[Interview / Portland Business Journal] Exclusive: Smart home builder eyes Woodstock for new development
Oct 3, 2022, 3:27pm PDT Updated: Oct 4, 2022, 10:33am PDT
Homma Group Inc., a smart-home builder with headquarters in California and Japan, opened its first Portland development earlier this year in the North Tabor neighborhood and has purchased land to build another in nearby Woodstock.
Homma Haus Mount Tabor is an 18-unit multifamily project developed in partnership with Portland-headquartered design-build firm Green Hammer. Every unit includes smart infrastructure controlled through Homma's own app.
Homma Haus renters can use the app to control lighting that changes during the mornings and evenings, smart, key-free door locks and smart thermostats for each room, according to the NWV Group real estate listing. An in-home hub connects to a Homma mobile app.
The units, all of them 2-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom, are at 5115-5183 E. Burnside St. Sized between 1,100 and 1,200 square feet, the tech-outfitted units come at a premium, with rents running $2,795 to $2,995 on the available homes.
"If you were to try to wire your home the same way that a Homma home is wired for lighting, let's say, theoretically, you might be able to achieve the same level of energy savings (and) energy efficiency by having the lighting automated, right, having occupancy sensors, things like that, maybe," said Robert Pile, director of real estate development at Homma. "But I think where the Homma advantage really comes into play has to do with all of those systems being managed for you and delivered operating from Day One."
That combines with how workers have position light fixtures to capitalize on natural light in a way not possible in a retrofit case, he contends.
"The one big competitive advantage, for sure, versus the DIY side is that we're building a one-to-one relationship from one app and one home. So everything is happening in one app," Chief Design Officer Ede Schweizer said. "Homma is controlling all the things. We're not building any of the hardware, but we are orchestrating all the hardware to be working together."
Smart home features are part of a growing market. Revenue within the smart appliances segment in the U.S. is expected to hit $8.8 billion this year, with a projected market volume of nearly $14 billion by 2026, data provider Stastista forecasts. The trend hasn't gone unnoticed by tech companies. Home security heavyweight ADT Inc. this year bought the smart home startup Iotas, which Portland technologist Sce Pike founded in 2014 to help give renters the same access to smart infrastructure as homeowners.
As smart devices' profiles have risen, so have privacy concerns. The Amazon Echo Show device, for instance, features a smart speaker, display and camera but comes with a sliding plastic fixture that lets users block the lens if desired. Data privacy is another rocky frontier for companies to traverse.
"Yes, we are collecting data, but we're using that to improve the Homma experience, and we're keeping that ecosystem as closed as possible when it comes to the Homma app and also the resident," Schweizer said. He added later: "We're not interested in selling data, but we are interested in using that data to anticipate future resident needs." For instance, company officials use machine learning to anticipate residents' movements through their homes to prepare to turn lights on or off, he said.
The Homma Haus Mount Tabor is about 70% or so leased up, Pile said.
Plans are underway for another in the Woodstock neighborhood, said Pile, who has spoken with the neighborhood association.
The 15,000-to-20,000-square-foot development will feature a to-be-released number of townhomes and is budgeted at around $10 million, according to Homma. Construction should start in the second half of next year and end in the second half of 2024.
"We're leveraging the learning and the feedback from the tenants and the residents at Mount Tabor and incorporating that into this next project," Pile said.
Jonathan Bach
Staff Reporter
Portland Business Journal