HomeSnap closes deal for same price as Heath Ledger’s treehouse

Sawbuck Realty closed $3.5 million in financing for HomeSnap, a real estate discovery engine that gives house hunters detailed information about a home based on photo.

Billed as “Shazam for Homes,” HomeSnap uses image-recognition technology to identify a property. Users snap a photo and the app draws from a pool of real estate listings, tax records, census data, attendance zones, and geolocation data to provide relevant information, such as appraised value, number of bathrooms, and school zone.

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Whether you are curious how much that suburban split level costs and whether it can accomodate a family of four or dying to discern how much a celebrity spent on a fourth home, HomeSnap can tell you what you want to know.

HomeSnap launched in March at SXSW, and since then it’s been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

Even for people not actively in the market for a house, interest in property values and a voyeuristic curiosity about other peoples’ homes are rampant, as testified by the dozens of reality television shows dedicated to real estate.

Home may be where the heart is, but it takes persistence, dedication, and time to find the perfect abode. House hunters traditionally have to hire brokers, troll through pages and pages of real estate listings, and scour the streets for promising “For Sale” signs.

HomeSnap was created by Sawbuck Realty, an online real estate brokerage site, to make the house-hunting process simpler. It can also help aspiring home owners gauge home values and what options are available to them.

Currently, the app is only available on the iPhone, and this recent funding is for Android and iPad versions as well as to build a web presence and expand the functionality to other areas, like condos, co-ops, and rentals.

The funding round was led by Revolution Ventures, a Washington, D.C.-based venture firm founded by AOL cofounder Steve Case. Sawbuck is also based in Washington D.C.