Not every country has a Multiple Listing Service to aid in buying and selling a home. This often makes the process complicated as buyers weed through fake and duplicate listings and little pricing data, unlike in the United States.
Property technology startup Nomad Homes is working to change that by creating a personalized real estate buying experience in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a region that represents $20 trillion in real estate, company CEO Helen Chen told TechCrunch.
“We are like Stitch Fix for real estate,” she added. “We are matching you to the best home for you. Instead of searching the old way by going through thousands of listings, you can take a ‘style quiz,’ and we match you with properties.”
Today, Nomad Homes announced a $20 million Series A funding co-led by 01 Advisors, an investment fund co-founded by former Twitter executives Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, and The Spruce House Partnership. There was also a group of new and existing investors that participated, including Goodwater Capital, HighSage Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Partech, Class 5 Global, Precursor Ventures and Alta Park Capital.
Angel investors in the round included co-founder and former CEO of Zillow and Pacaso Spencer Rascoff through his firm 75 & Sunny, Opendoor CEO Eric Wu, former Compass COO/CFO David Snider, Flyhomes CEO Tushar Garg, Landis co-founders Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit and DST Global partner Saurabh Gupta.
The company has raised a total of $24 million since Chen, Dan Piehler and Damien Drap started the company in 2019 after bonding over finding a place to live in a new city. They have collective backgrounds in Blackstone, Addepar and Uber, while Chen also left the Stanford Graduate School of Business to start the company.
Nomad Homes is creating its own MLS for the region and applies technology to the expertise provided by local customer services experts to provide home buyers with all of the information they need, from the initial search to financing and signing all of the documents.
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“Nomad Homes has built an incredible platform that is shaping the future of real estate across EMEA,” said Dick Costolo, managing partner of 01 Advisors, in a written statement. “What the team is building is increasing market liquidity and simplifying the consumer experience. We have invested in similarly transformative companies in the U.S. and are excited to partner with these founders and the entire team as they expand.”
After announcing its launch and seed round in 2020, the company’s platform is now online in Paris and Dubai. It is expanding into Southern Europe and building out its team in the United States and Europe.
As transaction volumes grew over 16 times through the first half of the year, the Series A was an opportunity to accelerate into new markets and heavily invest in the technology and product to improve the experience for customers, Chen said. A portion of the proceeds will also go toward fintech products and doubling its team of 32 by year-end.
“We will continue to deliver the best customer experience and expand our offerings across more markets,” she added. “We are also excited about all of the investors around the table. They are multistage investors, and we have a tremendous amount to learn from them, especially Spencer from Zillow and Eric from Opendoor, who are both experts in the space.”
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