A San Francisco-based company has raised $363 million and expects to use a portion of that to hire directly in the Tampa Bay region.
HomeLight announced the funding news Thursday, which places the company at a $1.6 billion valuation. The financing is a $100 million Series D round of equity, with the remainder being debt equity. It will largely be used to expand its services and open new offices across the country.
The company opened a Tampa office in the Westshore Concourse Centers in July, spanning 3,500 square feet. Officials previously told the Tampa Bay Business Journal they hope to hire 100 in the region and 500 across the state by the end of the year.
With the new funding, those plans remain intact, according to HomeLight's communication manager Lizzie Ryan.
"We consider Tampa –– and the entire state of Florida –– one of HomeLight’s key growth markets," Ryan said in an email. "We plan to use a portion of these funds to continue to grow our business in Florida as we double down on our commitment to hire hundreds of HomeLight employees throughout the entire state.
The round was led by Zeev Ventures, with Group 11, Stereo Capital, Menlo Ventures and Lydia Jett of the Softbank Vision Fund participating.
The company's funding now totals roughly $530 million. In May, HomeLight got a $100 million credit line from Credit Suisse to expand its Cash Offer and Trade-in services. With these services, HomeLight purchases a client’s new house for all cash and later sells the property to the client for a fee. Trade-in lets the buyer sell their existing home to HomeLight to access their equity to buy their new home. HomeLight typically owns a house for 41 days on average.
The company's headquarters recently moved from San Francisco to Scottsdale, Arizona, where HomeLight has its largest concentration of employees. The company is maintaining a presence in San Francisco and has five total locations.
The company doubled its workforce to more than 500 over the past year and plans to bring more on board.
“We’re hiring aggressively,” HomeLight CEO Drew Uher said. “We’re going to create a lot of jobs. Let’s just put it that way.”
HomeLight, founded in 2012 to work with top real estate agents, said Thursday it plans to open new offices across the country and globally. HomeLight expects revenue to triple this year to more than $300 million.
“After decades of stagnation in our industry, how we buy and sell homes is fundamentally changing,” Uher said. “We think that contingencies in real estate transactions are going to be a thing of the past.”
