HomeLight Raises $20 Million to Expand Bridge Loan Product

Real estate technology platform HomeLight has raised $20 million of new funding to help expand its bridge loan product that helps homebuyers unlock equity from their existing home.

This financial product, Buy Before You Sell, has been expanded to 40 new states and is now operating in a total of 47 states, the company said in a Monday (Aug. 26) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Buy Before You Sell is designed to help homebuyers solve the problem of needing to sell their existing home in order to buy a new one, according to the press release. The product lets these homebuyers unlock up to 70% of the equity from their existing home and start making offers on another.

“We are deeply focused on building the tools and technology that solve the hardest problems that lenders face today in closing transactions,” Drew Uher, founder and CEO of HomeLight, said in the release. “So far, the response to Buy Before You Sell has blown away our expectations and we’re thrilled to add so much value to both our lender and agent partners as well as their clients.”

Since the launch of Buy Before You Sell, HomeLight has partnered with more than 10,000 loan officers and more than 28,000 real estate agents and has unlocked over $655 million in equity from clients’ existing homes, per the release.

In addition, the company now enables agents to invite their preferred lenders to the platform to help their clients access this solution, according to the release.

One of HomeLight’s partners, Lisa Shapiro, senior mortgage advisor at NEO Home Loans, a subsidiary of Luminate, said in the release: “With Buy Before You Sell, we were able to accomplish my buyer’s goal: submitting a non-contingent offer, pulling equity out now for the down payment at closing, and only having to move once, with no rent payments in the middle.”

HomeLight was launched by Uher in 2012 to introduce technology into the homebuying market and solve the “mess and headache” he encountered in the process of buying his first home, Uher told PYMNTS in an interview posted in 2021.

“The problem that I started with was the agent matching problem,” Uher said at the time. “We basically started the business by helping buyers and sellers find the best agents in their area in a data-driven way, with a focus on agents that would sell their homes faster and for more money.”