BOGOTÁ, Colombia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Habi, the data-driven residential real estate platform, today announced that it has raised $100 million in equity in its Series B fundraising round – representing the largest Series B for a start-up headquartered in Colombia – fueling its path towards becoming the leading real estate service for middle-class consumers in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Having established a strong foothold in Colombia, Habi will use the capital raised to continue its growth in Colombia and to expand its footprint into Mexico. The round was led by the SoftBank Latin America Fund alongside previous investors Inspired Capital, Tiger Global, Homebrew, and 8VC.
Habi is transforming Latin America’s traditionally opaque and inefficient residential ecosystem by providing liquidity and information to a market that lacks pricing tools, or even a Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Leveraging its robust and proprietary database, Habi’s pricing model provides valuations and home offers quickly and automatically, saving customers time, granting them freedom of movement, and giving them access to their wealth.
In just over 18 months, Habi’s transparency, reliability, and ease of doing business has made it the prominent choice for buyers and sellers of used homes across Colombia. From May 2020 to May 2021, the Company’s transaction volume grew 40% month-over-month despite macro headwinds caused by COVID-19 and Colombia’s sustained lockdowns. Habi currently operates in four cities across Colombia — Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, and Cali — encompassing just under five million households.
“With our unique dataset and proprietary platform, Habi is transforming what was once a murky, painful and months-long ordeal into a transparent, predictable, and easy process, completed in a matter of days,” said Brynne McNulty Rojas, Co-Founder and CEO of Habi. “We are offering a value proposition that extends to all relevant stakeholders: homeowners gain reliability and access to liquidity, homebuyers gain a trusted partner, brokers harness data that empowers them, and banks can make better lending decisions thanks to the enhanced pricing information we provide. We look forward to partnering with SoftBank, along with our existing investors, to expand our services across the continent.”
“Habi has built an incredible platform that is shaping the future of PropTech in Spanish-speaking Latin America,” said Shu Nyatta, Managing Partner at SoftBank’s SBLA Advisers Corp. “Utilizing the information collected through its proprietary database, Habi is increasing liquidity in the market to create a better, more efficient residential ecosystem. We seek to invest in companies that are transforming the lives of those in the region and Habi is doing just that. We are excited to collaborate with Brynne, Sebastian and the entire team at Habi as they expand beyond Colombia.”
“Buying and selling a home is usually the biggest financial decision in a person’s life. People turn to Habi to help them invest responsibly and to help them unlock the wealth they have stored in their home – capital currently trapped by an illiquid housing market,” said Habi Co-Founder and President, Sebastian Noguera. “We are grateful for the trust bestowed in us by our customers in Colombia, and we are excited to build that same trust with consumers in Mexico. Our success is attributable to our world-class talent, and this new capital enables us to continue to grow our exceptional team, starting with the experienced leadership team already hard at work in CDMX.”
*Based on data from Crunchbase.
About Habi
Founded in late 2019, Habi is a data-driven real estate company that is streamlining the traditionally opaque home buying process in Latin America. Using a proprietary pricing algorithm and scalable processes, Habi aims to liberate middle-class Latin Americans across the region from a convoluted and inefficient real-estate market, providing freedom of movement and economic security with regards to their homes. With its unmatched dataset, Habi also helps brokers and banks make more informed decisions. Headquartered in Bogotá, the company operates across Colombia and in Mexico. More information is available at https://habi.co/.
