Mortgage rates at 7%? That’s not a financial forecast, that’s a blockade. But there’s a crew in San Diego cutting a path through it, with artificial intelligence, ambition, and a playbook nobody else bothered to write.
Meet RetroRate.
Founded in March 2024 by CEO Andy Taylor and CTO Tom Hartwell, this startup isn’t tiptoeing into the PropTech party. They’re breaking through the back wall with a freemium platform built for real estate agents who are tired of watching great deals die on the vine because no one knows how to handle assumable mortgages.
Assumable loans aren’t new. But the pain points around them? Ancient. Opaque processes. Confusing qualifications. Paperwork that reads like a ransom note. RetroRate flips the lens, making these low-rate mortgage unicorns visible, actionable, and insanely efficient.
At the heart of it all? The RetroMatch™ system. It’s AI with an actual IQ. 78 data points deep, this scoring engine sniffs out assumable opportunities like a bloodhound with a Stanford degree. Agents get side-by-side comparisons of assumable vs. market-rate loans, auto-generated assumption packages, and direct MLS data parsing. No guesswork. No gimmicks.
The concierge loan officer team? They don’t hand you a hotline. They walk the deal from identification to closing, built-in human touch wrapped in machine precision. That’s how you move a market.
Swift Ventures saw the signal and didn’t hesitate. They led the $2.2 million seed round, joined by Eniac Ventures, Cooley LLP, Keshif Ventures LLC, Interlock Capital, Launch Factory, and arkusnexus. These aren’t casual checks, they’re a coalition of belief that the way we buy homes is overdue for a reboot.
And it’s happening fast.
RetroRate is stacking integrations with Zillow Premier Agent, Realtor.com, and MLS systems across 10 new metro markets this year. By 2026, their tools will be baked into 85% of the markets where assumable loan activity matters. That’s not scale, it’s dominance, one AR-powered listing at a time.
Andy Taylor’s no stranger to the grind. With leadership stints at Credit Karma, Redfin, and Apple, and 14 patents to his name, he’s building with purpose. Tom Hartwell brings the code chops from Cue Health, Color, and Zuora, turning back-end complexity into front-end clarity.
Assumable mortgages are finally getting their spotlight. Not because the industry changed. Because RetroRate made them unavoidable.
Buyers are tired of balloon payments and 7% handcuffs. Sellers want a premium for the rate they locked in two years ago. RetroRate doesn’t just understand the need, they engineered the answer.
So, if you’re in real estate and still ignoring assumables, take a beat. The game changed. And if you’re in fintech and you missed this round, maybe it’s time to assume you’re late.
