The archive · Consumer Apps · Product decision · 2013–2025
QuintoAndar's no-guarantor rental bet: R$20B transacted, 300K contracts
Brazil's largest housing platform bet removing the fiador unlocks rentals; R$20B in a year and $4B valuation followed.
QuintoAndar
What the business is
An online rental-and-sales housing platform that guarantees rent payments and covers damage for landlords while letting tenants rent without a guarantor.
Starting capital：US$300M Series E (2021) at US$4B; about US$635M raised in total
How it started
André Penha and Gabriel Braga founded QuintoAndar in São Paulo in 2013, right after their Stanford MBAs, having watched qualified renters get excluded because they had no guarantor. Their first bet was that verified income data plus a guarantee could replace the fiador.
What happened
A $1.1M seed (2012) and a $7M Kaszek-led Series A (2015) funded the model; Series D in 2019 ($250M) made it a unicorn; Series E in 2021 raised $300M at a $4B valuation led by Ribbit Capital with SoftBank's LatAm fund. The playbook then scaled from rentals into sales, QPreço pricing, AI search, and city-by-city expansion.
How it ended up
Still running and expanding: R$20B transacted in 12 months, 300,000 managed rental contracts, 13,000 new rental contracts and 2,100 sales per month as of June 2025; R$100M Rio push announced for 2026.
Background
In Brazil, renting traditionally required a fiador — a property-owning guarantor willing to sign for you. Millions of otherwise-qualified tenants had none, and landlords had no safe way to rent to them. QuintoAndar, founded in São Paulo in 2012 by André Penha and Gabriel Braga, bet that this structural barrier was the real bottleneck: replace the guarantor with data-based screening and a platform guarantee of rent and damage coverage, and the rental market would unlock.
The strategy worked. By June 2025 QuintoAndar had surpassed R$20 billion in transaction value in 12 months and managed 300,000 rental contracts, all secured without a guarantor. It recorded more than 15 million monthly visits, about 13,000 new rental contracts and 2,100 sales contracts per month, and 5,000+ partner agents using its tools. The model also produced a compounding data advantage: every screening decision improved the underwriting that made the guarantee affordable.
Capital followed the traction: a $250M Series D in 2019 made it a unicorn, and a $300M Series E in 2021 valued it at $4 billion, with Ribbit Capital leading and SoftBank's Latin America Fund participating. The company then expanded the playbook from rentals into property sales, algorithmic pricing, AI search, and a R$100M push into Rio de Janeiro announced for 2026.
What has to be true
- It attacked the true market barrier (the fiador requirement) instead of building a better listings site, which is why both supply and demand came.
- Taking rent-default and damage risk aligned incentives: landlords got guaranteed income, tenants got access without collateral.
- The screening data created a durable moat — more transactions meant better risk models and cheaper guarantees.
- The guarantee also monetized the core transaction, so growth and unit economics grew together.
What can be applied
When a market's bottleneck is trust or collateral, remove that specific barrier by taking on the risk yourself — bearing it is what builds liquidity.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 QuintoAndar is alive and scaling as Latin America's largest housing platform. It crossed R$20 billion in annualized transaction value in 2025, manages 300,000+ rental contracts, and is investing R$100M+ per city in expansion pushes across Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro while extending into sales and adjacent services.
Sources
- QuintoAndar surpasses R$ 20 billion in total transaction value in one year
- Brazilian Marketplace QuintoAndar Raises $300m at Extraordinary Valuation
- QuintoAndar records 37% growth in rental agreements in Belo Horizonte
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