Affordable Housing Startup Pronto Housing Closes $3M Pre-Series A Round

Brings the company’s 3-year funding total to $9.5 million

By Philip Russo February 27, 2024 9:00 am

KC Crosby, left, and Christine Wendell. Photo: Courtesy of Pronto Housing

Many investors and entrepreneurs continue to chase the holy grail of aiding in the development of affordable housing. Pronto Housing announced Tuesday that it has closed a $3 million funding round to continue the proptech startup’s pursuit of that goal.

In closing what Pronto calls a “pre-Series A” round, the startup has now totaled $9.5 million since it began raising funding in 2021. Infinity Capital Partners, MRK Partners, Icon National and other investors participated in the round.

The Manhattan-based, female-founded software-as-a-service (SaaS) company aims at easing the compliance process for landlords, owners and residents in the notoriously cumbersome, largely manual, and paper-driven affordable housing sector. Pronto specializes in streamlining the qualification process for potential residents. It currently operates in 18 states.

“In 2023, Pronto grew our revenue 21x year-over-year,” said Christine Wendell, co-founder and CEO of the company. “It was a huge year of Growth. The reason that we raised capital is to be able to continue that pace of growth and to be able to implement customers faster, and make the product more scalable. And then also to start looking into our product roadmap and developing additional features that are all centered around access to housing.”

Pronto works with a wide range of multifamily nonprofits and for-profit companies, municipalities, and a mix of other entities focused on affordable housing, as well as those primarily in market-rate properties that also have an affordable housing component, said Wendell.

“We work directly with anyone who is qualifying residents for affordable housing,” she explained. “So, usually, that is the property manager, but we frequently get introduced through property owners or investors, lenders or syndicators. We also work directly with some municipalities who are managing this process themselves.”

Pronto’s investors see its technology as potentially game-changing within the affordable housing niche, according to Sydne Garchik, principal at MRK Partners. “We have already seen increases in efficiency and have no doubt that co-founders Christine and KC Crosby will continue to innovate and create tremendous leverage within our business while improving the lives of the more than 10,000 residents that live in our communities,” Garchik said in a statement.

With this investment, Infinity Capital Partners Chief Investment Officer Greg Jones, Icon National CEO Justin Krueger and Garchik join Simpson Impact Strategies founder Bob Simpson, and Patrick Kehoe, COO of Nava Benefits and former COO of VTS, on Pronto’s advisory board.