- Leading digital real estate closing technology company Qualia announced it raised $55 million in funding led by Tiger Global
Qualia — a leading digital real estate closing technology company founded by Nate Baker, Joel Gottsegen, and Lucas Hansen — announced it raised $55 million in Series C funding led by Tiger Global. Bienville Capital, 8VC, and Menlo Ventures also joined this round. Including this round of funding, Qualia has raised a total of $95 million.
With this round of funding, Qualia is going to hire top talent in their product, engineering, and go-to-market teams with a focus on accelerating growth and building strategic partnerships. And this funding positions Qualia to expand its role as the central technology infrastructure for all real estate transactions and empower digital transformation for partners.
Real estate purchases are changing at an accelerated pace. And according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), nearly half of all homebuyers in the U.S. found their home online in 2018. This number is expected to rise.
According to a Fiserv survey, nearly two-thirds of mortgage loan applications originated online — up from 56% in 2018. And NAR found that nearly 40% of homebuyers still cite paperwork and understanding the closing process as one of the most complicated aspects of home buying.
“One of the biggest points of friction in buying a home remains the sheer amount of paperwork and coordination that is involved in the closing. Our goal is to help real estate professionals and homebuyers navigate the complexities of the real estate closing process by bringing everyone onto one shared, easy-to-use and secure platform,” said CEO Baker. “We’re excited to have the support of our world-class investors to make this happen.”
In under two years, Qualia has more than tripled its market share, growing from 5% of all U.S. real estate transactions in March 2018 to more than 15% today. And the platform currently processes over one million transactions per year and Qualia has completed closings across 82% of U.S. counties. Plus Qualia was recently selected as the system of record for Iowa Title Guaranty, which is the state agency with exclusive authority to provide title coverage for Iowa real property.
“The workflow for most residential real estate transactions remains antiquated and opaque. Qualia has created a modern system of record, communication, and action for title insurance agents and mortgage originators and we believe their software platform materially improves productivity and reduces costs,” added Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global.
Qualia empowers users across the whole real estate ecosystem by bringing together parties like the buyer, seller, title agent, escrow officer, lender, and real estate agent. And the Qualia’s partners include companies purchasing and selling real estate, financial institutions, and title insurance underwriters.
“Qualia has one of the most impressive retention rates that we’ve seen across SaaS companies,” explained Tyler Sosin, partner at Menlo Ventures. “Qualia has a market opportunity to become the backbone infrastructure powering the digitization of real estate.”
