OpenAgent, a real estate website with the mission to make selling easy for Australian property owners, has announced it has successfully closed a A$12 million round of funding, led by ReInventure, with co-investment from Sydney VC Breakthrough Labs and Singapore based VC, Qualgro.
The investment brings OpenAgent’s total funding to A$20 million. The funding will primarily be used to deliver new services to Australian home owners who the founders say are crying out for more transparency, more control and better customer service when selling their property.
OpenAgent is the first investment in the second fund of ReInventure, announced just last week, and is the second Australian investment from Qualgro.
This infusion of funds comes after a successful funding round in 2015 which netted $6 million and another in 2014 to the tune of $1 million from notable investors.
On the new investors, the founders, Zoe Pointon and Marta Higuera, are thrilled to have additional support, connections and advice joining the OpenAgent team.
“Being backed by such high calibre investors is a great endorsement of the traction we have achieved in the last 3 years and the value we bring to the process of selling your property,” they remarked.
What does OpenAgent do?
Selling a home is the largest transaction most people will ever make and it’s only done on average every eight years. OpenAgent aims to bring transparency and better quality assurance to the industry.
It does this by intelligently comparing and ranking all active real estate agents in Australia, totalling over 30,000. The algorithm uses over two million sales transactions and 15,000 customer reviews to power agent rankings.
Founded in 2013, the start-up has been doubling in size every year and has expanded its team to more than 60 people.
Zoe said, “The model clearly resonates with consumers. 9 out of 10 people who have used our service would come back to OpenAgent the next time they were selling a property because the majority of people using our platform sell for more than the agent appraisal, and we save them on average 10+ hours in the process.
“We don’t see our job as just comparing agents, we are here to make it easier to sell your property,” she highlighted.
In the last 12 months, OpenAgent has helped more than 10,000 people shortlist and meet real estate agents, comparing their performance to help sellers make more informed decisions about the agent they would like to trust to sell their home.
