In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →HouseCanary, the American property-data company, says it has signed a national listings agreement with Google, the trade publication Inman reported on 1 October 2026. The report came nine days after the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in New Jersey, and one day after it asked the bankruptcy court to rule on how much of a lender claim of roughly US$43 million is actually backed by collateral.
The two stories run side by side, and they pull in different directions. One is about growth: a data firm formalising an arrangement with a search company and telling the industry that a nationwide expansion is weeks away. The other is about survival: a borrower that does not dispute it defaulted on a credit facility, a lender group that had scheduled a foreclosure auction, and a court asked to decide what the lenders' security is worth.
Everything below comes from Inman's report, which draws on the court filings and on public remarks by HouseCanary's chief executive. The filings themselves were not consulted for this article, and the dispute is described as each side has put its case, not as a court has decided it.
Figures from court filings as reported by Inman, 1 October 2026. The 60-day deadline is a condition of the company's interim financing.
What HouseCanary announced
According to Inman, chief executive Chris Rediger said at RISMedia's CEO & Leadership Exchange, and again on LinkedIn, that the company had signed a national agreement with Google, without giving the date. He presented it as the formal step in a rollout that was first discussed in June 2026, and said the nationwide expansion was expected in the coming weeks.
Related readWestern Australia's official property tools: titles, alerts, valuesTwo things were not disclosed, Inman notes: the date on which the agreement was signed, and its terms. That matters for anyone trying to place the deal in the bankruptcy timeline. Whether the signature came before or after the Chapter 11 filing of 22 September is not something the published reporting settles, and neither is what either party pays or receives.
What is public is the list of multiple listing services taking part. HouseCanary's own website names six, Inman reports: Bright MLS, California Regional MLS, My State MLS, the Permian Basin Board of Realtors, REcolorado and San Diego MLS. That list is the practical measure of the arrangement today. A national agreement describes how far the arrangement is allowed to reach; the participating services describe where listings are actually coming from.
For brokers and listing agents, the point of interest is narrow and concrete. Where their MLS has chosen to participate, the listing data they enter is part of what this arrangement carries. Where it has not, nothing changes until it does. The choice sits with each MLS, and the six names above are the ones that had made it by the time Inman published.
The Chapter 11 filing
HouseCanary filed for Chapter 11 on Tuesday 22 September 2026 in New Jersey. The date was not an accident of the calendar. Inman reports that the lender group, referred to in the filings as Structural, had scheduled a foreclosure auction for that same day, and that a California state court had denied HouseCanary a temporary restraining order that would have stopped it.
Related readDubai Land Department's digital tools: who uses each and what it costsThe company says it intends to propose a plan that pays its creditors in full. That is an intention, stated by the debtor at the start of a case, and it has not been tested. The interim financing that funds the company through the process carries its own clock: Inman reports that it requires a confirmed plan within 60 days of the filing. Counted from 22 September, that takes the case to about 21 November.
One asset sits in the background of that promise. In March 2026, a Texas jury awarded HouseCanary US$175 million in compensatory damages after finding that Amrock had misappropriated its trade secrets and defrauded it, according to Inman. The research behind this article does not say what stage that award has reached or how much of it, if any, has been collected, so it is recorded here as a verdict and nothing more.
What the lenders say they are owed
The claim is held by three entities: Structural Capital Investments III, Series Structural DCO II and CEOF Holdings, with Ocean II PLO acting as their agent. It grows out of a credit facility of up to US$30 million that HouseCanary entered in 2021 and that was amended six times. Inman reports that the default is not disputed.
The amount was set out by Kai Tse, managing partner at Structural, in a declaration filed in the state-court proceedings. Inman's account of that declaration gives four parts.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Principal | US$30 million |
| Accrued interest | About US$4.3 million |
| Late fees, expenses and other charges | About US$8.5 million |
| Attorneys' fees | About US$199,000 |
| Total | Roughly US$43 million |
Declaration of Structural managing partner Kai Tse in state-court proceedings, as reported by Inman on 1 October 2026.
The principal matches the ceiling of the facility. Everything above it, about US$13 million, is interest, charges and legal costs that accumulated on top. The lenders' position, as it appears from the steps Inman describes, is that of a secured creditor enforcing its rights: a loan made in 2021, a default the borrower accepts, a lien on the borrower's assets and an auction scheduled to realise them. The state court's refusal to block that auction went the lenders' way; the Chapter 11 filing followed on the day the auction was due.
