Homebuying Startups Roofstock, Orchard Score Combined $86M In Venture Funding

It’s a new year and already, startups in the real estate space are raking in venture dollars. This is not surprising because buying homes is something that people everywhere are not likely to stop doing soon.

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Already this week, two homebuying platforms announced big rounds. Oakland-based Roofstock, which facilitates investments in rental homes, raised $50 million in a Series D round led by SVB Capital. And New York-based Orchard (formerly called Perch), a platform for buying and selling homes, secured $36 million in a Series B round led by Navitas Capital.

Roofstock’s latest round brings its total raised to $125.3 million since its inception in 2015, according to Crunchbase data. A slew of other VCs participated in its latest round including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Citi Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Canvas Ventures, and others

Roofstock, according to TechCrunch, provides an “online marketplace where buyers and sellers buy and sell rental homes in more than 70 U.S. markets — homes with tenants residing in them oftentimes.”

Meanwhile, FirstMark, Juxtapose, and Accomplice also participated in Orchard’s financing. The round brings the company’s total known venture raised since it was founded in September 2017 to $66 million. Orchard has also raised a total of $220 million in debt financing.

In a statement, Orchard says it saw “10x year-over-year revenue growth”  and now has over 150 employees.

The company says it helps people buy homes before they’ve sold the ones they currently own by providing them with the needed cash.  It’s not the only company out there doing this, it’s important to note. Last July, we reported on Austin-based Homeward, which also makes an all-cash offer on behalf of a customer wanting to buy a house.

Another company that has recently raised money in the real estate space includes Divvy Homes, which in September announced a $43M Series B round to help in its mission to help more Americans “move from renters to [home]owners.”

In general, we’ve been paying attention to this sector, which saw some massive funding rounds from the likes of Knock and Compass in 2019. In July 2019, we covered Fifth Wall Ventures’ raising $503 million for its second fund to invest almost exclusively in real estate tech companies.

Illustration: Dom Guzman