Axeleo Capital and Outward VC co-led the funding round, with Seed X also participating in the round. Existing investors Global Founders Capital and ActivumSG Ventures are also taking part.
Founded by Simon Groll and Jeremy Matallah in 2021, Keyzy acts as a cash buyer for the properties its customers want and then rents it back to them for around three to seven years.
Customers can then establish a credit history to facilitate a mortgage application and up to a quarter of their rent is converted to lower the buy-back price. They can then buy the home at the original total cost minus the converted rent that has accumulated.
The firm also uses open banking, credit and other customer data to shorten the application process to less than 10 minutes.
Properties have been bought in Greater London, Liverpool, Southeast and Southwest England.
The company said most of its rent-paying customers were in key services such as education, emergency services and in the NHS.
Groll said the funding would allow them to “accelerate home purchases” and meet “surging demand” from 1,000 applications and over 3,000 signed up to the pre-launch waitlist.
“It’s an exciting moment in our drive to grow the platform, especially with turmoil in the mortgage market and the Help to Buy scheme coming to an end,” he added.
‘A much-needed bridge’
Mathias Flattin, partner at Axeleo Capital, said Keyzy was “leveraging data to provide a strong social impact on the UK housing market”.
He continued: “Rent-to-own is a solution to escape increasing rental prices by securing homeownership but also to keep cash to invest in your own place. The demand is very strong in the U.K. and there are similar opportunities in the rest of Europe.”
Andi Kazeroonian, investment manager at Outward VC, added: “We firmly believe that private sector models of living must evolve beyond the binary nature of outright home ownership or an increasingly competitive and costly private rented sector in order to meet the needs of society.
“Keyzy’s customer-centric solution acts as a much-needed bridge between renting and ownership, providing the flexibility of renting along with much of the stability, transparency and potential future upside that comes with home ownership.”
He continued: “We are already seeing this change the lives of Keyzy’s customers across the UK and therefore couldn’t be more excited to support Jeremy, Simon and the rest of their exceptional team to build on their mission to make the dream of home ownership a reality again.”
