Real estate startup Hemlane $2.5M seed round to empower rental owners to manage their properties remotely

Hemlane, a real estate startup that empowers rental owners to manage their properties remotely with a transparent solution, today announced it has raised $2.5 million Series Seed financing round to redesign its property management solution platform. The round was led by Prudence Holdings, an early investor in Compass, Morty and Properly, with participation from Aglaé Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund and several technology entrepreneurs including Thumbtack Founder Marco Zappacosta and Vouch Insurance Founder Sam Hodges.

Founded in 2015 by Dana Dunford and Frank Liu, the San Francisco-based Hemlane is an all-in-one rental management solution. Hemlane’s technology empowers rental owners to manage their properties remotely with a transparent platform that offers online tools, connections to local licensed agents, and coordination of property maintenance. Hemlane has redesigned property management using a combination of software and local brokerages.

“Over 72 percent of rentals are not run by management companies. The majority of the market doesn’t want that,” says Dana Dunford, Co-Founder and CEO of Hemlane. “Our platform provides an opportunity for rental owners to select their level of involvement and connect with third party agents and brokers for everything else. We offer something that has never existed in the market. The combination of lower cost, transparency and flexibility is exactly what property owners continue to tell me they want, and we listen closely to our customers,” added Dunford.

Hemlane offers two packages, a software only and a software plus service package. The software automates all administrative tasks, including advertising rentals to the top 30 listing websites, scheduling property showings, performing tenant screening, completing leases, collecting rent, initiating automatic late fees, and coordinating maintenance requests. The service package connects owners with local agents and 24/7 maintenance coordinators. To help build the services network, leasing agents and managers using Hemlane’s software connect with newly registered rental owners on the platform.

“We were very impressed at how well it worked. We recently moved two more properties from Illinois and two from Tennessee onto Hemlane,” says Daniel Gillette, a current customer who is based in Utah. Hemlane’s software platform was ranked as a leader on Gartner’s 2019 FrontRunners list. The company has scaled to over 5,000 properties and processed over $50 million in rental payments in the past six months alone.

Hemlane has rental properties in all 50 States and currently serves property owners and managers that have as few as one property to hundreds of properties. Hemlane is the exclusive property management partner to the California Association of Realtors (CAR) and partner to Roofstock.