Vesta the new online marketplace for buying and selling rental property, has opened its latest equity crowdfunding round to new investors through crowdfunding platform Seedrs.

The £750k fundraise will allow Vesta to further build and raise awareness of its business model, which allows landlords to buy and sell residential investment property with tenants in place. Vesta says this approach eliminates void periods (and removes uncertainty such as estimating the rental value and finding a good tenant) preserving rental income, encourage increased stability and longer tenancies and provide institutional access to investment property at scale.

Vesta launched in February 2018, achieved turnover of approximately £400,000 in the first six months, has sold over 105 properties (£23m) with a further 151 properties (£15.5m) sold STC and has had offers on £108m (1,000 beds) of student accommodation accepted. Over 500 properties have been on-boarded with over 2,500 properties in the pipeline.

The £750k Seedrs raise is part of a wider final seed raise of up to £5m to further scaling the business growth through brand and marketing campaigns, expanding customer services, expansion of estate agency and analytical teams, product development, expansion of the in-house engineering team and extending the runway to a potential Series A fund raise and international expansion in 2019-2020.

Russell Gould, chief executive officer at Vesta said: “As a relatively new proptech company gaining good traction in the UK, we were attracted to the Seedrs equity crowdfunding platform because it allows both retail and institutional investors to invest in the company’s on-going success, building a broader shareholder and customer base. The popularity of the Vesta marketplace among landlords and investors since our launch earlier in the year is a strong indicator that we hold a unique position in the real estate industry and proptech space. The Seedrs capital raise of £750k will contribute to building out our product to provide more individual and institutional landlords with an efficient and cost-effective solution for buying and selling rental property and at the same time supporting tenants by allowing them to remain in their homes.

“Vesta is on the radar of international groups and we have already been approached by two parties to explore licence and partnership opportunities in both North America and Asia Pacific. While slightly early for our immediate product roadmap this validates demand for a global investment property marketplace and supports our intention to build a multi-regional business of significant scale.”