Welcome to Ben Kinney's PLACE: Building a Billion-Dollar Future for Real Estate

Ben Kinney is known as one of the “most respected and practitioner-centric leaders in real estate tech today.”

As the co-founder of the real estate technology and services company PLACE, he is a successful brokerage owner and founder of multiple tech startups. He has sold more than 5,000 homes and is recognized as a thought leader in the industry. Then, when PLACE hit billion-dollar, unicorn status after one round of external fundraising, the world really began to pay attention.

Even though he’s proven himself time and time again, there were very few people from his hometown who would have bet that he’d make it to college – let alone become such a massive success. In fact, his teachers didn’t trust him to take Advanced Placement exams in school.

This is a man that went from living in the woods and surviving off the land to being at the forefront of real estate’s tech revolution. With each new step away from his past traumas, Kinney has learned to forge his own path – one defined by nothing but his own hard work.

Raised in Chaos

Kinney was born and raised in Washington, a state he continues to call home. Something that could be considered an accomplishment based on his turbulent childhood.

Kinney’s parents separated when he was a toddler. Instead of paying child support or going through a nasty legal battle, his parents decided that his mom would take his sister and he would go with his dad, he explained in an interview with The One Thing Book podcast.

They ended up in a town called Oso, where his father rented a 300-square-foot cabin, half of which was filled with boxes of debris, clothes, and garbage. They inhabited the other half, where his dad had broken apart a couch to act as a makeshift bed.

“I slept on one side with my feet one way and he slept on the other side with his feet the other way,” he went on to tell the host Geoff Woods. They cooked on a wood stove and had no power, though they occasionally “borrowed” electricity from a neighboring house via extension cord.

They relied on a local food bank, as well as fishing and hunting to survive, especially after his dad fell off a roof and broke his leg with no health insurance.

“If I had to summarize the hardships of growing up there – I remember being quite hungry.”

He went on to tell The One Thing Book that his dad was a “mountain guy” who didn’t really think about things like hygiene or sanitary conditions. Today, he believes this was because the man gave up on relationships, women, and civilized society.

While far from perfect, he had more respect for his mom as a parent, seeing her as a good and hard-working caregiver.

The problem was that she had terrible taste in men and ended up married to an alcoholic, which ended up fueling her own addictions. His mother's run-down trailer was always full of smoking, drinking, and drugs. He even recalls someone having a heroin overdose at a pizza party they threw.

Despite all of this, he ended up living with her in high school, the main driver being regular access to a shower, which he correctly assumed would attract more girls. But there was only so much he could take.

After years of abuse and neglect, he left home the second he turned 18, ending up in Granite Falls where he graduated from high school.

“What was interesting was, when I left, within a couple weeks, my mom left too,” he went on to say on the podcast, adding that she was never financially stable enough to support her kids. “So she selflessly stayed in that relationship and I believe that she used drugs and alcohol as a way to cope and just – was never able to break that cycle.”

After years of addiction took its toll, he lost his mom in 2024. Yet, from this chaotic beginning, Kinney would go on to build a future defined by his relentless drive.

College, Cables, & Career Changes

Despite everything he’s been through, he has never felt regret or been ashamed of his roots – it was just another step in his journey. But he never forgot the way that the teachers treated him due to his hygiene.

“I remember going to school and being dirty because we didn’t have a washing machine,” he explained to HousingWire. “The teachers wouldn’t let me test for the Advanced Placement exams because I think they assumed that because I was dirty , that I wasn’t that smart.”

Now that was a stigma he was determined to fight.

After his escape, Kinney was determined to continue his education, enrolling in college to study computer science and business. To pay the bills, he worked the jobs he could get. He started installing cable, eventually selling it door-to-door. But in 2004, he became distracted from his studies when he began working in real estate, finding some early success.

In between classes, he met a woman who would change his life, introducing him to the idea of property ownership via roommate. He thought that was the most brilliant thing in the world, saved up $11,500, and did just that.

Then, after getting his hands on a copy of “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent” by Gary Keller, he knew he needed to change his life’s direction. Dropping out of college a few credits shy of graduation, he committed to getting his real estate license instead.

Just as when he left home, he never looked back.

Finding His PLACE

Kinney decided that if he was going to make this shift, he would go all in. In 2004, he founded Ben Kinney Companies, which includes a diverse group of real estate software, coaching, and training companies, plus mortgage, title, escrow, and multiple real estate brokerage locations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.

Then, in 2012, he decided to launch Brivity in response to his own pain points as a realtor. The all-in-one platform was built to “house the entire transaction process in one streamlined system,” doing everything from generating leads to automating follow-ups.

“From day one, the guiding philosophy of Brivity has been to solve real issues, not overcomplicate, giving you time to do what matters: lead your company and sell more real estate,” he said on the Brivity website.

Kinney spent the next eight years bootstrapping the business. But Brivity would prove its worth, becoming an asset for Kinney’s next project. He partnered with co-founder Chris Suarez to launch PLACE in 2019, offering what it describes as “an end-to-end suite of software solutions and business services.”

Kinney promotes the company as doing two main things: helping real estate professionals eliminate up to 75% of their daily tasks and allowing them to focus on buying and selling homes.

“Imagine the Amazon app of the home. We believe this can be built for the world and be built in Whatcom County. Everything you need for your home all in one PLACE,” he said to the Bellingham Herald.

“We are not a brokerage, but we aren’t a network either – we are a platform,” he and his co-founder explained to the publication Online Marketplace. “Our goal is to simplify the homeownership process for both agents and consumers.”