Utah-based proptech Homie has laid off one-third of its employees, in accordance with experiences.
Hunter Richardson, former director of expertise advisory and acquisition at Homie, posted on LinkedIn that he was among the many one-third affected however declined to touch upon his being let go.
Homie was based in 2015, and in accordance with its CEO and co-founder Johnny Hanna’s LinkedIn web page, it most not too long ago employed “over 270 folks.” The corporate’s web page on LinkedIn reveals 311 workers. PitchBook signifies 315 workers as of 2021. Doing the mathematics – if one-third of the employees was let go, that could possibly be anyplace from 90 to 105 affected folks.
Homie was one of many many proptechs that started off as a web-based brokerage aimed toward serving to dwelling consumers and sellers navigate the acquisition and promoting course of. It turned recognized for reducing out conventional closing prices, 6% actual property commissions and the arduous paperwork related to conventional dwelling gross sales. Over time, in an effort to be a one-stop store, Homie expanded into offering dwelling mortgage, insurance coverage and title companies.
On its LinkedIn web page, the corporate stated:
Right this moment, we made the troublesome choice to scale back the scale of our firm based mostly on the impacts of the altering actual property market. It was the toughest choice we now have ever needed to make. Each one in every of these proficient people will not be simply our co-workers; they’re our buddies. These affected are a few of the most expert, dedicated, and unbelievable professionals and folks. Their contributions have formed Homie’s tradition and merchandise and made it doable for us to assist 1000’s of shoppers throughout a number of markets. We’re doing all we are able to to assist every homie whereas they transition to the following chapter of their careers.
This discount is not going to influence our capability to serve our purchasers in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Idaho. Restricted housing stock has additionally created a difficult actual property marketplace for dwelling consumers; driving up costs and making homeownership much less and fewer accessible. We are actually refocusing on serving to resolve this drawback by making shopping for a house doable for extra folks. These leaving as we speak have helped to construct the merchandise to make this a actuality. They are going to be vastly missed.
In March 2021, Deseret Information reported that Homie was trying to rent 1,000 “new buy-side actual property brokers throughout all of its markets” by 12 months’s finish. At the moment, it operated in 5 states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Utah.
In accordance with Crunchbase, Homie has raised a complete of $35.1 million in enterprise capital since its inception. In February of 2020, TechCrunch reported that it had raised $23 million in a Sequence B spherical of funding after seeing 150% development the 12 months earlier than. Its press launch on the topic included no point out of collaborating traders.
The corporate is one other instance of how arduous the actual property tech startup group has been hit by the current modifications within the trade panorama. When rates of interest have been at historic lows, enterprise was booming and there was hiring left and proper. However now that rates of interest are greater and refinancings have slowed down and stock shortages abound, firms within the area are clearly taking successful
On the time of writing, Homie had not responded to our requests for remark. It is a creating story.
