Just six months into its operations as a consumer-direct and wholesale mortgage lender, Nexera Holding announced last week that it has received a whopping $100 million in funding.
The Emeryville, California-based startup launched in mid-2015 with a mission of increasing efficiency, simplicity and transparency in the lending marketplace via a Web portal that gives customers the ability to view the status of their loan application and communicate with closing stakeholders throughout the lending process.
“I think the consumer gets handed off too many times in the mortgage process we have now,” Nexera’s founder and CEO, Steve Abreu, told Inman News last year. “A single point of contact for the consumer is critical. Our customers are able to know what’s going on with the loan and are able to track loan offers and know what’s going on with the loan at all times.”
Initially operating in just California, Oregon and Washington, Nexera quickly added Colorado to its operations as well, and has plans to expand to other states this year. The company runs a lean operation by outsourcing functions such as regulatory compliance to third-party vendors.
“Our unique, low-cost business model and proprietary technology have been key to a quick start in a very competitive market,” Abreu said.
Nexera operates two different brands: Newfi, a consumer-direct business model centered on the company’s Web portal that provides a single-point-of-contact system with Nexera’s 250 loan officers; and Blustream, a wholesale mortgage channel that works with 35 mortgage brokers across the West coast.
Next up for Nexera is developing a way to pull a consumer’s tax return and bank statements without the consumer having to sign a release, as well as a portal enabling Realtors to track buyers’ applications “so they don’t feel detached from the process,” Abreu said.
“We want to grow this into a national platform to focus on a consumer-direct business and how we deal with Realtors through products, execution and service,” Abreu said.
