According to the Pew Research Center, owning a home is often the largest asset for US homeowners. Owning and maintaining can be extremely costly. “Seventy-seven percent of homeowners say they faced an unexpected issue or repair with their home in the first year of ownership, according to a recent survey from the insurance company Hippo.” in the National Association of Realtors magazine.

Brendan Kennealey founded Nester in 2021 specifically to help new homeowners to better prepare for these expenses. “Homeowners may put a large, unexpected home repair on their credit card and get into that debt cycle and this affects low- to moderate- income (“LMI”) homeowners more than others,” says Kennealey. 

Nester is part of the inaugural cohort of CAFE’s flagship Fintech Accelerator program. CAFE is committed to working with innovative fintechs who are building technology to support immigrant, LMI, and other underserved communities. 

Each week, we are featuring founders of our participating companies and their impact on underserved communities. This week, we are featuring Brendan Kennealey from Nester. Here’s a snippet from our chat with him.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. Was there a specific experience or moment that sparked the idea for your company?

“My background is primarily in education, I went to Boston College and Harvard Business School and lived in the Boston area for almost 15 years and worked with different schools. I also worked in education in Rwanda. After that, I moved to Wilmington, DE, where I worked as Head of School at Salesianum School. After 10 years there, I transitioned into Nester.  Starting a fintech startup after education seems a little off path.  

The reality was, that I was having dinner with one of my best friends who recently bought a house. It was a relatively new house, only about 10 years old but there were lots of things wrong with the house, and he was extremely frustrated. However, a lot of the stuff going wrong was up against its useful life and he had no insight into it. 

I realized that he’s not alone. The number one regret that homeowners have is the cost of maintaining their house. Most of these costs are predictable since we can project what will need replacing based on the useful life of different things in the home. We used to project this for the schools I worked at, and it got me thinking, why not do this for the homes as well? I wanted to make owning a home a better experience for homeowners.”

Tell us a little bit about Nester. 

“We got started with the idea of helping home buyers. Sort of like how Carfax sits in the transaction of a used car, Nester would sit in the transaction of a used house if you will. Before the buyer gets their house, we give them their Nester report, where we put home maintenance costs in a digestible timeline. We show them how much they need to save per month in addition to their mortgage to afford the costs of owning their home. We also give every house a Nester score like a FICO score for the house, which changes based on where your house is in its lifeline. For example, if you replace your roof, the score goes up because you won’t have to change it for a long time. 

We give home buyers follow-up questions to ask the seller and realtor, to help them get more educated. For a buyer, we can also help them compare houses side by side. It’s complicated for someone to do all these calculations on their own. We are independent and we don’t take positions about this being a good or bad house, one may be more expensive in sticker price but when you factor in maintenance, it changes the math.”

How does Nester impact LMI populations?

“Nester works and is valuable whether a house is $100,000 or $1 million. Interestingly, the value increases for folks who are lower and middle-income. If their roof or furnace goes, it can be a major burden financially. 

We are partnering with government entities and financial institutions. Every state has a state housing program where they provide down payment assistance and first homeowners programs. They have this dual mission to help people get access to homeownership and do it in a way to make sure these homeowners are not getting in over their heads. We are currently partnered in our hometown with the city of Wilmington, Delaware. We are now looking at these partnerships as priority number one. 

Priority two is financial institutions. For most people, their house is their biggest asset, if you are a bank or credit union and your customer is looking to buy a home, you can provide them value with Nester and cross-sell other products too. We also have a partnership with Habitat for Humanity and we’re looking at that to expand out beyond local networks.”

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your entrepreneurial journey?

“Honestly, it is customers and when they get the report, just the relief that they get is so valuable to us. We do a lot of in-person focus groups and such, for our product development, and seeing the reaction of the customers when they get the report is great.  We recently did Nester reports for a group of 4 single moms who were soon to be homeowners for Habitat for Humanity.”

What prompted you to apply for the CAFE accelerator program? 

“When I heard what CAFE was doing, it felt like a great fit especially as we transition to working with government and financial institutions. CAFE’s mission to advance financial equity aligns with our product, which is getting traction with LMI homeowners and home buyers.”

