London-based Proportunity has announced the closure of a new round of funding worth a total of 150 million dollars, which includes 143 million dollars from loans and 7 million dollars funding from VCs. An initial funding of 10 million dollars in 2020 should b added to this amount.
VentureFriends, Kibo Ventures as well as existing investors Anthemis, Entrepreneur First as well as Amro Partners participated in the round. The startup plans to use this funding to grow its team, as well as increase the maximum loan amount from 90,000 pounds to 150,000 pounds for each client/home.
Around 85% of tenants in the UK want to have their own home, but they cannot because of the high deposit requirements and the rapidly rising house prices. Proportunity reports that it provides home buyers with a home purchase capital loan, similar to the UK government’s ‘Buy Assistance’ programme, but available for any home not just for new construction.
The loan becomes accessible to the general public with only a 5% deposit and is intended to supplement the total amount of the purchase in addition to the loan from a bank and can reach up to 4 to 6 times the customer’s income.
The company says it can do this through special machine learning algorithms that helps identify reasonably priced homes in areas of high potential growth, reducing borrowing and large advances.
Vadim Toader, CEO and co-founder said: “In the UK there is a gap of 100,000-200,000 pounds between what buyers want and what they can afford, caused mainly by lenders and combined with rising house prices and the need for an extra room due to the new reality of working from home and it’s easy to see that buyers are facing a lost battle.