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Real estate software startup Goby Homes has formally launched its flagship real estate software solution, a product “designed to improve the transparency, document management and security of residential real estate transactions,” according to a June 4 statement.
Augmenting the company’s announcement is the National Association of Realtors naming founder Terrence Nickelson as the recipient of its iOi Innovator of the Year Award. This year’s award will be presented at the 2025 Realtors Legislative Meetings, taking place May 31 through June 5 in Washington, D.C.
Previous iOi Innovator awardees include Pritesh Damani, chief technology officer at The Real Brokerage; Inés Hegedus-García, managing partner at Avanti Way Realty; and Kathleen Lappe, CEO of DirectOffer.
“Receiving the Innovator of the Year award is a tremendous honor,” Nickelson said. “It reinforces my belief that while technology plays a crucial role in streamlining processes, in the real estate industry, particularly when dealing with our clients’ most significant investments, there’s truly no such thing as a completely ‘end-to-end’ platform driven solely by artificial intelligence.”
Inspiring the creation of Goby Homes is the pace at which real estate deals fall through before closing. While the reasons are many, increased transparency and more multi-party collaboration on how to address common transaction challenges can only help. The company summarizes its value proposition as “introducing alignment, visibility, and structured collaboration to every transaction.”
“Despite countless tools available, transactions still fall apart because key information gets missed, roles and responsibilities are unclear, and real-time transparency is almost nonexistent,” Nickelson said. “Without a shared source of accountability, confusion builds, leading to friction, a poor client experience, and ultimately, fallout.”
Nearly 760 home sales collapse every day, totaling a quarter of a million per year, according to Goby Homes. Redfin reported in May that “Roughly 56,000 U.S. home-purchase agreements were canceled in April, equal to 14.3 percent of homes that went under contract that month.”
Additionally, Goby Homes has found that digital security remains a major risk throughout the lifecycle of a common home sale, due in part to fragmented communications spanning email, text and other transaction systems. While wire fraud is always a risk, so is long-term data risk and the spilling of personal financial information into the coffers of bad actors.
The product’s centralization of all transaction information can help alleviate security risks by ensuring a single, secure hub is the only landing spot for deal point documents, terms and workflow.
In addition to NAR’s recognition, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) presented Nickelson the “Innovation Impact Award” at the 2025 Responsible AI Symposium. He was also a panelist at Inman Connect Miami, on stage for a session entitled, “Built for Real Estate: Tech Solutions That Deliver Results.”
Goby Homes is a member of the second cohort of fledgling companies being supported by Equity Angels, a woman-founded and -led organization focused on equitable access to financial and entrepreneurial resources. A member of its first cohort, Upfront, recently acquired MoxiWorks’ backoffice product, MoxiBalance. It will be rebranded as Vero.