Related readDubai's property portals: owners, listing rules and broker costsWhat HouseCanary says is secured
On Wednesday 30 September, HouseCanary asked the bankruptcy court to estimate the secured portion of that claim. Its answer is strikingly small. The company proposes that only US$85,061.56 of the roughly US$43 million is secured, which would leave about US$42.9 million as unsecured debt.
Inman reports how the company builds that figure. It counts US$55,061.56 in cash, US$10,000 of equipment and US$20,000 for contracts and intangible assets. Added together, those three lines give the US$85,061.56. The company assigns no value at all to about US$1.4 million of receivables.
Set against the claim, the proposed secured amount is about 0.2 per cent of the total. The argument is not that the money was never lent or that the default did not happen. It is about what the lien reaches. HouseCanary's attorneys put it in a line Inman quotes from the filing: "Structural has a lien on milk, but not the cow."
The distinction decides a great deal. A creditor's secured claim is tied to the value of the collateral behind it; the remainder stands with the unsecured debts. If the court accepted the company's number, the lender group would be secured for a sum smaller than its reported legal fees and would hold nearly all of its claim as an unsecured creditor. If the court found the collateral to be worth far more, the group would keep the stronger position it asserted when it scheduled the auction.
Structural's reply to the estimation request is not described in the reporting this article relies on. Its side of the argument is therefore represented here by its claim, its lien and its enforcement steps, and readers should not take the absence of a quoted rebuttal as agreement.
Related readDubai's REES initiative and PropTech Hub: targets, entry routes, deliveryWhy data feeds are part of the case
The business of a property-data company rests on licences and on the feeds it receives from others. Inman reports that HouseCanary filed an expedited motion asking the court to bar its counterparties from terminating licences, MLS participation and listing-data feeds because of the bankruptcy. The motion was set to be heard on Thursday 1 October at 2 p.m. Eastern time.
The company says the risk is real. According to Inman, at least one counterparty tried to end its agreement within 48 hours of the filing. The counterparty is not identified in the research for this article.
This is where the two stories meet. The Google arrangement depends on listings supplied by participating MLSs. An MLS that withdrew its feed because its partner had entered Chapter 11 would remove part of what the national agreement is meant to carry. The motion asks the court to keep those relationships in place while the case runs. Inman's report was published on the day of the hearing and the outcome is not part of the material available here.
Three questions the published reporting does not answer
The terms and signing date of the Google agreement have not been disclosed. The result of the 1 October hearing on data feeds and licences is not in Inman's report. The lender group's response to the proposed US$85,061.56 valuation has not been described.
The dates ahead
Two deadlines are already fixed, and both fall before the end of November.
- 2021HouseCanary enters a credit facility of up to US$30 million, later amended six times.
- March 2026A Texas jury awards the company US$175 million in compensatory damages against Amrock.
- 22 September 2026The date set for the lenders' foreclosure auction. HouseCanary files for Chapter 11 in New Jersey.
- 30 September 2026The company asks the court to estimate the secured portion of the claim.
- 20 October 2026Hearings scheduled on the secured claim and on second-day matters.
The hearing on the secured claim is set for Tuesday 20 October, alongside the second-day hearings in the case, Inman reports. That is the first occasion on which the court is due to take up the gap between US$85,061.56 and roughly US$43 million, and the first at which the lender group's valuation of its own collateral would be expected to be aired in the bankruptcy court.
Related readNew South Wales property data tools: what each official one showsBehind it sits the financing condition: a confirmed plan within 60 days of the filing. The valuation question and the plan sit on the same calendar: the company says its plan will pay creditors in full, and how much of the lenders' roughly US$43 million is secured is still to be decided by the court.
What MLSs and brokers can take from it
For the six participating MLSs, and for any organisation weighing whether to join them, the reporting offers facts and leaves the judgement to them. The partner at the centre of the arrangement is in a court-supervised reorganisation that it entered on the day a foreclosure auction was due. It says it will pay creditors in full. It has asked the court to stop counterparties leaving because of the filing, and has told the court that one already tried.
For brokers and agents, the listing arrangement is described by its chief executive as national and about to widen. How quickly it does so depends on decisions by individual MLSs, and those decisions are now being made with a bankruptcy docket open.
For lenders to property-technology firms, the estimation request is the part to watch. A facility of up to US$30 million, amended six times, has produced a claim of roughly US$43 million and an argument from the borrower that almost none of it is secured. Whether that argument succeeds is for the New Jersey court. The company's attorneys have chosen their image of milk and cow; the lender group, which lent the money and holds the lien, is due its hearing on 20 October.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
