SoftBank portfolio company Reonomy raises $60 million in its quest to beat CoStar and become the real estate industry's main source for analytics

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SoftBank portfolio company Reonomy raises $60 million in its quest to beat CoStar and become the real estate industry's main source for analytics

Rich Sarkis

Reonomy

Rich Sarkis, CEO and cofounder of Reonomy

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Reonomy, a real estate data and analytics provider, said on Thursday that it has closed a $60 million Series D fund.

The fund was led by SaaS-specialists Georgian Partners, with participation from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Citi Ventures and existing investors like Sapphire Ventures. The company declined to provide a valuation.

The fresh money will assist Reonomy's plans for expansion in Canada and the UK. Earlier this year, the company announced preferred partnerships with Dun & Bradstreet, CoreLogic, and Black Knight providing it almost-exclusive access to data from each. Reonomy says it has information on more than 50 million properties and has over 100,000 users.

CoStar, the biggest data provider in real estate, was founded in 1987 and became a public company in 1998. While it has an established track record and a large array of clients, Reonomy and similar companies like CompStak have also been competing in the space.

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Still, real estate - a hyper-local and reputationally old-school industry - has been cast as a bit behind the curve on the use of data in decision making.

Reonomy has raised $68.4 million from investors such as SoftBank Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and chairman of Starwood Capital Group and Starwood Property Trust Barry Sternlicht since it was founded in 2013. SoftBank did not invest in this most recent round of funding.

The company was especially busy last year, securing $46 million. According to Reonomy's CEO and cofounder, Richard Sarkis, this newest round of funding was a bit unexpected.

"We didn't go looking for the money, it sort of found us at a time that made sense," Sarkis said.

Sarkis saw this money, specifically the money from Wells Fargo and Citi's venture arms, as an "explicit acknowledgement" that the company has arrived.

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SoftBank was an early believer in Reonomy's ability to become an industry-standard, investing in every round since the Series A.

SoftBank, and its Vision Fund, have had a rocky year. SoftBank Group notched a third-quarter loss of $6.5 billion in the wake of WeWork's failed IPO and rocky performance for other investments. Shortly after SoftBank's WeWork bailout was announced, SoftBank portfolio company Fair.com announced layoffs, prompting both the CEO and CFO to resign.

While some of SoftBank's investments may be faltering, Reonomy continues to add features to its core product.

Most recently, Sarkis said, the company has launched a portfolio view that can give clients analysis across their entire portfolio, instead of requiring them to individually grab data from each property. This product has already been rolled out to some existing larger clients, and will continue to be offered to more customers over time.

Sarkis sees analytical tools as the next big thing for real estate data, referencing automated valuation models and smart lending platforms as examples.

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"The problem to them has not been historically, 'hey I don't have enough data, it's 'how do I see through this data,'" Sarkis said.

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