HomeLister, the Santa Monica-based property-selling platform that says it replaces the agent, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding.
Venture capital firms MetaProp and Homebrew led the round, which was announced this week, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.
HomeLister says it will guide users through the process, from listing a property, to showing to closing a sale, according to its website.
HomeLister charges users a flat fee between $599 and $2,699 depending on the number of services the user chooses.
The money raised will go toward a redesign of the HomeLister website and marketing. The company was founded in 2015, and operates in 13 states — including New York, Florida and California — and Washington, D.C.
MetaProp was one of the first proptech-focused VC funds to come on the scene and it is one of the most active funds in the space. The firm has been slow to attract investors to a $100 million fund started last year. As of July, it had only raised about half of that sum.
But proptech remains a focus of real estate investors. A number of industry firms backed by Softbank could be headed for initial public offerings in the near future.
Investors Joseph Beck and Thomas Hennessy are readying to take home-services startup Porch.com public through their first blank-check company and are already working on their second SPAC fund — a $175 million vehicle eyeing an established proptech firm.
[LABJ] — Dennis Lynch