Spotahome is a 100% online booking platform, offering an exhaustive list of apartments, rooms, studios, and student residencies. The company focuses on finding residential rentals for mid-to long term stays of a minimum 30 days, depending on city regulations.
Inspired by their own experience living abroad, Alejandro Artacho, Bruno Bianchi, Bryan McEire and Hugo Monteiro came together to create Spotahome with the objective of overcoming the hurdles and pitfalls of trying to find a suitable rental wherever you are.
SOLUTIONS TO LANDLORDS AND TENANTS
The Spotahome removes the need for in-person viewings, saving both tenants and landlords the time and expense. It creates a listing at no cost to the landlord, sends a professional photographer (“Homechecker”) to visit the property and creates the audio-visual materials including high quality photos, HD video tours, detailed floor plans and honest property and neighborhood descriptions. It also offers guarantees against default payments and damages.
The company plays a pivotal role in eliminating communication and language barriers between local landlords and foreign tenants, offering excellent customer support in several languages on both ends of the negotiation.
This year, the company introduced the concept of “Instant Booking”, which allows a booking request to be automatically accepted, if the tenant’s profile matches the requirements set by the landlord.
Spotahome also puts several guarantees in place to ensure the platform is scam free for all users, including transferring funds to landlords after 48 hours of a tenant has moved in, to make sure tenants find no issues with the property while simultaneously safeguarding landlords against defaulted payments or property damage. Spotahome charges a percentage of the total contract value for the rental.
TWO ROUNDS OF INVESTMENT TOTALING 65 MILLION
All four Sportahome founders invested their savings in the business, which was launched in 2014 with only €3,000, spent on photographers to build the listings. Eventually friends and family realized the potential of the business and invested €125,000, even before the seed investment was secured.
The company participated in two additional rounds of investment, raising $25M in Series A, between 2014 and 2017, and $40m in Series B in June 2018. The funds are being used to consolidate the startup’s presence in the countries where it operates and in continued development of digital and technical products to digitalize services in the value chain of real estate, which will improve the experience for both tenants and landlords. Finally, the company will continue hiring first-class international talent.
Sportahome has about 50,000 properties listed in 33 different cities across 17 countries in Europe and the UAE and its success has been recognized. In 2017 the startup has achieved three awards: Best SME of the Year by ‘Emprendedores Magazine’, Young Bull Award at the White Bull Summit and Best Startup in the South Summit.