news release

Real Estate Payment Services Leader Secures Venture Funding for Expansion

PropertyBridge Innovates With Comprehensive Electronic Payments Solution

OAKLAND, CA - January 31, 2006 – PropertyBridge, Inc., an Oakland, California-based payment services provider, today announced that it has closed a Series A funding round of $2 million. Claremont Creek Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage information technology companies, led the investment. The funding validates PropertyBridge’s position as the leading managed payments service provider in the multifamily housing and property management industries. Real estate industry investors Dennis O’Brien, founder of The O’Brien Group, and Jim Klingbeil, chairman and CEO of Klingbeil Capital Management, also participated in the financing.

“Claremont Creek is an ideal working partner for PropertyBridge,” said Ryan Gilbert, CEO of PropertyBridge. “The mix of payments industry experience and proven entrepreneurial leadership offered by Claremont Creek will be invaluable for our team. Our goals are ambitious but realistic, and Claremont Creek’s deep domain expertise and commitment of support are huge bonuses as we look to achieve those goals and further build on our market leadership position.”

The PropertyBridge Payments Platform processes the largest dollar volume of automated electronic payments in the multifamily housing industry, handling payments for over 1.3 million residential tenants. PropertyBridge enables residents to pay rent and other lease-related transactions using any of six payment types including payment cards (credit and debit), ACH, and e-checks. PropertyBridge provides large property management firms with a previously unattainable level of integration and administrative efficiency in this key area of their business.

“PropertyBridge marks a terrific initial investment for Claremont Creek,” said John Steuart, Claremont Creek Managing Director. “Residential rent payments total more than $200 billion annually in the United States, and yet a miniscule fraction of that business is conducted electronically. This is a virtually unexplored product space in both the technology and real estate industries, and PropertyBridge's early successes and strategic relationships with financial industry leaders, including Visa USA, bodes well for an exciting future. PropertyBridge’s experienced management team and its sustainable and replicable business and revenue model are also key ingredients—they have the legal know-how and business experience to deliver a fully compliant and innovative product to market. As an Oakland-based venture fund investing in an Oakland-based company with such potential, we feel that this is a landmark moment.”

“We have spent the past two years developing a concrete foundation of services, technology and relationships that have positioned PropertyBridge as the primary automated electronic payments solution in multifamily housing,” said Jason Gardner, president of PropertyBridge. “Along with our investment partners, we look forward to furthering support of our clients, industry partners and real estate owners and managers with the next generation of payment services and technologies.”

Claremont Creek Ventures focuses on early-stage, fast-growth companies based in the eastern half of the San Francisco Bay Area. PropertyBridge is Claremont Creek’s first portfolio company, with the funding serving as a model for additional upcoming investments. Claremont Creek’s founding partners Nat Goldhaber, John Steuart, and Randy Hawks have combined strong operational backgrounds with highly successful investment experience in product and market areas that are closely aligned with PropertyBridge’s opportunity. Additional Claremont Creek team members include Steve Elefant, previously co-founding Chairman and President of ICVerify, Inc., the worldwide leader in PC-based credit/debit card and check authorization and payment processing software.

About PropertyBridge, Inc

PropertyBridge, Inc. is rapidly emerging as the leading provider of automated payment processing services for the real estate management industry. Formed in 2003 by a diverse group of financial services, technology, marketing and real estate professionals, PropertyBridge launched its first solutions for large multifamily housing and property management firms in 2004. PropertyBridge now serves customers across the United States. These include some of the largest residential real estate management companies serving hundreds of thousands of tenants. PropertyBridge collaborates extensively with some of the financial service industry's largest organizations including Visa USA, Wells Fargo Bank, Discover Financial Services and MasterCard.

Contacts

Peter Mansfield
Vice President of Marketing
310-245-9600
pmansfield@propertybridge.com