Proptech venture capital firm Fifth Wall was announced as the lead investor of a $9 million series B funding round for New York-based company and leasing platform Vero, which comes nearly four months after the firm closed a multi hundred-million-dollar real estate technology fund.
The $9 million in capital brings Vero’s total funds raised to-date to $26.7 million and will help to deepen the company’s technology stack.
According to Vero’s website, the company’s platform eliminates application fraud and streamlines leasing workflows to benefit owners, operators and renters. The platform automates time-consuming tasks of verifying an applicant’s previous residency and qualifications, which frees up teams and accelerates the time from lead to lease.
“We are thrilled to partner with Lou (Baugier) and the entire Vero team to bring a category-defining platform to the $3 billion residential leasing software market,” Sarah Liu, partner on the real estate technology investment team at Fifth Wall, said in a statement “Mitigating lease application fraud is paramount to ensuring owners’ fiscal security and enhancing trust between owners and tenants.”
Fifth Wall, which has an office in Marina Del Rey, heads into the Vero investment following the final close of its third real estate technology fund totaling $866 million. The fund closed in late December.
“When we started Fifth Wall in 2016, proptech was not yet a term. Since then, we believe that we played an intrinsic role in the ecosystem’s evolution and continue to propel it forward not only via capital, but industry awareness and strategic collaboration between our startups and real estate limited partners,” said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner at Fifth Wall.
The fund received commitment from existing and new investors such as Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE Group Inc., Koch Real Estate Investments, Granite Properties and more. Following the fund’s closure, Fifth Wall garnered 110 strategic limited partners from more than 15 different countries, bringing the firm’s total capital under management to approximately $3.2 billion.
