Homebound, a custom home building proptech startup, announced raising a $75 million Series C led by Khosla Ventures and hundreds of millions in debt equity from Goldman Sachs, according to TechCrunch.
The company, which was founded in 2018 to help rebuild homes destroyed by California wildfires, says it will use the funding to help address inventory shortages with its technology and increase its focus on off-market home transactions.
Existing investors including Google Ventures, Forerunner, Thrive, Irongrey, Fifth Wall and Deep Park Road also “substantially” participated in the funding round, according to the report. The company has now raised $148 million in total equity since its founding.
While Homebound saw potential in acquiring and flipping for-sale homes, it also saw that there was a major need for machine learning- and data-based tech investment based on its scaling speed and the lack of inventory in the market right now.
“We realized what we were facing in Austin and other markets across the country was a different kind of disaster, which is a historic housing shortage being compounded by record migration to a bunch of cities around the country that had some of the worst shortages in the country already going into this migration,” Homebound CEO Nikki Pechet told TechCrunch.
“While we had a plan and knew roughly what we were going to do, we could never have imagined the insane acceleration of Austin or what we’d be able to accomplish in what has definitively been the biggest 10 months in the history of the company,” Pechet said.
Strategically aimed at homes that cost between $500,000 and $1.5 million, Homebound has seen success and potential in Austin, by helping potential homeowners find land they want to build on and acquire the materials for the job.
In addition, they help homeowners along the way with architecture plans and the literal construction of the homes, using a set of plans that customers can choose from.
“In most cases, people can build a new home for less than they can pay for an existing home just because of the dynamics,” Pechet said.
In addition to investing in its tech stack, Homebound also plans to rapidly accelerate its scaling across new markets, with plans to start offering increased service in Dallas, Houston and Denver markets.
It also plans to use the new capital to increase its team size from the current 200 employees.
In other recent proptech news, Zego named Stephen Baker as new President and General Manager in an attempt to free up executive responsibility for US expansion. ICE Mortgage also announced its 2022 Technology Innovation Award Winners.