Real estate startup Roofstock closes $50M Series D to let investors buy shares in single-family rental properties

The single-family rental home sector is $3 trillion and continues grow. The sector has stuck to the old way of doing things for far too long – it’s an industry ripe for disruption. Enter Roofstock, a real estate startup that is turning real estate investment on its head and transforming the way people invest in single-family rental properties by making it easier for qualified investors to invest as little as $5,000. Roofstock makes investing in single-family rental properties radically simple.

Rather than researching and buying vacant homes that need to be repaired and leased, Roofstock enables its investors to treat their real estate investments more like stock portfolios, focusing on asset allocation. What’s so great about Roofstock is that it allows investors to have fractional ownership. Since inception in 2015, Roofstock has completed over $1 billion in transactions.

Today, Roofstock announced today it has closed on a $50 million Series D equity round. SVB Capital led the financing, leading a syndicate comprised of several new investors including Citi Ventures, Fort Ross Ventures and 7 Global Capital as well as prior round lead investors Khosla Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Canvas Ventures. This latest round brings the total amount of equity raised to $133 million.

The funding proceed will be used to support company’s continued growth, including investment in its data science, product and engineering capabilities, expanding its retail supply and distribution network and rolling out Roofstock Platform Services, the company’s latest service which lets institutional investors build their own tailored portfolios of single-family rental homes.

Founded in 2015 by Gary Beasley and Gregor Watson, the Oakland, California-based Roofstock is an online marketplace that invests in leased single-family rental homes in a transparent, low-friction method. The company provides its clients with research, analytics, and insights to evaluate and purchase independently certified properties at set prices. Roofstock is backed by Bain Capital, Ron Conway, Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff, and various other investment companies. Since inception in 2015, Roofstock has completed over $1 billion in transactions.

“Roofstock is in the vanguard of the rapidly-growing proptech space,” said Sulu Mamdani, Managing Partner of SVB Capital. “As startups continue to broaden access to financial services, we see real estate as an incredibly attractive asset class for retail investors looking to go beyond the typical stock and bond portfolio.”

SVB Capital, a division of SVB Financial Group, was selected to lead the round in part due to its interest in the promise of Roofstock One, which offers shares in fully managed investment homes for as little as $5,000 per share.

“Roofstock makes it easy for anyone, no matter where they live, to add real estate to their investing strategy, with minimal overhead and no prior knowledge needed,” said Gary Beasley, CEO and Co-Founder of Roofstock. “This funding is a validation of our work to lower the barriers to entry and level the playing field for real estate investing. Roofstock gives individual investors the same level of information, access and operational support that used to be available only for large institutions.”

Roofstock makes it easy for investors of all sizes to buy, own and sell investment properties at a fraction of the cost and with much less friction than historically has been the norm. Roofstock gives users access to rich market and neighborhood data, combined with powerful analytical tools that make it easy to compare and contrast different investment properties across the country.