If you’ve been in real estate tech long enough to remember floppy disks and faxed appraisals, then you know this move is bigger than just a press release.
Clear Capital just pulled off something we don’t see often, after 24 years of bootstrapped building, real revenue, and staying fiercely independent, they’ve taken on their first outside capital. And it wasn’t a small handshake. Chicago’s heavyweight GTCR stepped in with a strategic investment and became majority shareholder. No magic number disclosed, but the message is loud: Clear Capital is doubling down on the future, not cashing out of the past.
Founded in 2001 by Duane Andrews and Kevin Marshall, Clear Capital’s story isn’t the usual coastal rocket ship tale. It started in Truckee, California, made the smart play to move HQ to Reno in 2015, and quietly scaled into one of the most pivotal players in real estate valuation and analytics. Over 1,300 employees. A nationwide network of 30,000+ professionals. Supporting over 5 million transactions a year. No buzzwords. Just business. And with Andrews still holding significant equity, this isn’t a changing of the guard, it’s the crew swapping the propeller for a jet engine.
GTCR didn’t just bring capital. They brought Scott Happ, a 40-year mortgage tech legend who built Mortgagebot, ran Optimal Blue, and now steps onto Clear Capital’s board. That’s not just a board seat, that’s a strategic alignment with a guy who’s been in the control room for some of the biggest evolutions in digital mortgage history.
And while the industry gets lost in the AI arms race, Clear Capital’s been quietly winning with accuracy and speed. Their flagship ClearAVM hits a 2.3% MdAPE across 124M+ properties. Their Rental AVM? 3.05% across 85M. Valuations in under 0.05 seconds. That’s not hype, it’s horsepower. And with their CubiCasa floorplan tech in 30% of new U.S. listings and a brand-new PropertyNova data platform just launched, they’re not just chasing the data, they’re defining it.
The play here is bigger than funding. It’s about focus. More R&D. More infrastructure. More acquisitions. More clarity for a market that’s been fogged by legacy systems and half-baked platforms. GTCR’s backing doesn’t just validate Clear Capital’s position, it arms them for a national expansion strategy that could fundamentally shift how real estate risk is measured, managed, and monetized.
Respect to Duane Andrews, Kevin Marshall, and the entire leadership team, Ron Rowan, Helge Hukari, Sheila Ryan, Deepak Sachdeva, Jason LeGaré, Kenon Chen, Luke Frederick, Simon Blackburn, Kevin Raney, Cathy Wright, and Jeff Allen. When you scale the right way, people notice. When you scale with substance, GTCR shows up.
