Generation Home scoops $30.4m Series A and £300m debt facility in bumper raise

The funding will be used to expand Generation Home’s ever-growing staff numbers as well as releasing new products down the line.

Buying a home is one of the most, if not the most, expensive purchases a person will make in their lifetime and it’s increasingly hard for younger, first-time buyers to get on the property ladder. That’s where Generation Home comes in.

The proptech, which is a mortgage lender hoping to make everyone a homeowner, has just closed a $30.4m Series A funding round and received a £300m debt facility from NatWest.

Generation Home’s latest funding effort was led by Mithril Capital, US-based VC founded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan, and is the fund’s first foray into the UK fintech scene. As part of the investment, Thiel will sit on Generation Home’s board.

“We’re using the money for growth,” Generation Home’s CEO and co-founder William Rice, told AltFi, “We started the year with a team of 33 and now we’re over 70 people and are expecting to grow again several-fold over the coming 12 months.”

“Keeping on top of the demand growth that we are seeing so far, just across the board, is a top priority. We’re making a really big push in the product and engineering side of the organisation at the moment.”

A series of angel investors also took part in the round including Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield, Kevin and Julia Hartz, co-founders of Eventbrite, and Joe Cross, former head of growth at Wise (formerly TransferWise).

“Since we launched in October 2020, it’s been quite frantic, obviously there’s been a lot going on in both the housing market and the broader economy during that time. We’re not just building a mortgage lender, we’re building a service to buy a home, so we are taking the responsibility on ourselves to help our customers, not just getting the right financing but through the whole transaction,” Rice added.

Born out of their own home buying frustrations, husband and wife duo Will Rice and Sophia Guy-White set out in 2019 to help change the way people buy houses.

Generation Home is creating a better way to buy homes, with the support of family and its fractional ownership platform, to increase borrowing power, security of funds and create a hassle-free way of buying a home.

As well as the $30.4m Series A, Generation Home secured a £300m debt facility from NatWest to help it realise its mission.

“Supporting a new UK business, especially one providing an innovative solution to an underserved sector of the UK mortgage market, lies at the heart of NatWest’s purpose-led strategy to support UK businesses and consumers,” George Ross, head of speciality finance at NatWest, said.

“Generation Home’s product offering will be instrumental in helping UK borrowers access the property ladder and NatWest is delighted to be a business partner to Generation Home on this exciting journey.”

The lender is already lending tens of millions of pounds every month to first time buyers, 76 per cent of which buy a home with a partner, siblings or friends.

Generation Home’s new funding will be used to expand its rapidly expanding team as well as launch new products. 

With its latest fundraise, Generation Home’s total raised to date is now $38.9m, following an unannounced $8.5m Seed round in August 2019.