Tell us more about your goals on networking and mentorship through the fintech accelerator program and how it’s been so far. 

“Our primary goal is getting quicker access to financial institutions and CAFE has a great network of financial institutions, community banks and credit unions. That’s something that we are starting as a channel for Nester. We also want to get smarter about selling to these kinds of institutions. I think that’s gone well particularly on the learning side, not just from the speakers but from the other founders who have gone through this. The other founders in the cohort have shared some of their learnings and mistakes they made. Meeting other founders in similar industries is the benefit of this cohort model. 

Third down the list of goals is that we are likely going to look for institutional funding soon, be it venture capital or a strategic partnership, we are looking at getting access to those.”

Are there any challenges you have faced in getting financial institutions on board? 

“The challenge we’ve seen is from the financial institutions’ side. Getting in the door is the first hurdle but even when you are through the door, there is no linear path to getting a partnership signed. Every bank is different, there are multiple people making decisions, and they all need to sign off on a partnership in no set order. Each bank has their process; certain things are similar, but they are a lot different.  

Navigating that process and figuring out the people who will be involved in that decision and trying to somehow get them to a consensus, is not unique to us but a big challenge for us. CAFE has been helpful in that, part of what has been helpful is the reassurance that we’re not crazy, everyone is facing that. We are also learning things we can do to make this process better.”

How does your business evaluate the impact you create in underserved communities?

“Having an impact on LMI communities is super important to us, my background has largely been in education and working with LMI communities.  We have a product that is useful to everybody but has a large impact on LMI homeowners. I believe every transaction should come with a Nester report – there’s no downside to having more information. Without the foresight Nester provides, homeowners may put a large, unexpected home repair on their credit card and get into that debt cycle and this affects LMI homeowners more than others. The fact that our product can play an important role there, it’s a huge win for us personally and professionally.”

 Brendan Kennealey from Nester shares his journey in building an impact-driven startup to empower homeowners and joining CAFE’s fintech accelerator. 

According to the Pew Research Center, owning a home is often the largest asset for US homeowners. Owning and maintaining can be extremely costly. “Seventy-seven percent of homeowners say they faced an unexpected issue or repair with their home in the first year of ownership, according to a recent survey from the insurance company Hippo.” in the National Association of Realtors magazine.

Brendan Kennealey founded Nester in 2021 specifically to help new homeowners to better prepare for these expenses. These unexpected expenses can be especially burdensome on low-to-middle income homeowners. “Homeowners may put a large, unexpected home repair on their credit card and get into that debt cycle and this affects low- to moderate- income (“LMI”) homeowners more than others,” says Kennealey. 

Nester is part of the inaugural cohort of CAFE’s flagship Fintech Accelerator program. CAFE is committed to working with innovative fintechs who are building technology to support immigrant, LMI, and other underserved communities. 

Each week, we are featuring founders of our participating companies and their impact on underserved communities. This week, we are featuring Brendan Kennealey from Nester. Here’s a snippet from our chat with him.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. Was there a specific experience or moment that sparked the idea for your company?

“My background is primarily in education, I went to Boston College and Harvard Business School and lived in the Boston area for almost 15 years and worked with different schools. I also worked in education in Rwanda. After that, I moved to Wilmington, DE, where I worked as Head of School at Salesianum School. After 10 years there, I transitioned into Nester.  Starting a fintech startup after education seems a little off path.  

The reality was, that I was having dinner with one of my best friends who recently bought a house. It was a relatively new house, only about 10 years old but there were lots of things wrong with the house, and he was extremely frustrated. However, a lot of the stuff going wrong was up against its useful life and he had no insight into it. 

I realized that he’s not alone. The number one regret that homeowners have is the cost of maintaining their house. Most of these costs are predictable since we can project what will need replacing based on the useful life of different things in the home. We used to project this for the schools I worked at, and it got me thinking, why not do this for the homes as well? I wanted to make owning a home a better experience for homeowners.”

Tell us a little bit about Nester. 

