CHARLOTTE – Ribbon, which is jointly headquartered in New York City and in Charlotte, disclosed this week that the company has secured an additional $150 million, including a $75 million Series C equity financing and $75 million in additional working capital.
The technology-enabled company bills itself as “the homeownership company,” was founded in 2017 and launched operations in North Carolina soon after, including in the Charlotte region and in the Triangle.
The company’s Series C was led by Greenspring Associates, and the company noted in a statement that prior investors also participated, as well as additional new investors.
The company has raised a total of $130 million in equity and $500 million debt.
The latest financing will enable the company to conduct more than $10 billion in real estate transactions annually, the company noted in a statement. The company also plans to expand to additional states.
It currently operates in North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and, most recently, Florida.
“North Carolina is our largest market with nearly $1 billion in volume since our inception,” said Ribbon co-founder and CEO Shaival Shah in an interview with WRAL TechWire. “We now represent nearly 2% of all home transactions in Charlotte, and a little less than half that amount in Raleigh-Durham.”
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The company employs about 50 people in North Carolina, working from the company’s Charlotte headquarters location, and plans to continue to hire through the rest of the year, ahead of an expansion into other North Carolina real estate markets in 2022, said Shah.
The company’s core product provides homebuyers access to capital in order to allow their real estate agent to make an all-cash offer, which could make such an offer more attractive for a home seller to accept, because an all-cash offer indicates more certainty of closing the transaction due to the removal of a mortgage financing contingency. Ribbon also has a program that protects buyers using its services against low appraisals compared to contract price of a home.
“The real estate market in the Triangle and in Charlotte has largely followed national trends,” said Shah. “It’s been extremely competitive for home buyers.”
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According to Shah, the sale price of an average home in Raleigh is 25% higher than at this time last year, and Charlotte isn’t far behind that mark, either. “What this means for the buyer experience is that you’re faced with one month home supply, whereas a regular market provides about six months worth of supply,” said Shah.
“The historically low inventory of homes and hypercompetitive housing market has opened eyes: everyday buyers lose out on homes as affordability disappears, and other solutions for agents and lenders are insufficient to meet the moment,” said Shah.
Ribbon’s technology-enabled solutions help homebuyers, Shah noted. According to the company, more than 100 brokerage and lender partners have implemented experiences for their clients to use a Ribbon-powered cash offer, and the company noted that it is supporting $600 million in home offers each month.
The company raised a seed round of $4.5 million, a Series A of $20 million, a Series B of $30 million, and now a Series C round of $75 million, totalling $130 million in equity, along with access to a total of $500 million in debt financing.
