HomeLight Raises $60M in Series D Expansion, Acquires Fintech Accept
Proptech firm HomeLight has acquired fintech Accept.inc and raised an additional $60 million in equity funding from Zeev Ventures.
The fundraising, which the San Francisco-based startup billed as an extension of its Zeev-led $100 million Series D round last September, values the company at $1.7 billion — just above its $1.6 billion valuation in last year. It also secured $50 million in debt capital.
HomeLight, which early last year was reported to be nearing an IPO, seeks to streamline the home buying process by facilitating contingency-free cash transactions. It has now raised $645 million in equity funding.
HomeLight said it used stock to buy Denver-based Accept, a self-described iLender that facilitates cash offers for mortgage-ready buyers, but it did not disclose a corresponding dollar value. It now claims to be the largest “agent-focused cash offer program” in the country, having completed a combined $3 billion in referred transactions in the first quarter.
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The acquisition — HomeLight’s third M&A deal in three years — and new funding come at a troubled time for tech startups, which have narrowed their focus and cut costs amid macroeconomic turmoil and a tougher fundraising environment.
Venture capital has continued to flow into proptech, but the pace has moderated and startup valuations have declined as recent cautious investors have demanded more favorable terms, according to venture capitalists in the area.
“Flat is the new thing in this market,” said HomeLights founder and CEO Drew Uher.
The recent belt-tightening has been particularly difficult for later-stage startups, which during the pandemic investment boom raised piles of cash at ever-higher valuations in a frenzied pursuit of growth. Recently, many have referred to redundancies, including most recently at the digital mortgages Tomo and Better.com, and the brokerage house Side.
Founded in 2012 with investments from Google Ventures and Group 11, HomeLight says its cash-offer program’s transaction volume has grown sixfold over the past year (Uher declined to disclose revenue or other performance metrics.) It offers the program in Arizona, California, Colorado. , Florida and Texas, and will expand in the coming months to Accept’s other domains, which include Minnesota and the Portland and Seattle markets.
There will be no short-term redundancies linked to the acquisition, according to Uher. But given the shift in investor sentiment, the days of rapid growth for startups like HomeLight are clearly over.
“We’ve reworked our hiring plan to be much more conservative through the end of the year,” he said.
HomeLight acquired Disclosures.io, a provider of listing management tools, in 2020. The year before that, it acquired digital mortgage lender Eave.
