Knock Increases Home Prep & Marketability Allowance on its Popular Home Swap™ Financing Product to Ensure a Seller's Home is Listing-Ready

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Jan 18, 2023, 10:00 ET

Increase to $35,000 allows sellers to make necessary repairs on their house to sell for top dollar in today's slowing housing market

NEW YORK, Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In the current housing market, first impressions are more important than ever. To help its clients ensure that their homes standout when they list them for sale, Knock, the innovative home finance tech company that makes home buying simple and certain, announced today that it has increased the Home Prep & Marketability Allowance feature on the Knock Home Swap™ to $35,000, effective immediately.

"The days of placing a for-sale sign in the front yard and a home selling in two or three days without any prep are over," said Knock Co-Founder and CEO Sean Black. "In today's environment, it's important for a homeseller to put their best foot forward and they only get one chance to do so. Based on what we are seeing in the markets we operate across the country, when a seller prices their home realistically and makes minor updates they will find that it's still a very good housing market. When a home is listed as is, it tends to languish on the market and the longer it remains on the market, the more concessions a seller will have to make."

Knock's flagship Home Swap provides all of the financing, including a competitively priced mortgage¹, that enables a consumer to buy before they sell, allowing them to avoid living through repairs and showings and make only one mortgage payment. Once settled into their new home, they can work with their agent and Knock's Home Prep & Marketability team to make up to $35,000 in non-structural updates to the home, such as new carpeting and floors, bathroom upgrades and fresh paint. The $35,000 allowance is part of an interest-free equity advance that covers the down payment on the new home and up to six months of mortgage payments on the old house.

A sign of the shifting market, customers leveraging the Home Swap's Home Prep & Marketability Allowance increased 50% from the first half of 2022 to the third quarter as has the amount sellers are spending to make updates to their homes. Nationally, median days on market continued to rise throughout 2022 ending the month of November at 22. During the same period, the median time it took for a homeowner who took advantage of the Home Prep & Marketability Allowance to sell their home was nine days – 13 days fewer.

Consistent with Knock's mission of making buying and selling homes certain, convenient and cost-effective, the company has introduced several features in recent months designed to help consumers in a slowing and more costly housing market. This includes the ability to use the Home Swap's Equity Advance to lock in a mortgage rate for up to four months and reduce the monthly payments on a new home purchase by buying down the mortgage rate and increasing their down payment.

The Knock Home Swap is available through more than 300 real estate brokerage firms with 117,000 agents in approximately 5,900 ZIP codes in 75 markets nationwide. Homebuyers also can learn more and see if they qualify for the Knock Home Swap at knock.com.

¹Mortgage loans offered by Knock Lending LLC. NMLS 1958445. Equal Housing Lender. For licensing information go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org.

About Knock

Knock is an innovative home finance tech company making home buying simple and certain. Our flagship Home Swap™ product empowers consumers with a non-contingent, cash-like offer right on their phone to buy the home they want before selling the home they have, providing the certainty of locking in their dream home with the convenience of not having to live through repairs or showings of the old house.

Launched in 2015 by founding team members of Trulia.com, Knock currently operates in 75 markets nationwide. Knock has raised $900 million in debt and equity from top-tier investors, including Foundry Group, Greycroft, RRE, Parker89 and The National Association of Realtors®, giving NAR's 1.5 million members the ability to market Knock's homeownership solutions to their clients. For more information visit: knock.com.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Knock