HomeLight announced $363 million of new funding, led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Group 11, Stereo Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Lydia Jett of the SoftBank Vision Fund.
The round includes $100 million of Series D equity and $263 million in debt financing to power HomeLight Cash Offer™ and HomeLight Trade-In™ operations, bringing HomeLight’s total funding to approximately $530 million to date.
HomeLight will use the funding to accelerate the expansion of its technology platform for agents, including its flagship financial products, HomeLight Trade-In™ and HomeLight Cash Offer™, to new markets across the country. HomeLight also plans to continue hiring and will open new offices across the United States and globally.
RealTrends has noticed an increase private equity or venture-capped entities considering the path to success through partnerships with brokerage companies and teams or acquisition of the same.
Many of them have strong financial and technology backgrounds. “Some of these companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and believe there is an opportunity to revolutionize the structure of the business through the investment in certain types of brokerage companies or teams, or a combination of both,” says Steve Murray, senior advisor to RealTrends.
He notes that “they’re coming at it with service packages that combine all the things we’ve seen over the last three to four years in terms of either buying activity, bridge loan activity and other financial services.”
HomeLight also sees this opportunity. “After decades of stagnation in our industry, how we buy and sell homes is fundamentally changing,” said Drew Uher, Founder and CEO of HomeLight. “We’ve built the definitive platform that gives the best real estate agents and their clients the power of contingency-free transactions — whether that’s enabling an all-cash offer, unlocking liquidity of an existing home to buy a new one, or creating certainty through a modern closing process. We’ve proven that technology can help transform the transaction experience, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring that technology to top agents, homebuyers, and sellers everywhere.”