Better.com has received a $500 million investment from SoftBank that values the digital mortgage lender at about $6 billion, CNBC reports.
Although the news was initially reported by The Wall Street Journal, CNBC confirmed the news later with sources familiar with the matter.
Better’s last funding round was in November 2020 where it was valued at $4 billion, Pitchbook data shows. Better extended $14 billion in loans in Q1 this year, and $25 billion in loans in 2020. The profitable company reaped in $800 million in revenue in 2020, CNBC reports.
Better is expected to go public later this year and SoftBank is purchasing shares from Better’s existing investors, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Better offers home loans for customers through its digital website and partners with banks like Ally Financial.
Better has benefited from the red hot home buying market and the rise in refinancing activity in the past year as interest rates are incredibly low.
The sources told the Wall Street Journal that SoftBank has been in talks with Better about this investment since late 2020 because of the company’s accelerated growth.
SoftBank appears to have an affinity for the proptech industry. According to Crunchbase, SoftBank has participated in proptech deals totaling $19.9 billion across 31 known and publicly announced rounds. The fund has seen Compass recently go public to muted investor interest and Housing.com exit to PropTiger, another one of its proptech investments.
In other recent proptech news, proptech startup GiGstreem has secured $50 million in funding from Fort Worth, Texas-based Crestline Investors that will enable expansion of GiGstreem’s WiFi platform for multifamily and commercial properties.
Also, founded in 2013, CrowdStreet experienced its most successful year ever in 2020, despite a 32% drop in deal volume across the U.S. commercial estate sector versus 2019. The crowdfunding platform attracted more than $640 million in investments across 90 deals last year. In the past seven years, the startup has arranged roughly $1.7 billion in investments via more than 470 projects.
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