On Our Radar: Deals we are paying attention to for their impact on industry.
It’s a common dilemma. A homeowner wants to buy a new place while selling the old one at the same time. Easier said than done.
Cue the iBuyer startup Perch, which announced April 2 that it raised $20 million in equity and $200 in debt in a Series B financing round.
Perch, a New York-based company with offices in Texas, offers both selling and buying properties in a way it claims is less stressful to the customer than the traditional approach. Online real estate sites including Zillow help customers sell their house, but do not offer ways to replace it with a new one.
According to the Real Deal, Perch launched its platform in Texas early last year, first in San Antonio, then in Dallas. Austin is the company’s next market, and it has plans to move into more next year.
The two-year-old Perch provides an offer to buy a customer’s home that is good for up to six months. During that time, the customer can use its real estate agents to buy a new place, and, should all go well, close on both deals the same day. Customers also can stay in their old place for up to two weeks after closing for a rental fee. The home sale fee is 6%, and other services, such as notary and title search, are offered at additional costs.
“Last year, there were over $1.5 trillion in home sales,” the company said in a press release, “with almost all of that listed and sold through a traditional home-selling process that involves months of uncertainty and inconvenience.”
As for the April financing round, FirstMark Capital led the equity investment, with Accomplice and Juxtapose also participating. In May 2018, Perch announced it raised $30 million, a Series A investment led by the same financing team.
Michelle Lodge is a New York-based writer whose work has appeared in Time, Fortune, Barron’s, the Miami Herald, the British Medical Journal as well as on CNBC.com.