“We got started with the idea of helping home buyers. Sort of like how Carfax sits in the transaction of a used car, Nester would sit in the transaction of a used house if you will. Before the buyer gets their house, we give them their Nester report, where we put home maintenance costs in a digestible timeline. We show them how much they need to save per month in addition to their mortgage to afford the costs of owning their home. We also give every house a Nester score like a FICO score for the house, which changes based on where your house is in its lifeline. For example, if you replace your roof, the score goes up because you won’t have to change it for a long time. 

We give home buyers follow-up questions to ask the seller and realtor, to help them get more educated. For a buyer, we can also help them compare houses side by side. It’s complicated for someone to do all these calculations on their own. We are independent and we don’t take positions about this being a good or bad house, one may be more expensive in sticker price but when you factor in maintenance, it changes the math.”

How does Nester impact LMI populations?

“Nester works and is valuable whether a house is $100,000 or $1 million. Interestingly, the value increases for folks who are lower and middle-income. If their roof or furnace goes, it can be a major burden financially. 

We are partnering with government entities and financial institutions. Every state has a state housing program where they provide down payment assistance and first homeowners programs. They have this dual mission to help people get access to homeownership and do it in a way to make sure these homeowners are not getting in over their heads. We are currently partnered in our hometown with the city of Wilmington, Delaware. We are now looking at these partnerships as priority number one. 

Priority two is financial institutions. For most people, their house is their biggest asset, if you are a bank or credit union and your customer is looking to buy a home, you can provide them value with Nester and cross-sell other products too. We also have a partnership with Habitat for Humanity and we’re looking at that to expand out beyond local networks.”

What has been the most rewarding aspect of your entrepreneurial journey?

“Honestly, it is customers and when they get the report, just the relief that they get is so valuable to us. We do a lot of in-person focus groups and such, for our product development, and seeing the reaction of the customers when they get the report is great.  We recently did Nester reports for a group of 4 single moms who were soon to be homeowners for Habitat for Humanity.”

What prompted you to apply for the CAFE accelerator program? 

“When I heard what CAFE was doing, it felt like a great fit especially as we transition to working with government and financial institutions. CAFE’s mission to advance financial equity aligns with our product, which is getting traction with LMI homeowners and home buyers.”

Tell us more about your goals on networking and mentorship through the fintech accelerator program and how it’s been so far. 

“Our primary goal is getting quicker access to financial institutions and CAFE has a great network of financial institutions, community banks and credit unions. That’s something that we are starting as a channel for Nester. We also want to get smarter about selling to these kinds of institutions. I think that’s gone well particularly on the learning side, not just from the speakers but from the other founders who have gone through this. The other founders in the cohort have shared some of their learnings and mistakes they made. Meeting other founders in similar industries is the benefit of this cohort model. 

Third down the list of goals is that we are likely going to look for institutional funding soon, be it venture capital or a strategic partnership, we are looking at getting access to those.”

Are there any challenges you have faced in getting financial institutions on board? 

“The challenge we’ve seen is from the financial institutions’ side. Getting in the door is the first hurdle but even when you are through the door, there is no linear path to getting a partnership signed. Every bank is different, there are multiple people making decisions, and they all need to sign off on a partnership in no set order. Each bank has their process; certain things are similar, but they are a lot different.  

Navigating that process and figuring out the people who will be involved in that decision and trying to somehow get them to a consensus, is not unique to us but a big challenge for us. CAFE has been helpful in that, part of what has been helpful is the reassurance that we’re not crazy, everyone is facing that. We are also learning things we can do to make this process better.”

How does your business evaluate the impact you create in underserved communities?

“Having an impact on LMI communities is super important to us, my background has largely been in education and working with LMI communities.  We have a product that is useful to everybody but has a large impact on LMI homeowners. I believe every transaction should come with a Nester report – there’s no downside to having more information. Without the foresight Nester provides, homeowners may put a large, unexpected home repair on their credit card and get into that debt cycle and this affects LMI homeowners more than others. The fact that our product can play an important role there, it’s a huge win for us personally and professionally.”