Now, more than ever, due to the effects of the pandemic and the ensuing uncertainty, there is a need for more flexibility of the housing market and new business models that allow homeowners and home seekers to focus on short and medium-term renting. Real estate digitalization such as remote management of real estate and marketing without physical inspection are solutions in which European proptech startups are trying to specialize and focus more resources.
One such property management startup from the SEE ecosystem that develops software allowing vacation rental owners to manage all aspects of their business from a single platform on any device is FantasticStay and it has recently raised €1.3M in a round led by the Bulgarian VC New Vision 3 (NV3), which invested €770K, in partnership with the angel investor Velizar Velichkov and previous investors.
The growth potential of real estate tech
After making its first three investments in the fintechs Paynetics, Phyre, and Phos back in March 2020, and then backing the e-commerce marketing and sales platform CloudCart, NV3 is now focusing on more industry-agnostic investments. Being a successor of NEVEQ I and NEVEQ II, NV3 is co-financed by the Bulgarian Fund of Funds and has an investment capacity of €23.2M with a term of 10 years and the goal to fund around 15 startups and 30 scaleups from the AI, IoT, shared economy and decentralized platforms, and fintech sectors.
“We believe that the long-term fundamentals of the proptech market are very solid despite the short-term damage that Covid19 did to the real estate industry. The reason why we decided to invest in FantasticStay is both the size and the long-term growth potential of the proptech market and the outstanding team driving the company, who have the experience and the vision to build FanstasticStay into a global player,” shares for The Recursive Yordan Zarev who is one of the Partners of NV3.
Streamline, automate and scale
The solution of FantasticStay helps short-term property managers to automate their entire rental business from onboarding and marketing to the guest check-out. Its Property Management System (PMS) and Channel Manager offer features such as listing and reservations management, a unified inbox to organize communication with clients, as well as revenue and KPI reporting solutions. The startup also develops payment processing solutions, calendar management, and website creator features.
FantsaticStay already serves hundreds of clients from all around the world, is an official partner of Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia Group, and after it acquired one of its competitors – the vacation rental software Vreasy back in 2020, it became one of the key players in its industry. Now the freshly raised capital will allow FantasticStay to continue developing its software and services in order to help more property managers to run and scale their short-term rental businesses.
The founder and CEO of FantasticStay, Ivan Nikolov, highlights that: “Right now the short term rental industry, as part of the global travel industry, is still suffering a lot from the COVID-19 pandemic. We are confident that the industry will bounce back stronger than ever. We aim to be a support backbone and the engine behind short-term managers to streamline their operations, get more reservations, revenue and delight their guests during these unprecedented times. NV3’s investment will increase our capability to do exactly that.”
