Lev Capital, an online financing platform for commercial real estate, has raised $10 million from investors that include brokerage JLL and former executives from Trulia and LoopNet.
The New York City startup said the funding will allow it to meet growing demand for its services, which has surged over the past year. NFX, a venture capital fund started by Trulia co-founder Pete Flint, led the round, with participation from JLL Spark and Canaan Partners, where Rich Boyle, a former CEO of LoopNet, is now a managing partner. Prior backers Amino Ventures and Ludlow Ventures also participated.
Lev was founded in 2019 by Sammy Greenwall, who previously worked at Toll Brothers, and Yaakov Zar, who sold a prior startup, Dispatch, a logistics management software firm, to Vista Equity Partners in 2018.
The platform uses data and automation to help real estate owners and investors source financing and get the most competitive capital stack for their property.
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In a statement, Boyle said Lev is using tech to bring transparency to an opaque part of commercial real estate.
“Lev is transforming commercial real estate financing in ways that are similar to what LoopNet did to property marketing and discovery 20 years ago,” he said.
Despite the onset of the pandemic and a tighter lending environment, Lev notched $100 million in transaction volume in 2020. It is on track to do $1 billion or more in 2021, according to Zar.
Over the past few months, the company has recruited veterans of the commercial real estate industry. In January, it hired Justin Piasecki from Avison Young. And last week, it announced a second office in Los Angeles and tapped Greg Goldstein, a veteran of Eastdil Secured, HFF and JLL, to lead that expansion.