Nestio raises $1.6M, hires former OLR exec

Joseph Ben-Zvi will head up sales for resi. listings database

From left: Caren Maio and Joseph Ben-Zvi
From left: Caren Maio and Joseph Ben-Zvi

Residential listings database Nestio raised $1.6 million in its latest fundraising round, CEO Caren Maio told The Real Deal today.

Seed investment firm Freestyle Capital, whose bets include About.me and BackType, led the financing round. Nestio, which caters to both landlords and brokers and counts Two Trees Management and Time Equities among its clients, raised $750,000 in a seed funding round in 2011 and an additional $1.5 million last year.

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“We’re really looking forward to stepping on the gas,” Maio said. The new funds will mainly be used to bulk up the firm’s sales efforts, she added. The company just hired Joseph Ben-Zvi, who was most recently director of sales at rival residential listings company On-Line Residential, to head up sales. In a statement, Ben-Zvi said that he was “excited and humbled” to be joining the firm.

Nestio started in 2011 as a consumer-facing listings aggregator but in 2013 evolved into a listings management software for landlords. The system lets property owners manage inventory online, send broker blasts and track the performance of their rental portfolios. It added a product for brokers this year which allows them to manage their leads and market listings through the platform.The Real Estate Board of New York integrated Nestio into its RLS listings system in June, as TRD reported.

The company now claims to have over 30 percent of New York City’s rental listings in its database.