Preeminent proptech and real estate VC Fifth Wall leads financing round, with participation from marketplace experts including Andreessen Horowitz, DoorDash’s Tony Xu, StockX’s Scott Cutler
LEHI, Utah – To capture massive demand for self-storage by repurposing under-utilized space, Neighbor, the self-storage marketplace, today announced it has closed a $53M Series B funding round led by the largest fund focused on global real estate and proptech, Fifth Wall. With support from returning investor Andreessen Horowitz and additional funding from DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler, who will join former Uber CEO Ryan Graves and Overstock CEO Jonathan Johnson as investors and advisors to Neighbor.
As a relative newcomer to the $40B self-storage industry, Neighbor is shaking up this antiquated and dusty sector by democratizing access to self-storage income and space. Without any new construction or existing infrastructure, Neighbor is quickly adding new square footage to the market by inviting commercial and residential property owners to turn under-utilized or vacant areas into meaningful passive income opportunities. For users, these self-storage solutions are priced approximately 40-50% less than traditional storage facilities.
“With a roster of investors and advisors hailing from the world’s largest marketplace operators, including Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash and StockX, Neighbor will use this sizable investment to rapidly expand its nationwide network of hosts and renters,” said Joseph Woodbury, CEO and co-founder of Neighbor. “Storing your personal goods in someone else’s space is rooted in trust and we’re proud to have expanded our community’s trust into tens of millions of square feet in big cities, small towns, suburbs and rural areas across all fifty states.”
In addition to leading the round, Fifth Wall has facilitated opportunities for Neighbor to partner with the firm’s extensive roster of strategic LPs — 65+ of the world’s largest owners and operators of real estate from 15 countries. Fifth Wall partners Acadia Realty Trust and Jamestown have already begun onboarding properties onto Neighbor’s platform. This will add to Neighbor’s burgeoning commercial real estate footprint, which grew 10X in 2020.
“Our firm ardently pursued the opportunity to invest in a transformative proptech business like Neighbor,” said Dan Wenhold, Partner, Fifth Wall. “Self-storage is the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry for four decades running and Neighbor has already built an impressive business positioned to capture untapped demand for space in a smart and sustainable way.”
2020 was a record-breaking year for Neighbor. According to the Self-Storage Almanac 2021, more than 1 in 10 Americans currently rent a storage facility and that demand is not dwindling. With the power to address both the supply and demand for self-storage, Neighbor saw a 5X YoY increase in revenue from March 2020 to March 2021 and 7X increase in organic reservations. Not only were households using Neighbor to monetize garage, driveway and basement space, but commercial owners also repurposed vacancies into storage rentals intended to generate meaningful income to cover mortgages and other building expenses.
The Lehi, UT-based marketplace will use the investment to expand its brand footprint and user base into every corner of the U.S. With one of the top 10 Series B funding rounds in Utah’s history, Neighbor has plans to make additional strategic hires and attract more tech talent to the Silicon Slopes, building on its bench of recent hires from Uber, Carta, Mercari, Instructure and Banjo.
About Neighbor
Founded in 2017, Neighbor is a self-storage marketplace based in the Silicon Slopes of Lehi, Utah. The company connects people who have unused space in their garages, attics, basements and driveways to renters who are looking for affordable storage. Neighbor benefits renters by providing safer, more accessible storage for half the price of a traditional self-storage unit, while giving hosts the opportunity to earn thousands of dollars per year from their unused space. Neighbor’s team helps keep the connection safe, easy and friendly and provides an unprecedented $25,000 renter guarantee for items stored and a $1 million host liability guarantee so that good neighbors everywhere can help each other out. Neighbor’s investors include leaders in real estate and marketplace experts, including Andreessen Horowitz, Fifth Wall, Wilshire Lane Partners, Pelion Venture Partners, Album Ventures and top executives from DoorDash, Uber, Overstock and StockX.
Learn more about Neighbor at neighbor.com.
SOURCE Neighbor
https://www.neighbor.com/
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