Online Home Brokerage Rex Secures $45 Million investment

Rex, a Woodland Hills company that uses technology to sell homes, has secured $45 million in Series C funding. Last year, Rex expanded to Colorado, Texas, Northern California and New Jersey from its roots in Southern California and New York. The fresh funding will pay for a national expansion and add to its services. The company charges a fixed 2 percent commission covering both sides of the transaction with a team handling listing, escrow, title, mortgage and closing. The company said it increased listings by 300 percent last year, representing more than $1 billion worth of homes and saving customers more than $12 million in commissions they otherwise would have paid traditional brokers. “Rex is delivering a residential real estate solution in step with how consumers actually behave and what they actually want,” Scott McNealy, former Chief Executive of Sun Microsystems and an investor in Rex, said in a statement. “Rex has expanded rapidly and has been managing its business with incredible focus, and we’re delighted by the way home buyers and sellers across the U.S. are responding.” To date, the company has raised $75 million from private investors including McNealy; Dick Schulze, founder of Best Buy Co. Inc.; Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel; Amit Singhal, former senior vice president at Google; and Jack Greenberg, former chief executive of McDonald’s Corp. “We are at a transformational moment in the U.S. real estate market with consumers demanding lower costs, great service and the benefits brought by technology that have transformed so many other industries,” Jack Ryan, co-founder and chief executive of REX, said in a statement. “Rex offers a more affordable, convenient and transparent way to buy and sell homes, in contrast to all the brokerages that depend on the MLS model that uses protectionist practices to maintain outrageously high fees.”