Orchard, the tech-forward residential real estate platform, has today announced the close of a $69 million Series C funding led by Revolution Growth. Existing investors FirstMark Capital, Navitas, Accomplice and Juxtapose also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $138 million.
Orchard (formerly Perch) launched in 2017 on a mission to digitize the entire experience of buying or selling a home. They focused initially (and still) on ‘dual trackers’, which essentially means that they are home buyers who are also in the process of selling their existing home.
As you might expect, the process of doing both at the same time can be incredibly tedious and, at times, costly. Orchard makes an offer on the buyers’ home with a price that’s guaranteed for 90 days — the company says the vast majority of those homes sell at market price before that 90-day period is over.
Orchard’s product suite also includes tools for searching for homes, title and mortgage.
The search products, in particular, stand out among a crowded space of property search tools. For example, Orchard users can search homes by the room that’s most important to them, putting the Kitchen or the Backyard as the lead image on their listings. Orchard also uses machine learning to suggest more personalized listings.
Orchard cofounder and CEO Court Cunningham had this to say in a prepared statement:
In the same way Amazon has fundamentally changed retail, and Carvana has innovated the car buying experience, Orchard is putting the customer first and modernizing the home buying and selling transaction. We’re thrilled to have a partner in Revolution Growth who has extensive experience working with transformative growth stage consumer businesses that are upending traditional industries. In the year ahead, we’ll be launching an exciting suite of new products and services that further modernize the home purchase experience, while also offering our services to new markets throughout the country.
In the release, the company said it would be using the investment to further expand the product portfolio and grow the team in markets like New York, Texas, Colorado and Georgia, as well as move into new states.
