Funding Fridays—Homebound raises $75 million Series C

Homebound—a tech-enabled custom homebuilder born out of the 2018 California wildfires with a mission to rebuild homes more efficiently—has raised $75 million in a Series C funding round led by Khosla Ventures.

Homebound, whose mission is to serve as a next generation homebuilder that makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to own a home, plans on using its latest funding to help address major housing inventory shortages across the country.

Prior to 2021, Homebound exclusively focused on helping homeowners rebuild in disaster areas but recently the company pivoted to apply its personalized homebuilding services to non-disaster use cases as well.

Homebound has taken key learnings from their disaster rebuilds and applied the same streamlined, tech-enabled building processes to make custom homebuilding an option for homeowners in all markets.

In addition to its $75 million Series C, Homebound also secured hundreds of millions in debt from Goldman Sachs bringing the company's total funding to date to $148 million. Other investors that participated in this latest round of funding include Google Ventures, Forerunner, Thrive, Fifth Wall, Deer Park Road, as well as former Amazon executives Jeff Wilke and real estate developer Stephen Ross.

Homebound will use this influx of debt to acquire new properties. The company uses a combination of machine learning and data to purchase land in mostly off-market transactions.

While the construction industry has long been plagued by inefficiencies, Homebound feels its robust tech stack that is used at every step of the homebuilding process can help address said issues from in efficient labor productivity to underwhelming customer experiences.

Using Homebound's proprietary tech platform, home builds are completed 80% faster through pre-construction, 10% faster during construction, and approximately 8x more efficient during the architecture and design phase.

Combined together through all phases of home construction, Homebound claims to save its clients up to 30% when compared to other local custom home builders.

CEO Take: With Homebound's pivot to non-disaster markets and expansion into Austin, Texas, the company is using technology to apply its proprietary building process to the custom homebuilding process.

With historic housing shortages sweeping across the country, Homebound turned to investing significant amounts of funding into its tech stack to help power its purchase property program. They used machine learning as well as rich data to help potential homeowners find land to purchase—most often in off-market transactions.

From there, Homebound helps homeowners develop architectural plans, customize designs, and complete construction of their home. In Austin, the typical building cost for a standard single family home is approximately $500,000 depending on a variety of factors—not including land. 

Utilizing mostly off-market transactions for land means Homebound would rely on property listings not available on multiple listing services (MLS) such as the robust property data that Estated offers on over 150 million residential and non-residential properties nationwide across the United States to find compelling land offerings for its clients.

Congratulations to Homebound on your recent expansion and if you're ever in the market for a more accurate property data supplier to help with finding and evaluating land for potential clients, click below to schedule a chat with us!

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About Estated: Estated is a leading property data provider with records on over 150 million residential and commercial properties nationwide across the United States. 

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