Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Oakland, California-based Roofstock announced last week raising Series E funding in the amount of $240 million. This increases the single-family rental investment platform’s overall valuation to $1.94 billion.
Founded back in 2015, Roofstock has received significant trenches of funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Citi Ventures, and a string of others. SoftBank led this most recent round for the highly successful company. To date, the proptech company has raised a total of $400 million.
For those unfamiliar with Roofstock, the platform makes investing in single-family rental properties about as easy as investing in the stock market. The company basically curates an online marketplace of SFR and rental properties and gives buyers, and gives buyers all the tools to shop for and purchase them online. The platform helps potential investors overcome geographical and logistical barriers to investing in prime real estate.
The current portfolio of Roofstock includes more than 15,000 homes. The company has really broken loose as far as transactions of late are concerned, with more than $2.5 billion gleaned in the past year. Gary Beasley, CEO, and co-founder of Roofstock offered this via the company’s announcement:
"There has never been a time quite like this for single-family real estate, and Roofstock is truly at the vanguard of making the market work for everyone. We're grateful for the continued support from our new and existing investors and stakeholders who share our vision to make this a modern, radically accessible asset class.”
Beasley went on to thank Roofstock’s new partners at SoftBank, and he attributed his company’s success to the all-in-one nature of the platform. Roofstock runs off complex algorithms for predicting profitable purchases, fractional ownership opportunities, and property management services.
Roofstock’s co-founder is not a stranger to the startup world. Beasley also had success starting and launching two companies through IPOs: ZipRealty as CFO and Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust (now a part of Invitation Homes, the largest single-family rental home REIT in the United States).
In the current news, Roofstock says it plans to use the latest capital to expand its portfolio and staff, acquire other potential startups, increase its digital offerings for landlords and property management services and further explore proptech just gaining a foothold in the real estate space.
