inventory levels and stagnating prices.”
The 12.8% pace of average annual gains seen in the first two years of the pandemic was not sustainable, and the 6.9% annual appreciation rate averaged over the past five years is more realistic. But even that slower pace has outstripped the wage increases that serve as a key support for home purchases. And they are above the premium over inflation that housing normally generates.
Temperatures are much cooler on the high plateau where metro Denver’s housing market finds itself. In March 2021, listings went under contract in 19 days on average. Near the market peak in 2022, the average was 15 days. Last month, listings required an average of 48 days to find a willing buyer.
What comes next is uncertain. The clouds of high interest rates could pull away, allowing affordability to improve and the markets to march higher. Or the light fog could turn into a bitter economic storm that forces the housing market lower.
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After the initial waves of the pandemic passed and the economy reopened, job growth has been solid, providing key support to home-buying activity despite higher interest rates. But the pace of hiring has slowed significantly in the past year and Colorado is underperforming the country as a whole.
In February, Colorado added 500 jobs over the prior 12 months, or 10,500 if the striking King Soopers workers are added back in. Even at 10,500 jobs added, the annual gain was the weakest since early 2021.
Population growth, another key support of housing demand, also looks to be softening after a brief bump over the past two years due to a surge in international migration. Both consumer and business confidence are falling sharply.
Buyers have more selection than at any point since the pandemic hit, and sellers are more anxious to make a deal. The question is whether buyers will be in the mood to buy if the winds are blowing against them.
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Colorado homebuilder under criminal investigation amid dozens of theft, fraud claims
Tyler and Nicole Kirby used their life savings to buy a lot in Denver’s Berkeley neighborhood, with the goal of building a new house from scratch.
Their plans included an accessory dwelling unit above the garage so Nicole’s parents could live with them as they aged.
“This is the first time we’ve ever done this,” Nicole Kirby said. “We were so excited.”
So in June 2023, the Kirbys enlisted Castle Rock-based Adamo Building Company — which does business as Adamo Homes — to make their dreams a reality. The couple put down a $50,000 deposit and another $7,500 to complete the architecture plans.
The house never got built. Adamo, through its owner Carl Dean Amann, stopped returning their messages. The Kirbys’ architect told them the company had gone out of business and absconded with their money, they said. Contractors who hadn’t been paid by Adamo placed a lien on their property.
“They just dropped off the face of the Earth,” Tyler Kirby said of Amann and his company.
The Kirbys are among dozens of people in Colorado who allege they’ve been scammed by Adamo Homes. The company has been sued nearly 40 times since last year, racking up allegations of theft and fraud from jilted banks, contractors and property owners.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that Amann is one of the subjects of a criminal investigation looking into the bankruptcy of a construction company based in the county, though a spokesperson wouldn’t say which one.
Amann and other company representatives could not be reached for comment. The firm’s website is no longer active and phone numbers for the business have been turned off. The homebuilder’s listings on Google and Yelp say “permanently closed.”
The cascade of lawsuits began last May and continued through this month.
One Texas couple sued Adamo in July, alleging they paid the builders nearly $500,000 to construct a home in Parker. In September 2023, they broke ground on the residence, but the couple later learned Adamo had failed to pay its subcontractors and suppliers, the complaint alleges. Numerous mechanic’s liens were placed on the property.
The company submitted false and inaccurate invoices, the couple said in their lawsuit, and allegedly charged the family for materials the homeowners never ordered. In April, the company abandoned the project.
The home, as of the lawsuit’s filing, had not been completed.
Numerous subcontractors have also sued Adamo over nonpayment. Alpine Lumber Company alleges the company owes it more than $46,000 for labor, materials, equipment and goods. Peak View Roofing says the business owes it nearly $40,000.
A Castle Rock landlord sued Adamo over more than $30,000 in unpaid rent.
An archived version of Adamo’s website advertises the company’s homes as being “built true.”
“Adamo stands behind character, craftsmanship and positive relationships,” the business stated. “As builders, we built our company with you in mind.”
Tyler and Nicole Kirby inside their home under construction in the Berkeley neighborhood in Denver on Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) Related Articles- DPS board may require 3-year pause between rounds of Denver school closures
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Meanwhile, families like the Kirbys wonder whether they’ll see any of their money returned.
A Douglas County judge in September awarded the couple more than $122,000 in damages, though they haven’t seen a dime yet.
Nicole’s parents, thinking they’d be moving to Denver to live in the house, sold their residence in Arizona. They’ve been living with Nicole’s brother as they wait for the house to be completed.
The Kirbys eventually found another homebuilder to begin the process again. They hope to move into their new house in Berekely in December, a full year later than expected.
“We were too trusting in this process,” Tyler Kirby said. “Unfortunately, that’s not how the world works.”
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