LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Fifth Wall announced a $100 million investment with its anchor LP Lennar Corporation (NYSE: LEN and LEN.B) (“Lennar”) in Opendoor. The $100 million in debt financing is in addition to a $35 million equity investment led by Fifth Wall’s Fund, which includes Lennar as an investor, as part of Opendoor’s Series D. The $135 million equity and debt investment marks the largest strategic technology investment ever made by a real estate company.
With this deal, the nation’s largest home builder is joining together with the most disruptive company in residential real estate to solve a pervasive problem plaguing the industry, consumers, and the broader U.S. economy today: the inefficient process of buying and selling a home.
Lennar is the nation’s largest home builder, and has prioritized digital solutions given its goal of providing high-quality, affordable homes to consumers in the most efficient way possible. Lennar has amalgamated a robust ecosystem of financial products that make it easier to transact a home, from mortgages, to title insurance, to home insurance, etc. Digitizing these residential financial products has been a strategic priority for Lennar and Fifth Wall, as digitization holds the potential to increase both transparency and affordability of U.S. housing.
Opendoor is further increasing that transparency through a pioneering technology platform where consumers can get a quote with a fair market offer on their home in a few clicks and gain access to liquidity the moment a homeowner is ready, increasing the potential frequency of homes sales by making it easier and less costly to transact. Opendoor is injecting liquidity into a marketplace where none has existed, and streamlining the transaction which traditionally involves a months-long closing process.
“Making homes more liquid is the single most transformative event that could happen today in the U.S. economy, well outsizing the potential impact of blockchain, autonomous driving and even tax reform,” said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner of Fifth Wall. “With Lennar and Fifth Wall investing and partnering with Opendoor, first-time homeownership is being completely re-imagined. Seeing the opportunity for Lennar to be a ‘kingmaker’ for Opendoor and dramatically accelerate the company’s pace of growth, Fifth Wall brought these two firms together through this significant investment and helped orchestrate this partnership to address this market at scale.”
The alignment of Lennar and Opendoor addresses one of the hardest parts about buying a new home – selling your existing home. The partnership is a paradigm of the kind of win-win-win scenarios the Fifth Wall team is focused on: a win for Lennar, a win for Opendoor, and a win for homeowners.
This deal validates the Opendoor model, and integrating the companies gives customers a complete, end-to-end home buying and selling experience. Opendoor learns daily from Lennar’s best-in-class operational experience, and further benefits from Lennar’s unmatched distribution through its Trade-Up Program – providing a new channel to access customers, which will broaden Opendoor’s scope and scale.
The Opendoor investment is not only smart market economics for Lennar, but allows them to more deeply understand their consumers – using Opendoor data to drive insights on emerging cities and communities of interest, as well as home style, size preferences, etc. The partnership also allows existing Lennar homeowners to leverage the Opendoor platform as they look to move into a new home.
This is incumbent-disruptor symbiosis at its finest and is characteristic of all of the deals Fifth Wall has executed across its portfolio. Industry disruption doesn’t have to end with a company’s demise. When incumbents embrace startups, businesses are not only enhanced, but they thrive. The validation on both sides is clear: Lennar is establishing themselves as the leading tech-enabled home builder and Opendoor is going to market with buy-in and support from the largest incumbent in its category. Consumers across the country benefit when homes become more frictionless to transact, imagine the wealth creation for tens of millions of Americans, especially lower- and middle-income families, who can finally make a homeownership decision they never otherwise could without this safety valve.
About Fifth Wall Ventures
Fifth Wall Ventures is the largest venture capital firm focused on technology solutions for the Built World. Fifth Wall is connecting the world’s largest owners and operators of real estate with the entrepreneurs and innovators redefining how the world interacts with its physical environment. With $250M in assets under management, Fifth Wall is backed by CBRE, Lennar, Hines, Equity Residential, Prologis, Macerich, Host Hotels, and Lowe’s Home Improvement. Fifth Wall invests in businesses from all sectors of the Built World, including retail, industrial, hospitality, multi-family, homebuilding, office, and brokerage and structures real estate partnerships that accelerate the growth of its portfolio companies. For more information on Fifth Wall Ventures, its partners and portfolio, visit https://fifthwall.vc.