RET Ventures $165M Fund

Single-family rentals are getting a huge amount of money.

Real Estate Technology or RET Ventures is a venture capital firm. The company was able to raise a fund worth $165 million. This fund will be invested in technology but only for single-family rental and multifamily operators and owners throughout the U.S.

RET’s starting target was $130, and it has already achieved it. Some of the significant participants included Starlight Capital, Starwood Capital Group, Mid-America Apartment Community, Greystar Real Estate Group, Essex Property Trust, and Invitation Homes Inc. These companies are associated with single-family rental operators and the biggest apartments in America.

Real Estate Technology or RET Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Utah. Founded in 2017, it invests in real estate technology. 

The company wants to invest in technology companies in the American multifamily real-estate industry. Its focus areas are rental management, data analytics, internet service providers, house movers, and asset rentals. Real Estate Technology Ventures l was its first fund. It was worth $108 million. Till December 2019, it made 14 investments.

Investors are taking a keen interest in the single-family rental market because the demand has increased manifold in recent times. The credit goes to the latest remote work culture and high ownership costs. Big single-family rental companies like Invitation Homes Inc. and American Homes 4 Rent have lately increased their share in the housing market.

However, critics do not appreciate this trend as they believe single-family rentals may take the affordability crisis from bad to worse, resulting in more people leaving their houses in coming times.

A partner with RET Ventures named Christopher Yip informed budding companies are getting investments from the fund. A point of special interest is “rent tech,” a term that he coined that includes the technology associated with rental properties. He further added that the company was deeply interested in solving issues that troubled rental owners and operators.

RET Ventures is one of the leading funds to make huge investments in proptech. The motive of many of these companies is to modernize those areas of the real estate industry which they feel are resistant to technology, and these areas lack their other counterparts in a technology-driven world. Some such areas are home closings, construction, and title insurance.

These firms’ valuation has touched the sky in recent times. The simple reason for this is that many of these firms wish to go public with the help of special purpose acquisition companies.

SmartRent got strong backing from RET Ventures. It is a home automation company specifically designed for renters and property managers that have plans for the near future to go public with the help of SPAC at a starting worth of $2.2 billion.

RET Ventures has also made some investments in Passive Logic where Passive Logic is an autonomous building platform. And this is not all. RET also invested in Kasa Living which is a company for short-term rentals.