Student accommodation platform HousingAnywhere.com raises €5 million

HousingAnywhere.com, a rental listings platform for students, has raised €5 million from Real Web and VC firm henQ.

Italy’s Real Web owns real estate site Immobiliare.it while henQ is a previous investor in HousingAnywhere.com. The Rotterdam startup intends to use this new round of funding to push into university cities in Western Europe and the US, with the goal of reaching 100 cities by 2018. Currently it has 100,000 vacant properties listed.

“It’s very valuable to us that a major international company like Real Web has joined us. They possess a wealth of experience in the online housing market and we can learn a lot from them,” said founder Niels Van Deuren.

HousingAnywhere.com’s main target users are exchange students that are looking for accommodation in a new country or city where they may not be familiar with the renting situation or transferring money. Van Deuren’s platform allows for all transactions to happen within the site once the student has viewed the accommodation.

“A lot of landlords and subletters want you to pay rent in advance to make sure you actually show up but for a student it’s a pretty big step to transfer money without having actually seen the place first.”