Zumper, a rental marketplace for renters and landlords, announced this morning it has raised $60 million in a Series D round led by new investor e.ventures.
New backer Greycroft also participated in the financing, which brings San Francisco-based Zumper’s total funding since its 2012 inception to more than $150 million. Stereo Capital and Axel Springer led the company’s $46 million Series C round in September 2018 (at which time the company had a pre-money valuation of $200 million, according to Crunchbase). The company has a long list of high-profile investors including Kleiner Perkins, Breyer Capital and New Enterprise Associates.
Anthemos “Anth” Georgiades, CEO and co-founder of Zumper, declined to disclose the company’s current valuation, saying only it is “a significant step up from our 2018 valuation.”
Zumper’s self-described mission is to make renting an apartment “as easy as booking a hotel.” The startup claims to be the largest privately held rental marketplace (in terms of users) in the United States. Last year, 67 million people used Zumper to find, list, or rent properties in the U.S. and Canada. Georgiades expects that number to climb to 80 million this year, saying he company helps advertise more than 1 million listings a month.
‘Airbnb for one-year leasing’
The residential real estate market space is a crowded one for sure, and Zumper competes with the likes of publicly traded Zillow.
For Georgiades, Zumper differentiates itself in that it helps people in all steps of the process, making it a true “end-to-end” marketplace.
For example, Zumper offers renters the ability to find, apply for and then book an apartment. They can also digitally pay their rent to their landlord. It also helps small landlords and multifamily properties with things like finding tenants, marketing and collecting rent.
The company makes money in two ways: Landlords pay to be at the top of its feed for more exposure, in a classic lead-generation model; and also pay Zumper to close leases. For example, if a landlord uses its tools to conduct a transaction, it pays Zumper a fee per transaction.
Georgiades declined to disclose revenue figures but said the company saw its “pretty sizeable” revenue rise by 100 percent year over year last year.
“We’re not going from a small number to a small number,” he told Crunchbase News.
Meanwhile, the company doubled its headcount to 200 compared to about 100 a year ago. Zumper’s employees are spread across offices in San Francisco, Scottsdale, New York, Chicago and Providence, Rhode Island.
Looking ahead, the company will use the new capital to grow its sales and engineering teams and invest in scaling its transactional tools. Currently, 90 percent of its audience finds Zumper organically, according to the company.
“Ultimately, we want to be the Airbnb for one-year leasing,” Georgiades said.
For Mathias Schilling, co-founder and managing partner of e.ventures, Zumper’s progress so far has been “striking.”
Yesterday, we wrote about a similar offering in the United Kingdom. London-based Goodlord announced it had raised about $13 million. Goodlord’s SaaS (software as a service) platform aims to make the rental process smoother and more efficient for landlords, leasing agents and renters alike. It handles a wide range of services from contracts to references to payments.
