Colombia’s La Haus Raises $35M To Digitize LatAm’s Residential Real Estate

Colombia-based real estate tech startup La Haus has raised $35 million in a Series B round, the company announced Thursday.

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La Haus is building a real estate marketplace for Latin America to make the homebuying and selling process easier.

People in the U.S. often bring up tools like Redfin or Zillow, La Haus co-founder and President Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios said in an interview with Crunchbase News. 

“All of these are fantastic, innovative solutions for the U.S. real estate market,” Sanchez-Rios said. “But it is really important to establish the background against which we’re operating.”

The real estate market in Latin America is not like the United States: There’s no Zillow, Multiple Listing Services, or easily accessible public records, tools and services people often take for granted in the U.S., Sanchez-Rios said. There’s also no licensing or central repository of information in Latin America, which, combined with a lack of MLS, means there isn’t a coordinated platform for listings.

“It all boils down to a lack of trust,” Sanchez-Rios said. “That lack of trust is pervasive and you can really feel it with the average time it takes to sell a property in Latin America, which is 14 months.”

La Haus streamlines the homebuying and selling process, and currently operates in Medellin, Bogota and Mexico City. With the new funding, Sanchez-Rios said, the company will be “doubling down” on product development to help address real estate challenges in Latin America. For example, La Haus is also developing an inventory management system to help developers–who have traditionally managed everything offline–make tasks like sending quotes to clients, managing what’s sold, and what’s available more efficient.

Greenspring Associates led the Series B round, which also included participation from Acrew Capital, Kaszek Ventures, NFX–which was co-founded by Trulia founder Peter Flint—IMO Ventures, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff, and Hometeam Ventures.

La Haus first appeared on Greenspring Associates’ radar because the firm is a limited partner in NFX, which invested in La Haus previously. Greenspring Associates also heard about the company organically and was impressed by its growth, partner Seyonne Kang said in an interview with Crunchbase News.

“What was really interesting to us is that the market is very fragmented, it’s not like in the U.S.,” Kang said. “For example there’s no MLS, there’s a ton of different brokers, there’s no giant player in the space. … it takes 14 months to buy a property.”

The company, which is based in Medellin, Colombia, and has about 250 employees, will also be hiring, focusing on growing its product and development teams.

While La Haus currently operates in three markets, it also plans to use the funding to expand into new cities, although it hasn’t yet determined which cities will be next.

La Haus says it has facilitated more than 4,000 transactions to date, ending December 2020 with four times the number of transactions the previous year. Before the latest funding, the company most recently raised money with a $10 million Series A in June 2020.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias