Digital mortgage company Habito completes £35M Series C

Habito, the London startup that has spent the last few years moving the mortgage process online, including offering its own mortgages beyond acting as a broker, has completed £35 million in Series C funding.

The newly disclosed round — comprising an earlier Series C equity raise and a more recent Series C extension in the form of a convertible loan note, was led by new investors Augmentum Fintech, SBI Group and mojo.capital, with participation from various existing investors including Ribbit Capital, Atomico and Mosaic Ventures.

The convertible loan was also matched by the U.K. taxpayer-funded Future Fund, set up by the government to help mitigate the coronavirus crisis’ affect on the country’s venture-backed startup ecosystem. It brings the total raised by Habito to just over £63 million since launching in 2016.

In a call, Habito founder Daniel Hegarty that the new investment will be used by the company to continue digitising aspects of home financing and buying which still remain a pain-point for homebuyers and sellers.

The fintech/proptech started out by offering a digital mortgage brokerage, promising to help you secure a new mortgage and monitor the competitiveness of your existing mortgage. The idea was to make applying for or switching mortgages as frictionless as possible.

In July 2019, Habito announced that it would begin direct lending via its own range of mortgages. Starting with ‘buy to let’ mortgages, the move saw the company expand beyond brokerage after it received regulatory approval to become a mortgage lender. By doing so, the aim was to cut the timeframe from mortgage application to offer in half, enabled in part by Habito’s integration with the conveyancing process to add more transparency for the homebuyer, while the number of documents needed was also significantly reduced.

In January this year, Habito launched “Habito Plus,” something getting closer to an end-to-end homebuying service. It brings together a buyer’s mortgage application, conveyancing needs and surveys “under one roof” — which feels less vitamin pill and more actual painkiller for anyone who has ever experienced having to deal with and coordinate all of the various stakeholders and parties involved in buying or selling a property.

Most recently, Habito launched its broker portal, providing more than 3,000 external brokers access to its own buy-to-let mortgage products and “Instant Decision” technology capabilities. Hegarty tells me the company intends to develop a suite of “innovative” residential mortgage products for all types of homeowners, not just ‘buy to let’.

Notably, Habito recently become a “B Corp” certified company, meaning it has made a legal commitment to put “people and planet on the same level as profit”. Resembling somewhat of a movement, there are more than 3,000 accredited B Corp companies globally, including Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and WeTransfer.