Vacation home rental platform Vacasa has secured another round of funding to the tune of $64 million, the company announced Thursday.
The new funding round, which was led by Riverwood Capital with the participation of existing investors Level Equity, NewSpring and Assurant Growth Investing, will now allow the Portland-based company to expand into additional markets, CEO Eric Breon told Inman.
“I think it’s a sign of our investors’ continued confidence,” said Breon, whose company snagged a $103.5 million Series B round one year ago. “Just how impressed they’ve been with what we’ve accomplished over the past year and what they’re looking for us to accomplish over the next year.”
In addition to operating in 23 U.S. states, Vacasa manages more than 10,000 rental properties in 16 countries across Africa, Europe and South and Central America.
Since Vacasa employs local staff in every market in which it operates, adding to its team will be a priority with the new funding round.
“We’re really looking to fill in a lot of the markets where we don’t yet do business,” Breon said. “You’re going to see a lot of new market launches from us in the coming year.”
With a still-new foray into the real estate business, Vacasa aims to combine its data insights with local understanding.
In July, the company launched a new Vacasa Real Estate platform, which connects a pipeline of vacation homeowners with agents and clients seeking to buy or invest. The platform has drawn 416 real estate agents from more than 80 brokerages, all of whom receive exclusive access to Vacasa’s properties.
Vacasa’s data models can figure out the correct price to offer homes in the short-term rental market across the country, Breon said.
“We have very accurate predictions as to how well that home will rent,” he said. “We also have great local people who have an understanding of what is the local climate. What is the regulatory risk for that home, [or] what improvements could be made to improve rentability.”
Breon believes investment buyers also can benefit from higher long-term gains with the platform — as well as a couple bonuses.
“One, it is way more fun to own a beach house or own a ski house than it is to own a fourplex in the suburbs,” Breon said. “Two, in a lot of the markets we focus on supply is constrained. There’s never going to be more oceanfront land. There’s very limited development around a lot of ski areas.”