- Funnel Leasing recently raised $35.5 million in Series B funding. These are the details.
Funnel Leasing — the only renter-centric leasing platform — recently announced the completion of a $36.5 – million Series B raise that will transform the residential leasing process for multifamily operators. This preemptive round was led by RET Ventures, a leading PropTech-focused VC firm and existing Funnel investor. And they were joined by Camden Property Trust and Morgan Properties, two of the country’s largest owners of multifamily properties, as well as Wilshire Lane Capital, Trinity Ventures, and Camber Creek.
Additional strategic investment was provided by RET Ventures Limited Partners MAA, Essex, and Cortland. And the financing will expand Funnel’s reach in the enterprise and mid-market of leading property owners and management companies who recognize the value of centralized leasing and renter-centric models for success.
The marketing, communications, and leasing platform streamline every stage of the rental lifecycle in line with today’s consumer expectations, creating efficiencies for property teams and improving the process through automation and added conveniences for renters. And the software differentiates itself from legacy vendors through its “renter-centric” approach that places a renter — not a property — at the center of every interaction.
In addition to better serving renters, this approach also establishes greater efficiencies for leasing teams who leverage Funnel’s technology to improve and workstream operations across their portfolio by centralizing operations, optimizing marketing budgets, and operational costs by staffing intelligently.
Originally founded as an apartment marketing platform in 2010, Funnel had expanded its mandate significantly in 2018 and has established itself as the leading full-stack platform for the entire apartment rental process. And since then, the company has experienced meteoric growth; it is now used by 17 of the NMHC Top 50, offering a range of leasing and communications tools to enable more efficient leasing through centralization and automation. This financing will support the development of new tools to complete the end-to-end renter journey, adding renter onboarding and resident portal functionalities.
KEY QUOTES:
“RET’s Limited Partners are some of the largest and most innovative operators in multifamily real estate. They have seen Funnel’s ability to transform the entire leasing process through their initial investment years ago and they have been an invaluable partner to us ever since. We are honored to now be the full-portfolio CRM for 5 of the 20 largest apartment owners in America. This financing gives us the ability to allow other forward-thinking companies to move leasing from property level to the portfolio level.”
“By providing a simple, seamless and personalized renter journey, we help leading multifamily companies lease faster and more efficiently. For owners and operators on legacy Property Management Systems (PMS) feeling stuck between a bunch of disconnected point solutions, or giving up their trusted accounting systems, we have great news and a better approach: we integrate deeply with the biggest PMS players and provide a modern, flexible and complete leasing platform to help you reduce costs, and compete more effectively for today and tomorrow’s renters.”
— Tyler Christiansen, CEO of Funnel
“Our conversations with strategic investors have increasingly shown the need for a more streamlined leasing process that puts the prospective resident in control of the process and allows for self-touring, omni-channel communications and online leasing so that an apartment can be leased at any hour of the day at the prospective renter’s convenience. The pandemic, resulting social distancing requirements and limited staffing accelerated this trend. In this environment, Funnel has become one of the most valuable PropTech tools, sought by both clients and tech partners because of its location at the top of the sales funnel.”
“We are very excited about Funnel’s place at the point of conversion from prospect to resident with their online leasing tools. We see this as a foundational platform for many other vendors and a sticky position for multifamily. Funnel has been a crucial, flagship investment for RET since 2019, adding value to our strategic partners and portfolio companies alike — including Essex, MAA, Cortland, LMC, Decron and LCOR — we made this preemptive investment to demonstrate our ongoing belief in Funnel’s mission and to help drive its continued expansion.”
— John Helm, Partner at RET Ventures
