ZeroDown provides a real estate solution that purchases homes with all-cash offers and lets customers select a home via an online approval process. Customers move in on their own schedule, pay monthly lease payments to ZeroDown, and earn purchase credits that can be used to buy the home after an agreed period. The company also offers a concierge service covering cleaning, moving, and ordering new furniture. ZeroDown launched publicly earlier this summer and is focused initially on the Bay Area market. It has raised more than $30M in equity financing led by Sam Altman and Goodwater Capital and recently secured more than $100M in debt financing from Credit Suisse. The company intends to use the debt financing to accelerate growth. ZeroDown combines a consumer-facing technology business with a debt-funded real estate vehicle to let qualified customers pick a home, lease it from ZeroDown, and earn monthly purchase-credits toward eventual purchase. Customers typically have individual or combined annual income above $200,000 and choose homes generally priced between $550,000 and $1.75M; ZeroDown charges a $10,000 fee per home and offers a 24/7 concierge service. Buyers get five years to pay ZeroDown the cost of the down payment, earn purchase-credits each month, can redeem credits for cash if they move after two years, and must purchase the home at the five-year mark if they wish to stay. The company is a Y Combinator winter cohort graduate led by CEO Abhijeet Dwivedi with co-founders Laks Srini and Hari Viswanathan and is based in San Francisco. ZeroDown operates the tech startup (supported by equity financing and ~20 employees) alongside a separate real-estate fund backed by debt capital (amount undisclosed). In the long term the team intends to expand beyond the Bay Area into new geographies to serve a wider and more diverse population of potential homeowners.

Total raised

$130M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

Aug 2019