German hybrid estate agent McMakler lands $20 mln

Berlin-based McMakler, a real estate platform, has raised $20 million in funding. The investors were Balderton Capital and GR Capital.

PRESS RELEASE

Berlin, 15 October 2019 – Germany’s fast-growing hybrid estate agent McMakler (www.mcmakler.de) has raised $20m in funding from Balderton Capital’s Liquidity I Fund, which typically invests in direct secondary for late stage growth companies, and GR Capital.

McMakler has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing real estate platforms and is leading the digitalisation of the real estate industry in Germany, with tools that blend artificial intelligence, data science and digital workflow to improve the experience of buying and selling a home. The company is pioneering the introduction of software tools that have been adopted in other industries into the estate agency sector, which has largely held on to its traditional methods for buying and selling high value homes and commercial premises. In total it has raised funds worth €74.5m, following a Series C round earlier this year led by Israel Growth Partners and Target Global.

Felix Jahn, founder and CEO of McMakler, said: “Balderton and GR Capital share our vision of how to transform the real estate sector by combining personal expertise with the technology that can ultimately lead to quicker, more transparent transactions.”

“Brokers remain the absolute experts when it comes to trading properties, but many traditional real estate companies do not have the technology to provide the highest level of service across the country. This is where McMakler is different: we have built the largest full-value chain transaction platform for real estate in Germany, that combines a great digital experience with highly skilled individual agents to provide superior service to our customers.”

Daniel Waterhouse, partner at Balderton Capital, said: “McMakler is blending the best of data science, digital workflow, and scale to radically improve the experience and success of buying and selling a home. It has unrivalled insight into the German real estate market, already manages an impressive level of property transactions and has a strong vision and ambition for where to go from here. We are delighted to be partnering with Felix and the team for the next phase of growth.”

McMakler will use the new funds to further develop its technology, which includes a transaction platform and advanced AI real estate valuation models. While online estate agency has become the main tool for property search, most people still bring in a broker to carry out a transaction and few traditional estate agents understand how workflow tools and data science could help them to conduct business more efficiently, ultimately cutting costs to buyers, sellers and landlords. McMakler is bringing the ideas and skills of proptech companies to the traditional estate agency model and sees the potential of transforming the whole sector.

McMakler, founded in 2015, currently employs 450 people across Germany, Austria and France and completed transactions worth $400m last year, five times the previous year’s total.

About McMakler
McMakler (www.mcmakler.de) is a full-service real estate agent, active in Germany, Austria and France. Founded in 2015, the company combines innovative technology with personal advisory by regional real estate agents. With its hybrid model, McMakler is pioneering the digitalisation of the real estate industry and one of the largest and fastest-growing real estate companies in Europe. The company is headquartered in Berlin and currently employs more than 450 employees including 255 full time real estate agents. Felix Jahn, Hanno Heintzenberg and Lukas Pieczonka co-founded the business. Felix Jahn was the co-founder of Home24, Europe’s largest online furniture retailer, and is an investor in two of Germany’s tech sucesses Zalando and Auto1 Group.

About Balderton – Balderton Capital is a London-based venture firm focused exclusively on backing the best European-founded technology companies. In the two decades since our founding, we have worked with hundreds of extraordinary European founders, and have raised seven funds totalling more than $2.7bn. Previous investments include Betfair (FTSE: BET), Magic Pony (Twitter), NaturalMotion (Zynga), Sunrise (Microsoft), Talend (NASDAQ: TLND) and Yoox Net-a-Porter (BIT: YNAP). Among Balderton’s current portfolio of 85 companies are Aircall, Carwow, Citymapper, Contentful, Frontier Car Group, GoCardless, Hiya, The Hut Group, Kobalt Music, Labster, Nutmeg, Prodigy Finance, Recorded Future, Revolut, ROLI, SOPHiA Genetics, Vestiaire Collective, Vivino and Voi