New investors — Silicon Valley VCs and mom-and-pop landlords — are flocking to a Denver startup that just leased a new headquarters.
Flock Homes Founder Ari Rubin (Courtesy Flock Homes)
Flock Homes, which buys homes that are pooled in a REIT-styled fund, raised a $22 million round last month, according to SEC filings.
That brings the Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm to nearly $50 million raised since its founding in 2020, when it raised $1.7 million. Flock also raised $26 million in 2022.
Though founder Ari Rubin declined to comment on the specifics of this round, he said the company will start buying new types of real estate. The new office at 2930 Umatilla St. in LoHi is an extension of that growth.
Rubin signed a one-year lease for the space, with hopes to grow his 12-person team to over 20 in the coming months.
So far, Flock has amassed a nearly $200 million portfolio of 850 single-family homes, which make up its fund. Homeowners sell their homes to the company in exchange for shares.
Rubin said Flock will begin adding multifamily units this year.
“Our clients are the millions of Americans who have owned real estate for a long time, and they’re just like, ‘I need an exit strategy. I don’t wanna deal with real estate. I don’t wanna deal with the property manager,’” he said.
But the reason most sell to the company is to avoid triggering Uncle Sam. Flock’s process avoids depreciation or capital gains, Rubin said.
“If you just sell the thing outright, you’re gonna pay 20%-plus in capital gains tax,” he added. According to real estate website Orchard, Denver’s median sale price has gone from about $309,000 in April 2015 to nearly $561,000 in February 2025.
“Then you could lose up to 30% of that value to frictions and fees,” Rubin said. “And as a result of this, people don’t sell.”
Flock appraises its homes and then gives sellers shares of its total fund at that value, minus a processing fee Rubin said is comparable to paying a broker. Flock also charges an asset management fee.
Flock manages and collects rent on those properties, managing about half themselves and having property managers for the others. That money is paid out in quarterly dividends to its shareholders.
“Our main goal is not just to generate money. Our main goal is to solve a problem for these people. It’s capital preservation. It’s piece of mind. It’s tax deferral. It’s estate planning. It’s flexible liquidity,” Rubin said. “A lot of funds out there say they’re gonna double your money in two years. But our goal is … low-risk, peace of mind.”
By adding multifamily assets, Rubin is aiming to expose Flock fund shareholders to more asset-types and decrease risk.
“We want to provide people scale and diversification,” he said.
Out of his staff of about 30, a little less than half are in Flock’s Denver headquarters, which was previously in Cherry Creek. Rubin also said he has smaller teams in both San Francisco and New York City.
He said that the fund collects just over $1 million in monthly rent and that Flock posted roughly $10 million in revenue last year, mostly from on-boarding fees.
“When we’re growing, we’re doing a lot of revenue,” he added, saying the 2024 numbers were a 400% improvement on 2023’s.
Rubin, a Chicago native, dropped out of the graduate business school at Stanford to build the company. The 35-year-old Harvard grad previously worked as an investment manager at Denver-based Ibex Investors.
He has since moved to Palo Alto, California, but said he hopes to be back in Denver after his wife finishes a medical residency.
One day, he hopes Flock’s fund has nearly every type of real estate under its belt, including gas stations, hotels and car washes.
“There’s so much underutilized real estate out there, and people have spent their lives just stacking up these amazing assets and don’t know where to put them,” Rubin said. “The long-term vision is one day to have hundreds of thousands of homes and other assets.”
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