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Homie never strove to be a brokerage of 22 agents. Its plans were much bigger than that.
The Utah-based discount brokerage was on a path for rapid growth. Its provocative billboards, which once lined the state’s most heavily trafficked highway, captured the attention of consumers and real estate professionals alike as it grew into one of the biggest brokerages in the region.
The company weathered backlash from agents at traditional brokerages and rode the crest of the COVID housing market that spiked homebuying activity and home prices, a double whammy that helped drive consumers to the venture capital-backed discount brokerage.
The company had lofty aspirations of having 1,000 agents in 2021 and plans to expand far beyond the Intermountain West, a feat that, if accomplished, would have made the company among the largest brokerages in the nation.
Today, Homie is just a shell of its former self. Deflated by alleged boycotts from competing agents, disciplinary action by the state and a down market, Homie was sold in February and now operates as a brokerage with fewer than two dozen agents in Utah and Arizona, many of whom have no active listings.
In recent months, real estate professionals in Utah began speculating that Homie had closed for good.
“I’ve never had a potential client say, ‘Well, we were thinking of using Homie,’” said Salt Lake City-based broker Babs De Lay. “My clients generally are educated enough to know you get what you pay for. We don’t even think it’s around.”
“It’s an interesting thing, which is kind of disturbing to us agents. The minute they stopped doing all of the extreme slamming of agents — Remember all the billboards they had? — once they stopped doing all of that, they really had a hard time,” said Patricia Laforte, a transaction coordinator near Salt Lake City.
Homie is still around. It’s just turning the corner in a remarkable pivot from market disruptor to a small outfit looking to win listings on the promise of a discount.
Credit: Homie / Facebook
New ownership
According to records filed with the state of Utah, the brokerage name was sold to Tyler Tiberius in February. The filing was signed by a representative with a Utah-based investment firm called Wasatch Group, a previous backer of Homie.
Tiberius is an entrepreneur whose companies, Tiberius Technology and Tiberius Arms, create training for police and military, and who has a history of creating paintball guns and non-lethal police weaponry.
His family made international headlines in 2022 when his wife gave birth to identical triplets at the age of 46, giving the couple seven boys.
It’s not clear whether Tiberius has a history in real estate. He isn’t registered as having a real estate license in either of the two states Homie now operates in.
Tyler Tiberius
State records show that the entity Homie Broker was created last fall by a group that includes Tiberius and John Hanna, who was CEO and co-founder of Homie before he left in September 2022. The real estate agent Bob Ross, Homie’s principal broker, is also listed in state records as a manager of the company.
Hanna didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. A Homie spokesperson said he isn’t part of the Homie Broker team, despite his inclusion in state records as a manager of Homie Broker.
Ross is the principal broker for Homie Broker in Utah, where the company has 20 licensed agents, and Arizona, where Homie has two agents. Ross referred questions to a spokesperson and didn’t respond to a request to talk about the brokerage.
Homie Broker, the current company, is separate from Homie Technology, which is the entity that is suing the National Association of Realtors and a handful of other competitors that Homie said conspired to defeat it.
Homie declined to share details with Inman about the transaction, make Tiberius available for an interview, answer questions about the company’s plans under the ownership change or confirm Tiberius’ identity as the owner of Homie as well as Tiberius Arms and Tiberius Technology.
Homie’s marketing director said the company still had its eye on expanding again.
“Homie Broker LLC remains committed to keeping fees low and transparent, continuing the original mission of making homeownership more affordable and accessible for all,” said Sarah Edelman, the marketing director. “Thoughtful expansion beyond Utah and Arizona is also part of the longer-term vision as the company grows in a sustainable, service-driven way.”
A remarkable shakeup
A year ago, Homie shed half its staff, converted its salaried agents to contractors, and saw the resignation of key leadership.
Homie has offered scant information about the company’s status, although it provided some answers to Inman’s questions.
In recent months, Homie shuttered its ancillary service, Homie Loans. Nearly all of its original leaders have moved on.
Less than a month before Tiberius and Hanna created the entity called Homie Broker, Mike Peregrine resigned from the company, which was officially called Homie Technology, in November 2023.
The company once offered mortgage, title and insurance. Homie Loans surrendered its real estate license to the state of Utah at the end of 2024, records show.
Homie Broker lists 20 active agents and brokers in the state of Utah. It has two active agents in Arizona, plus Ross as the designated broker, according to records in that state.
The hollowed-out company raised $23 million in funding rounds as recently as 2020, when it said it was aggressively fundraising to expand far beyond Utah.
In June 2017, within 18 months of its launch, Homie claimed to be the seventh-largest brokerage in Utah. The company said at the time that it closed 800 transactions in the previous year and had a “run rate just under 3 percent market share,” which in 2016 would have amounted to 1,470 deals, according to Hanna.
The company said that in 2019 it was the top brokerage in Utah by sales volume, a number that’s difficult to confirm. It said that year that nearly three out of every four Homie agents was awarded a Realtor 500 for being one of the top producers in the state.
With its small team of agents, Homie is still committed to offering discount services to sellers, the company said, with sellers paying a flat $5,500 fee to list their home below $1 million, or $11,000 for homes above.
For De Lay, Homie’s contraction wasn’t necessarily a remarkable pivot as much as it was an inevitable shift as the market slows.
“Those kinds of companies surface when it’s an incredibly big sellers market,” De Lay said. “Then they vanish when the market settles down.”
