Where it started
There was a woman.
She needed a new furnace.
She had no reference point.
Parity was founded by someone who spent years inside one of the largest corporate home services platforms in the country, watching outside investors buy local companies, keep the trusted names, and send technicians to the door with tablets, tiered pricing and financing offers.
The playbook rested on one insight: homeowners have no reference point. They do not know what a furnace should cost, or that the company they called was sold six months ago. It is an emergency, they are scared, and they sign.
"We were quoting homeowners five times what someone else would charge. They only purchased because we offered predatory financing.
We preyed on the fact that they had no reference point."
Parity founder
One homeowner signing a financing agreement for a job that should have cost a fraction of the price. That is why Parity exists. She deserved a reference point.
The problem
The machine is
very good at hiding.
Outside investors have found that plumbing, heating and cooling, electrical, pest control and landscaping are an almost perfect business: essential demand, fragmented ownership, aging founders with no succession plan, and homeowners who cannot comparison shop.
88%
Rise in buyouts of heating and cooling companies by outside investors in a single year S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2025
$657B
US home services market outside investors are racing to own as much of as possible Philip A. Saunders & Associates, 2022
Up to 7x
What a PE-backed company can charge for the same service call as an independent Parity founder, firsthand as a rollup general manager
300,000+
Independent home service businesses still standing, and being targeted Philip A. Saunders & Associates, 2022
The playbook is simple. Buy a trusted local business. Keep the name on the truck. Do not tell the homeowners. Set prices above the independent down the street, add financing, and train technicians to close before they leave. The owner retired to Florida. The homeowner calling the number they have trusted for a decade has no idea.
Past, present, future
Where Parity
is going.
→
Where we are now
The watchdog
A public record of investor-owned home service companies still operating under a local name, and a verified directory of the independents. Searchable and free. Started on Long Island, expanding from there.
2
Down the road
A record, not a rating
Not anonymous reviews. A complaint goes to the owner first, with ten business days to make it right, and the details are never published. What builds is a record: complaints received, complaints made right, jobs verified by invoice.
3
The long game
Every trade. Every market.
The same playbook running in HVAC is running in veterinary, dental and funeral homes. Before anyone lets a stranger through their door, for any reason, they check Parity first.
How Parity is paid. Parity is free for homeowners. It is paid for by an optional $49.99 membership for verified owners, which buys promotion and extras, never the badge, and it may license its own research and anonymous totals. Parity never sells personal information or leads.
What we stand for
The principles that
never change.
1
The owner cannot hide.
Every verified contractor shows their face, puts their name on the badge, and has a public, permanent record. They cannot disappear.
2
A complaint cannot be bought off.
Every complaint goes to the owner first, with ten business days to make it right; the details are never published. The count is permanent: complaints received and complaints made right. No lawyer or payment changes that number.
3
Homeowners always have the last word.
When a contractor says they made it right, the homeowner decides whether they did. Not us, and not the contractor.
4
Information asymmetry is the weapon. We take it away.
The playbook runs on homeowners not knowing what fair looks like: who owns the company, what others paid, whether a complaint was real. Parity takes that away, one verified record at a time.
5
We never list companies that bought their way in.
Every contractor on Parity is verified as independently owned. The moment ownership changes to outside investors, the badge comes off. The verification is for the owner, not the business name.
Disclosure
Parity's founder owns and operates home service franchise locations. None of them is a verified listing on Parity. If that ever changes, the listing will say the founder owns it, and someone other than the founder will do the verification. The Ownership Record is built from public sources, and every entry links to them, so you can check the facts without taking our word for it.
⚖️
Home Services Industry Insider
Founder, Parity · (name withheld)
"It made me sick to watch investment groups buy up the home service companies your neighbors built over 30 years, put scripts in technicians' hands, and call it a customer experience. Parity exists to level the playing field. Homeowners deserve to walk in informed. Independents deserve to compete on merit. That's it."
Why anonymous? The author writes anonymously because of a non-disclosure agreement from prior employment in the industry. Every Ownership Record entry is sourced from public records. The site stands or falls on the sourcing, not on the byline.