• UAE-based real estate listing platform Nomad Homes, has raised $20 million in a Series A round co-led by 01 Advisors, an investment fund co-founded by former Twitter executives Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, and The Spruce House Partnership, a New York based investment partnership. 

• Other investors in the round included Goodwater Capital, HighSage Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Partech, Class 5 Global, Precursor Ventures, Alta Park Capital, and several angel investors. 

• Founded in 2019 by Helen Chen, Dan Piehler, and Damien Drap, Nomad Homes offers an end-to-end buyer experience for the real estate sector, using technology to provide customers with a customised home buying process from search, financing and signing. 

• Nomad Homes is live in Paris and Dubai and will use the new funding to accelerate its expansion across EMEA, specifically in Southern Europe. The company will continue to invest heavily in its technology and offer additional products and services to offer a “one-stop shop” for everything related to the home. 

Press release:

Nomad Homes, a property technology startup that offers an end-to-end buyer experience for real estate across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, announced today it has closed a $20 million Series A funding round. The round is co-led by 01 Advisors, an investment fund co-founded by former Twitter executives Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, and The Spruce House Partnership, a New York based investment partnership. 

Nomad pairs technology with local customer service experts to equip home buyers with the confidence to buy their best home, resulting in the simplest, most customised home buying process from search, to financing, to signing.  

“Nomad Homes has built an incredible platform that is shaping the future of real estate across EMEA,” said Dick Costolo, Managing Partner of 01 Advisors. “What the team is building is increasing market liquidity and simplifying the consumer experience. We have invested in similarly transformative companies in the US and are excited to partner with these founders and the entire team as they expand.”

Nomad Homes was founded by three friends Helen Chen, Dan Piehler, and Damien Drap who bonded over their frustrations of finding a place to live in a new city. Collective experience at Blackstone, Addepar, and Uber gave them insight about designing a better, buyer-first approach. Chen left the Stanford Graduate School of Business to build a team to empower home buyers across the region. Nomad Homes is the only comprehensive real estate service focused on bringing a personalised experience to home buying. 

Buying and selling residential real estate is especially difficult across EMEA where there is no Multiple Listing Services (MLS). Despite real estate representing over $20 trillion across the region, the market is still riddled with fake and duplicate listings and no pricing data to understand the true value of a home. The process of buying a home remains offline and with no buy-side agents, leaving potential home buyers without representation or support in what will likely be a consumer’s largest financial asset.

“We set out on a mission to simplify the most important personal and financial decision in your life. We believe that the combination of technology and personalised customer experience empowers our customers to buy their home with confidence. A lot of that confidence comes from the MLS that Nomad is creating, which provides home buyers the data and transparency to make that decision.  We’re like a transactional Zillow, but in EMEA,” says Chen, Nomad CEO.

Nomad Homes is live in Paris and Dubai and will use the new funding to accelerate its expansion across EMEA, specifically in Southern Europe. The company will continue to invest heavily in its technology and offer additional products and services to offer a “one-stop shop” for everything related to the home. “We are particularly excited to continue investing in new fintech products and pricing tools to further streamline the buying journey for our customers,” says Piehler, Nomad CPO.

A mix of new and existing investors also participated in the round, including Goodwater Capital, HighSage Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Partech, Class 5 Global, Precursor Ventures, Alta Park Capital, and an undisclosed multi-billion dollar crossover fund, among others. Many notable angel investors also participated in the round such as Co-Founder and former CEO of Zillow and Pacaso Spencer Rascoff through his firm 75 & Sunny, Opendoor CEO Eric Wu, former Compass COO/CFO David Snider, Flyhomes CEO Tushar Garg, Landis Co-Founders Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit, and DST Global Partner Saurabh Gupta.

“We are excited to be partnering with Nomad Homes. We have seen firsthand the opportunity of digitising other large, offline industries, and believe that the same opportunity exists in residential real estate. We have known Helen for years and are convinced Nomad is the best team to take advantage of this opportunity across EMEA,” says Zachary Sternberg, General Partner of The Spruce House Partnership.

Despite launching in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has already expanded to its second country in less than one year. Growth has accelerated through 2021 with transaction volumes growing over 16x through the first half of the year. “We are using the same playbook that we used at Uber, to accelerate launching and scaling across markets,” says Drap, Nomad COO.