- Neighbor.com recently announced they closed $53 million in Series B funding. These are the details.
Lehi, Utah-based self-storage marketplace company Neighbor recently announced they closed $53 million in Series B funding in order to capture the massive demand for self-storage by repurposing under-utilized space. This round of funding was led by the largest fund focused on global real estate and proptech Fifth Wall. And with support from returning investor Andreessen Horowitz and additional funding from DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler – who will join former Uber CEO Ryan Graves and Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson as investors and advisors to Neighbor.
And as a relative newcomer to the $40 billion self-storage industry, Neighbor is shaking up this antiquated and dusty sector by democratizing access to self-storage income and space. Without any new construction or existing infrastructure, Neighbor has been quickly adding new square footage to the market by inviting commercial and residential property owners to turn under-utilized or vacant areas into meaningful passive income opportunities. For users, the self-storage solutions are priced approximately 40-50% less than traditional storage facilities.
Along with leading the round, Fifth Wall has facilitated opportunities for Neighbor to partner with the firm’s extensive roster of strategic LPs – over 65 of the world’s largest owners and operators of real estate from 15 countries. And Fifth Wall partners Acadia Realty Trust and Jamestown have already begun onboarding properties onto Neighbor’s platform. This is going to add to Neighbor’s burgeoning commercial real estate footprint, which grew 10 times in 2020.
Last year was a record-breaking year for Neighbor. And according to the Self-Storage Almanac 2021, more than 1 in 10 Americans currently rent a storage facility and that demand is not dwindling. With the power to address both the supply and demand for self-storage, Neighbor saw a 5x year-over-year increase in revenue from March 2020 to March 2021 and 7X increase in organic reservations. Not only were households using Neighbor to monetize garage, driveway, and basement space, but commercial owners also repurposed vacancies into storage rentals intended to generate meaningful income to cover mortgages and other building expenses.
The company will use the investment to expand its brand footprint and user base into every corner of the U.S. And with one of the top 10 Series B funding rounds in Utah’s history, Neighbor has plans to make additional strategic hires and attract more tech talent to the Silicon Slopes, building on its bench of recent hires from Uber, Carta, Mercari, Instructure, and Banjo.
KEY QUOTES:
“With a roster of investors and advisors hailing from the world’s largest marketplace operators, including Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash and StockX, Neighbor will use this sizable investment to rapidly expand its nationwide network of hosts and renters. Storing your personal goods in someone else’s space is rooted in trust and we’re proud to have expanded our community’s trust into tens of millions of square feet in big cities, small towns, suburbs and rural areas across all fifty states.”
— Joseph Woodbury, CEO and co-founder of Neighbor
“Our firm ardently pursued the opportunity to invest in a transformative proptech business like Neighbor. Self-storage is the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry for four decades running and Neighbor has already built an impressive business positioned to capture untapped demand for space in a smart and sustainable way.”
— Dan Wenhold, Partner, Fifth Wall
