New York lifestyle brand and real estate firm Mdrn. and its rental platform Stoop raised $1 million in a seed round, the companies announced Monday.
Mdrn. is a vertically integrated brokerage that offers buying and leasing, property management, roommate searches and even design services. Stoop lets residents rent month-to-month or for up to a year, outsourcing leasing, payments, roommate searches and utility payments to the company.
Mdrn. launched as a traditional brokerage in 2014 and added the Stoop brand in 2017. The two brands are separate companies but closely entwined via their common ownership.
The funding is being split between the two companies, although a lot of focus is on expanding the Stoop brand as a means of further growing the Mdrn. brokerage. Founder Zach Ehrlich in an interview described Stoop as “sort of a StreetEasy” powered by integrated agents.
“The capital will enable both companies to expand on their core real estate operations and technology infrastructure,” Ehrlich said in a statement. “This includes Stoop’s portfolio of turnkey, thoughtfully designed living spaces, as well as Mdrn.’s existing sales and leasing operations.”
Ehrlich declined to disclose the investors who participated in the seed round, besides saying they included “New York real estate families” and Israeli tech investors.
The two brands are trying to vertically integrate as property managers, landlords and agents in New York. Mdrn. has about 70 team members, including its own agents. The firm focuses on technology and lifestyle, offering in-house photography, interior design and marketing alongside its sales, leasing and property management.
With this influx of cash, the companies plan to expand Stoop’s inventory and add personnel on its operations side. The money will also be used to expand Mdrn.’s infrastructure and technology to drive more agents to the platform.
Further off is the goal of expansion beyond New York to other cities in the Northeast and the South.
“These are related areas — managing a building and doing a great job. We are going to keep in consumers’ minds and remind them of the fact that we are also brokers working with them to list,” Ehrlich told Inman in January. “The idea is to be able to directly market various services that relate to people’s day-to-day lives and homes and take that and improve the experience they are having.”
