Humming Homes, a home management startup that helps suburbanites care for lawns and fix leaky pipes, raised $5.6 million to help it expand beyond the northeastern U.S.
Venture capital firm Greycroft led the round, with backers that included AlleyCorp, Thrive Capital, Sound Ventures and New Valley Ventures. It brought the startup’s total funding to $8.1 million.
Humming Homes aims to provide home management for first-time homeowners, many of them millennials, who are finally abandoning urban rentals after getting used to sophisticated services, according to co-founder and CEO Adeel Mallick. Its software lets people monitor their homes, diagnose maintenance issues and manage repairs and services offered by local vendors.
“Our goal is to concentrate demand and actually push localized marketplaces that provide better availability, better pricing, better consumer experience — and we serve as the operating layer,” Mallick said in an interview.
While a number of platforms to manage rentals have emerged from the proptech ecosystem, relatively few target owner-occupied homes. Thumbtack and Angi are two prominent rivals, though no one company is dominant, Mallick said.
Humming Homes launched in October 2020 and, in its early phase, is targeting only “mass-affluent” households whose home values exceed $750,000. The priciest 10 percent of U.S. homes drive almost half the $500 billion that people spend each year on such services, he said.
“While it’s helpful to cast a very wide net for customers, that also is part of the reason it’s been difficult for a lot of these tech-enabled home services companies to hit exit velocity,” he said.
As of early October, Humming Homes managed homes collectively valued at $500 million, Mallick said. The main challenge: Persuading new homeowners that maintenance isn’t just a series of incremental, reactionary solutions.
Humming Homes is a subscription-based service for now. It may move to a more “a la carte” model as it expands beyond the Tri-State area, Mallick said. The company is initially targeting the South, and Florida in particular, where millennials and other first-time homeowners have gravitated. Humming Homes recently began a partnership with South Florida-based Douglas Elliman, which will advise the company on prospective new markets.
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