New funding for home capital

The Munich-based start-up buys parts of real estate. Now Vereinigte Volksbank is investing in the company.

The start-up Heimkapital has raised around ten million euros in capital, as Finance Forward reported. In the process, Volksbank invested together with Amavi Capital and fintech fund Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital. The existing investor Yabeo, which also has a stake in Solaris, also invested again. Only in January of this year, Heimkapital had received 300 million euros.

Julia Schabert, Dimitrij Miller and Benedikt Wenninger founded Heimkapital 2019, a Munich-based start-up that focuses on partial purchases of real estate. While property owners are still living in their homes, they can already sell up to 50 percent of their house to the start-up and then receive the sales amount. In return, Heimkapital becomes a partner in the property.

For the business model, there has already been criticism from the consumer center, Finance Forward said. It is often cheaper for seniors to get a loan from the bank, he said. "We are quite transparent and address when a loan at our own bank is a better fit for our customers, for example, a teacher couple with a good pension," Miller told Finance Forward. That's often not the case with Heimkapital's customers, he said. According to founder Miller, the startup's model is more flexible than loans. Customers also have the option to buy back their property, he said.