‘La Haus’ Real Estate Venture Co-Founded by President Uribe’s Sons Nabs US$135 Million Funding from Investors Including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

Colombia- and Mexico-based real estate search-and-development enabler La Haus announced July 29 that it has raised US$135 million from big international investors including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as well as from “new-age” banker Gabriel Gilinski — son of Colombian banker Jaime Gilinski, considered as Colombia’s second-richest person.

La Haus – with operations in Medellin, Bogota, Mexico City and Guadalajara (Mexico) – was founded by former Colombia President Alvaro Uribe’s two sons, Jerónimo Uribe and Tomás Uribe, along with La Haus president Rodrigo Sánchez-Ríos and chief technology officer Santiago Garcia, according to the company.

Jerónimo and Tomas Uribe met Sánchez-Ríos at Stanford University, and prior to launching La Haus, the Uribe brothers started and ran Jaguar Capital, a Colombian real estate development company that boasted of completing US$350 million worth of retail and residential projects, according to La Haus.

According to the corporate announcement, La Haus just nabbed US$50 million in Series B funding in a follow-on campaign co-led by Acrew Capital and Renegade Partners, paired with US$50 million in debt funding.

The latest round “brings the company’s total Series B funding to $135 million and cements the company’s leadership in Spanish-speaking Latin America,” according to La Haus.

“Funding expansion was driven by exponential growth in Mexico, where transactions grew almost 10 times from 2Q [second quarter] 2020 to 2Q 2021. La Haus expects to achieve more than US$1 billion in annualized gross sales by the end of the year 2021,” according to the company.

“Selling more than 500 homes per month, La Haus is the market leader in Spanish-speaking LatAm by an order of magnitude,” the company added.

Besides the new investments by Bezos and Gilinski, other new investors in the latest round include Endeavor Catalyst, Moore Strategic Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Rappi’s Simon Borrero and Medellin-based pop-rock music star Maluma, according to La Haus.

“New funding will be used to fuel geographic expansion and introduce financing solutions to help solve housing inequality. By the end of 2021, La Haus will be in every major metropolitan area in Mexico and Colombia,” the company added.

“The need for new housing in LatAm and other emerging markets is acute. The pace of building new homes is slow because small- and mid-sized developers– those who build 80% of new homes in LatAm — are cash constrained. Additionally, mortgages are largely unaffordable for consumers, with banks extending only a fraction of the credit to individuals compared to the U.S., and often at worse terms,” according to the company.

“With the new debt funding and its one-of-a-kind, proprietary data gleaned from thousands of real estate transactions, La Haus is now positioned to extend capital to developers and consumers more quickly, with much lower risk and at better terms,” the company added.