{"id":118269,"date":"2025-05-20T23:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/118269\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T23:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:14:09","slug":"multifamily-fraud-fighting-startup-vero-closes-growth-equity-round-commercial-observer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/118269\/","title":{"rendered":"Multifamily Fraud-Fighting Startup Vero Closes Growth Equity Round \u2013 Commercial Observer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vero<\/b><\/a>, a screening and leasing platform for multifamily owners and renters, announced Tuesday that it closed a post-Series B funding round. The company also announced it has brought on a new leadership team.<\/p>\n

The Manhattan-based startup declined to disclose the amount of the latest funding, which it said closed the week of April 28. The latest funding follows Vero<\/a>\u2019s $9 million Series B, which was led in part by venture capital firm Fifth Wall<\/b><\/a> and closed in April 2023. Magnus Vik<\/b>, co-president and chief operating officer of Fifth Wall, did say the recent round was \u201csignificantly more than the Series B in terms of the total.\u201d<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: NewMark Merrill\u2019s Sandy Sigal Is a Realist About Retail\u2019s Future<\/a><\/p>\n

Sunriver Capital Partners<\/b><\/a> co-led the round for the residential operating and leasing system. Rebuild Capital<\/b><\/a> also participated.<\/p>\n

Along with the new funding, Vero announced that Jamey Rosamond<\/b> has been named the company\u2019s new CEO, and Travis Gibson<\/b> its new chief technology officer.<\/p>\n

The new funding comes at a time when applicant fraud in multifamily is exploding, much of it now AI-generated. A recent TransUnion<\/b><\/a> study found a 27 percent increase in rental fraud year-over-year with synthetic identity abuse rising sharply. Industry-wide, lease-related fraud is estimated to cost more than $10 billion annually, making it one of the most acute operational risks facing multifamily owners and operators. Vero claims to have flagged tens of thousands of fraudulent applicants across its platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think where Vero sits in the marketplace at the front end of all screening \u2014 and all the information that you get from, say, Apartments.com<\/b><\/a> to lease signing \u2014 is a very pivotal piece,\u201d said Rosamond. \u201cAnd we view that as a pretty big growth sector in the next several years. It is going to be extremely important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraudsters looking to occupy properties are using AI to add to the complexity of identifying and weeding out such applicants, said Rosamond. Simple identification like pay stub verification no longer necessarily works as there are multiple ways to fraudulently produce such items.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe marketplace is demanding a higher-tier solution,\u201d Rosamond said. \u201cI think there\u2019s what you would call point solutions at the front end that might cover a thumbs up\/thumbs down-type application flow. What the market is demanding is a product that can get the applicants in as quickly as possible, but also catch fraud on the other end. That\u2019s a combination of what Vero will be from a flexibility of product standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vero\u2019s customers include Camden Living<\/b><\/a>, Gables Residential<\/b><\/a>, IRT Living<\/b><\/a>, Quarterra<\/b><\/a> (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lennar<\/b><\/a>), Roots Management Group<\/b><\/a> and Venterra Realty<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In its current leadership transition, Lou Baugier<\/b>, Vero\u2019s founding CEO who led the company in its evolution from early-stage startup to partnership with several of the top 10 property management companies in the U.S., will continue to support the company as a senior adviser.<\/p>\n

Vero\u2019s new leadership brings extensive experience in propech, fintech and startup development. Formerly a co-founder and managing partner at Sunriver, Rosamond was also COO at RentPayment.com<\/b><\/a>, leading the company through its acquisition by MRI Software<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gibson was an early engineer at global card issuing company Marqeta<\/b><\/a>, playing a pivotal role in scaling the company\u2019s digital banking product suite through to an IPO. He later founded Proper<\/b>, a Y Combinator<\/b><\/a>-backed fintech startup, which Intuit<\/b><\/a> acquired in March 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a proven track record of building and scaling category-defining financial products, leading<\/p>\n

high-performance engineering teams, and driving innovation across both startups and enterprise environments, Travis brings the vision and technical depth to accelerate Vero\u2019s next wave of product growth,\u201d Copley Broer<\/b>, co-founder and managing partner at Sunriver, said in a statement. \u201cThis significant capital infusion \u2014 combined with a best-in-class leadership team and a robust pipeline \u2014 positions Vero to capitalize on its momentum and solidify its status as the category leader of choice for owner-operators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vero, a screening and leasing platform for multifamily owners and renters, announced Tuesday that it closed a post-Series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[51,52889,3134,52890,52891,52892,52893,52894,52895,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-118269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-copley-broer","10":"tag-entrepreneurship","11":"tag-icsc","12":"tag-jamey-rosamond","13":"tag-magnus-vik","14":"tag-proptech","15":"tag-proptech-insider","16":"tag-travis-gibson","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114542704317083173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}