Mark Twain is credited with saying, “Buy land, they aren’t making it anymore,” which was later echoed by esteemed (fictional) businessman Tony Soprano. But for most people, investing in real estate is out of reach.
Now, Seattle-based real estate startup Arrived Homes is looking to make real estate investing more accessible.
On Wednesday, Arrived Homes announced that it raised $37 million, which comprises of a $10 million seed funding round and $27 million in debt financing. This round was led by Core Innovation Capital, but a handful of successful tech entrepreneurs also participated. This list includes industry heavyweights like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through his Bezos Expeditions fund, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff through Time Ventures, former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Arrived Homes has built a platform that allows people to buy fractional shares of rental homes. The company takes care of the real estate buying and rental process from end to end and Arrived users just pick which properties they want to invest in and how much money they want to invest.
Being a landlord is a good way to collect passive income, but managing a property takes work and you’re on the hook if something goes wrong. Arrived Homes alleviates this burden by managing the property and finding renters. Real estate is also expensive, with homes costing hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars. But Arrived allows people to buy fractional shares of homes starting at $100.
“Investing in real estate is synonymous with the American dream, yet very few people are in a financial position to buy whole homes or have the time to invest in and manage rental properties,” Arrived CEO and co-founder Ryan Frazier said in a statement. “With Arrived, we’re breaking down the barriers to investing in rental homes, by taking a process that typically takes months and making it accessible in less than four minutes, starting from just $100. We’re really passionate about the opportunity to help millions of people better access this historically great asset class.”
Frazier and his co-founders Kenny Cason and Alejandro Chouza founded Arrived Homes in 2019, with the platform launching in October 2020 — so it’s still a relatively new company. So far, Arrived has secured only 30-plus properties across Arkansas, North Carolina and South Carolina. This new funding will allow Arrived Homes to pursue more properties across the country. It will also help Arrived grow its team. Arrived Homes currently has a dozen open job listings on its site for roles across finance, marketing, engineering, design and more. Arrived has around 10 employees, according to LinkedIn, so these new jobs could end up doubling the size of the company.
“Real estate has long been a vehicle for wealthy people to diversify and grow their portfolios,” Rascoff said in a statement. “The past year has brought huge strides in the democratization of investing, including in real estate. Arrived makes investing in a rental home accessible to anyone with $100 and four minutes to spare. That’s incredibly empowering.”
Code.org founder Hadi Partovi, Good Friends (a VC led by the CEOs and co-founders of Allbirds, Harry’s and Warby Parker) and several others also participated in the round.
