Mexican Startup Kocomo Nets $56M for Vacation Homeownership in Sharing Economy

The Mexico City-based startup Kocomo announced on Monday (Aug. 30) that it had closed on $50 million in debt financing and $6 million in equity to help it meet its goal of making vacation homeownership more achievable.

As TechCrunch reported, the company’s mission is to go beyond traditional timeshare offerings to allow for cross-border ownership of high-end vacation properties.

Kocomo was founded earlier this year and has been “operating in stealth mode since May,” as the TechCrunch story put it. The company recently unveiled a beta of its website to connect with a waiting list of “select clients.”

“We are focused initially on Americans and Canadians wanting to buy a vacation home in Mexico, the Caribbean and Costa Rica, and then eventually we will be doing the same in Europe,” said Martin Schrimpff, co-founder and CEO of Kocomo.

Schrimpff said that spending more time with his family and friends became more important during the COVID crisis, leading him to a frustrating search for a vacation home. “Buying an entire vacation home that I was only going to use a few weeks a year, and which I’d have to manage myself, seemed wasteful, stressful and outdated,” he said. “Furthermore, it was impossible to find a beautiful house on the beach in Mexico that fell within my budget.”

He was also frustrated with going back to Airbnb year after year, which provided Schrimpff with“inconsistent quality and lack of professional management.” He talked this over with his co-founders, and the idea for Kocomo emerged.

Learn more: Vacation Home Startup Pacaso Raises $75M at $1B Valuation

While the company’s model is similar to another startup — the vacation home company Pacaso — Kocomo says its differentiator is that it deals primarily with international travel.

Launched in October of last year, Pacaso helps people co-own vacation properties by sharing ownership with others. The company purchases the homes and forms an LLC, then sells the properties with a minimum one-eighth investment. The percentage size of the investment determines the length of a vacationer’s stay.