Ehome.com Gets 3rd Round of Funding

The San Jose-based online real estate company, who’s technology team calls Bellevue, WA its home, announced that it has secured $17.5 million in a successful 3rd round of funding.

According to the company’s Bellevue-based CTO and co-founder Patrick Husting, ehome is already moving forward with expansion plans and recently launched a new version of its online system. Its 2.0 version of its proprietary technology for the real estate market includes a marketing engine, lead generator and a work flow system to manage all steps from escrow to property disclosure and transaction management. “With our system buyers and sellers can log on to check the status of the transaction, send emails and chat. While better communication is one benefit of the system, reduction of fees is also a key benefit. “By streamlining the process we are able to bring down the commission of the sale side to 1.5% vs. the traditional fee of 6%.”

As regard expansion, the the company will actually open additional sales offices. “We believe that in order to be successful we need to have real estate professionals on the scene,” says Husting. “By October 2000 we will have 19 regional offices, which will constitute 65% of the U.S. real estate market.” The company currently has 11 regional offices. According to Husting, the company is looking into opportunities in penetrating the European, Australian and Taiwanese markets as well.