Infused With Capital, Knock Announces Expansion Plans

Infused With Capital, Knock Announces Expansion Plans

Startup plans to take its house trade-in platform nationwide.

Real estate startup Knock, which currently has operations in four U.S. markets, has announced plans to expand nationwide and improve its house trade-in platform after raising $400 million in venture capital.

Led by founding team members of Trulia, Knock launched in 2015 with the goal of improving the home buying and selling process through its Home Trade-in platform. The additional funding will enable the company to buy more new homes on its customers’ behalf before representing them in the sale of their old ones on the open market.

“We believe the only way to revolutionize the real estate industry is by addressing both home buying and selling, given 71 percent of consumers are doing both at the same time, which is why we’re creating a marketplace solution with our Home Trade-in platform,” said Sean Black, co-founder and CEO of Knock.

“As we celebrate the success of the Trade-in with this latest round of funding, we are excited to have found investors and partners in Foundry Group, which has successfully helped other marketplace companies like Rover and Havenly scale platforms that transform traditional industries for a better, technology-powered consumer experience.”

Seth Levine, a partner with lead investor Foundry Group, joined Knock’s board of directors.

“At Foundry we love working with passionate founders who are on a mission to fundamentally change an industry. The team is exactly that—combining years of experience in real estate technology with a fundamental drive to change the way consumers buy and sell homes,” said Levine. “This is an unstoppable combination that we believe will transform the outdated real estate industry.”

A competitor of Opendoor, Knock offers a seamless process for the consumer who wants to sell their existing home in order to buy a new one. The first step for the consumer is getting a market evaluation from Knock.com, and if they decide to accept the offer, Knock.com helps the homeowner obtain a mortgage and shop for a new home.

The company has experienced rapid growth since its founding, launching in four markets: Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Dallas-Fort Worth. Along with its market expansions, the company’s headcount has multiplied in the past two years to 100 full-time employees distributed across 15 states. The engineering, product and data science team comprises one-third of the employee base.

Knock announced a number of product advancements in the past year, including its unique predictive home search tool Knock Deals. Fueled by this tool, Knock also released its inaugural National Knock Deals Forecast, a first-ever predictive study of home price outcomes for on-market listings across 45 top U.S. metros, driven by the company’s proprietary data science and machine learning-based algorithms.

“By combining our platform technology with national machine learning-driven housing insights and the real life, in-home experiences of our team as we grow across the U.S., we’re bringing a level of transparency to real estate that will enable a more certain, convenient and cost-effective experience for home buyers and sellers,” said Jamie Glenn, co-founder and chief operating officer.

This latest round of funding brings the total equity and debt raised by Knock to over $600 million. In January 2017, the company announced its Series A round led by RRE Ventures with additional funding from Corazon Capital, Redpoint, Greycroft, Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and FJ Labs.