Nextdoor raised about $75 million to connect neighbors

Nextdoor, the neighborhood social networking site, raised about $75 million in a funding round, The Information reported, estimating that the valuation is $1.5 billion. The round was confirmed by TechCrunch.

This adds to the over $200 million that the San Francisco-based company has raised, dating back to 2010. Its last reported round was in early 2015 at a $1.1 valuation.

The report says that the funding comes from undisclosed new investors. Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins and Insight Venture Partners led the rounds previously.

Nextdoor has not responded for comment, but the new capital will likely help the business expand to more communities. In June, CEO Nirav Tolia told TechCrunch that the service was being used in 160,000 neighborhoods in the U.S., the U.K. and the Netherlands.

In August, he told TC told that he’d like the platform to be in 85 percent of U.S. neighborhoods by the end of this year. He also said that he’d like to continue its international expansion in Germany, India, Japan and Brazil.

The company recently began rolling out its real estate listings feature, bringing in new sponsorship revenue for the business. In-feed advertising accounts for the rest of the top line.

Nextdoor is used as a platform to communicate with neighborhoods about anything from new restaurants to local crime. In major cities, Nextdoor divides the platform into various sub-neighborhoods.

I personally use it to find out what’s going out in my local community within the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco. My own neighbors have more recently been venting about our 20-block hood having been coined The East Cut last summer (an alleged improvement over its name of Greater Rincon Hill Community Benefit District, though we were satisfied to call it Rincon Hill).

The platform is also considered helpful when it comes to learning about local events and stuff that neighbors want to either sell or give away, including (when one is lucky) nice furniture.