Nested, the chain-breaking estate agency that helps home movers buy their next house before they’ve sold their current home, has raised £36m in a new funding round to expand its business.
It represents Europe’s largest proptech investment this year, and brings the total raised by Nested to £47m so far.
The latest funding round, led by Global Founders Capital, is the third round of money secured by Nested within 18 months.
Nested, launched in January 2017, is an estate agent that guarantees home sellers up to 97% of their property’s value within 90 days, and the rest on completion of the sale.
The home seller can thus use the funds advanced by Nested to buy their next home before selling their old one.
Nested will market the home, find a buyer and, irrespective of how long the sale takes, the home seller will receive the total sale amount of the home (minus Nested’s fees) upon completion.
In doing so, Nested aims to breaks property chains and give vendors the same market power as cash buyers. The firm says it is taking on 50 sellers a month.
Nested was co-founded in January this year by entrepreneur Matt Robinson, who previously co-founded the successful online payments company GoCardless.
Nested is currently available only in London but has plans to roll out. In London, it said it expects to have up to 10% market share next year. It works by guaranteeing a percentage of the home’s target sale price, typically around 97%, but incentivises itself to achieve 100%.
Nested’s fee is between 2% and 4%, depending on the property, but is typically 3%. However, if Nested only achieves 97% of the value it will charge 1.5%.
Robinson said: “This latest round of funding is recognition of the demand we’ve seen from home sellers in London.
“We’re already guaranteeing tens of millions of pounds worth of homes each month, and are delighted to be helping so many people with what is one of the biggest transactions any of us make in our lifetimes.
“Anyone who has ever sold a home in the UK knows that the system is broken.
“The typical sale involves months of stress with one in three sales falling through. Worse still, home sellers don’t know the only two things that matter – how much they will sell for and when they will receive the money – until after their property is sold. With Nested, both of these are guaranteed from day one, saving sellers months of stress without needing to compromise on end sale price.
“We fully anticipate being people’s preferred way to sell their home in the coming years. Based on current demand, we expect to be doing 1% of London home sales in the next few months and 5%-10% in the next year.”
Nine in ten of Nested’s customers are said to have previously been on the market with other estate agents.
The new money raised will fund Nested’s growth both across London and the UK.
While described as a proptech firm, Nested says it is a full-service agent.
So basically, taking advantage of desperate sellers that need a quick sale at under market value so they don’t lose their onward purchase. People will do almost anything in desperate situations not to lose their dream home. Although I despise the idea here, it will obviously be a great money earner for Nested and it’s really smart. However, I feel word will get around after another few years that they’re the Estate Agent you go to if you want less money for your house, and like purple bricks, the public will start realising that it’s not the best option, and stick with a waiting a little longer for a higher price.
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In fairness, they bridge the gap between certainty of sale and gaining the best price possible in the circumstances. What’s the alternative – ‘We buy Anyhouse’ It’s a niche in the market which they have done well to fill and if the fee goes to 3/4% for the service provided I think that is fair enough – if it is a guaranteed sale.
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Innovative idea but only works in a crappy market, hence why its popular in London ATM. Would they have set it up in London three years ago when properties were selling before they were listed? It wont be as popular in other parts of the country or in a half decent market. Think they charge something like a 2% sales fee too, which wont be stomached in other parts of the country. They also make you pay interest on the loan from memory.
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I’m sure the NAEA will do a deal with a bridging loan / mortgage company, to allow their members to offer something like this? It could catch on. I assume it also means more property surveys, keeping the RICS surveyors in work. If it only adds 2% on top of my usual fee, I think some of my customers would go for it.
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