With an aim to make moving abroad simple, Rotterdam-based HousingAnywhere, a rental accommodation marketplace, has raised €24M in its Series C round funding.
The company says in a statement that the new capital was secured through a series of financing events that took place over the last year with all of its investors participating.
The investors
The round saw investment by Ergeny Investments – a single-family firm, which joined as a new investor in January 2020. Current investors VNV Global and Real Web led this round. However, early-stage investor HenQ Capital sold their stake.
Raised funds to acquire Kamernet
In January 2021, HousingAnywhere closed the Series C round by raising funds to acquire Kamernet, a Dutch classifieds website operating in categories including room, studio, and one-bedroom apartments. This is the company’s fourth acquisition in a year.
The company has already acquired Germany’s Studenten-WG, Italy’s StanzaZoo, and Iceland’s Rentmate.
HousingAnywhere’s VP of Marketplace and person responsible for M&A, Gianluca Valentini, said, “We are far from finished. Our M&A team is looking to acquire more rental websites, to expand in audience and number of properties that fit the needs of our ever-growing user base.”
Use of the raised capital
In addition to the acquisition mentioned above, the funds will also be used to bring HousingAnywhere’s marketplace and service offering to 17 more focus cities in Europe, making it a total of 32 cities.
On this development, Djordy Seelmann, CEO at HousingAnywhere said, “While having devastating effects on international mobility, the pandemic offered us the opportunity to further develop our product. It enabled us to improve our contribution margins and explore local rental markets while accelerating the inevitable consolidation of the market. Despite turbulent market conditions, we managed to improve our business model, solidify the confidence of our investors and attract new capital.”
About HousingAnywhere
The company was founded in 2009 by a Dutch exchange student Niels Van Deuren who faced the difficult prospects of finding accommodation abroad and subletting his room at home.
And today, his HousingAnywhere.com, as claimed by the company, is Europe’s largest rental accommodation platform for mid-term stays. Through its platform, tenants book for longer stays and typically rent accommodation for 3 to 12 months.
Niels Van Deuren left the company two years ago. And, Djordy Seelmann is the current CEO who is leading HousingAnywhere.
HousingAnywhere wants to transform its rental accommodation marketplace into a property management platform for both tenants and landlords. Djordy Seelmann, CEO at HousingAnywhere believes, “We want to be the catalyst that pushes the rental market to the next phase. We do this by bringing new products into the market such as HousingAnywhere Payments, our payments software. These new product offerings are built on top of the nascent HousingAnywhere Platform, which we will leverage to realise our vision of turning the company into a super app for rental accommodation.”
The company gets 10 million website visits every year and has more than 60,000 properties available for rent. The company has about 140 employees.
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