IMMO Investment Technologies www.instaimmo.de, www.immo.co.uk has announced a funding round totalling €72 million, with €11.5million in equity from prominent investors Talis Capital, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tom Stafford & Rahul Mehta of DST Global, Mato Peric amongst others. Further €60million capital was raised from real estate investors for deployment through the company’s residential platform. IMMO digitally sources, appraises and acquires centrally located properties at scale on behalf of institutional investors. The acquired properties are upgraded and turned into fully furnished “living as a service” homes targeting the long-term rental market.
The latest funding round marks an important milestone for the London-based company, which has assessed €2.2Bn in single-unit properties since its first market launch in Sep-2018. From renting furnished IMMO homes as a young adult, to selling a house to IMMO later in life, the company’s vision is to become “Your housing partner for life”.
Founded by Hans-Christian Zappel (Davidson Kempner, Forbes 30U30), Samantha Kempe (Blackstone) and Avinav Nigam (P&G), IMMO buys residential properties directly from consumers on behalf of professional investors, thereby helping consumers sell their homes effortlessly and providing investors with much desired real estate exposure at scale. IMMO homes are fully renovated/furnished, meaning tenants enjoy high quality, long-term rental homes that are professionally managed.
Hans-Christian Zappel CEO & Founder of IMMO says, “Selling a property is the biggest and often most stressful transaction in our life. It takes on average 19 viewings and many months to identify a buyer. About 40% of transactions still fall through at that point due to financing risk, changing circumstances and minds. When selling to IMMO, customers enjoy a chain-free, professional experience that is fast, reliable, transparent and convenient. We offer attractive prices without charging fees and enable home sellers to plan their life around this important transaction.”
“For our tenants, we strive to provide the best rental product and experience in the market. IMMO homes are always modernised to a high standard, beautifully designed and furnished. We want our tenants to have the comfort of knowing that they will feel at home in their IMMO apartment. With Talis Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures we are proud to make some of the best venture investors in Europe part of our journey to disrupt residential real estate, the biggest asset class in the world.”
Vasile Foca, Managing Partner at Talis, comments: “The IMMO team has impressed us with their vision and track record in building technology companies. IMMO is uniquely placed to revolutionise residential real estate by connecting consumer supply with institutional demand. They are solving major pain points for sellers and tenants and poised to build a mega brand. IMMO’s data-led ability to unearth and secure properties at scale in a streamlined way using technology has, for the first time, unlocked the opportunity for institutional capital to be deployed in this asset class. We are excited to join the IMMO team on this next chapter of growth.”
Professional investors love residential real estate due to its attractive risk-adjusted returns profile, however, deploying capital at scale is very challenging despite the fact that residential is the largest asset class in the world (€39trillion in Europe alone). Single units account for 94% of all residential real estate transactions5, but as valuing and acquiring 1,000s of single units has so far been practically impossible, investors were restricted to deploying in the empty market of portfolios and multi-family developments. IMMO has built the technology to source, appraise and acquire single units at scale, thereby opening up a single unit residential real estate as a new asset class for institutional investors.
In one year, IMMO has assessed over 6,000 property leads (€2.2Bn) using proprietary machine learning technology, reducing the underwriting process from days to a matter of minutes. IMMO’s inspection team collects 281 data-points on every property. The IMMO Intelligence combines this property level data with millions of environmental data-points such as traffic nodes, crime statistics, school/restaurant/Airbnb ratings, distance to supermarkets etc. to come up with an offer price for the seller. It is this speed and accuracy that allows IMMO to buy single units at scale directly from sellers.
Samantha Kempe, CIO & Co-founder of IMMO says, “We have successfully built an acquisitions machine that allows us to assemble €100-500m sized portfolios, made up of single unit assets in a matter of months, that start generating very attractive stable returns almost instantly. The success of our fundraising confirms the appetite of institutional investors for the exciting opportunities that IMMO creates in opening up the largest asset class on the planet. Our proprietary IMMO Intelligence technology helps professional investors strategically target specific locations within any European city to get their desired risk/return exposure. The success of SFH as an investment asset class in markets like the US has been very encouraging for us.”