AI-powered platform redefines the home ownership experience

Artificial intelligence is reshaping our professional and personal expectations and experiences, and now it’s entering the home.

An AI-powered home platform changes every corner of home ownership, offering an improved experience for the homeowner and also for home service professionals.

HomeZada Founders John Bodrozic and Elizabeth Dodson added AI functionality to their digital home management platform to help homeowners maximize the value of their largest asset.

The platform offers seven tools for homeowners to manage their homes, from a home renovation budget calculator to instant photo identification of any item in the home for insurance purposes, to severe weather alerts tailored to a specific property address.

“I was coming from the commercial building real estate management side and I thought it was crazy that we can manage a billion dollar casino but I can’t manage my house,” Dodson said. “So we started digging 11 years ago to build a digital home management product. It started with storing images for insurance purposes, then we added 50 common home improvement templates and also moved on to the financial side of updated home values ​​and tracking all expenses, utilities, property taxes.”

HomeZada has invested heavily to build the platform with genetic AI technology. The app can now empower a homeowner to be smarter about the factors affecting their home, with guidance on maintenance and improvement projects and their impact on home value.

In the US, median home prices have risen above $400,000 nationally, so the average annual cost of owning and maintaining a home is 26% higher now compared to 4 years ago, according to the Hidden Costs of Homeownership Study of Bankrate. Thus, it is increasingly important to make wise financial choices about homes.

The report also estimates a tab of more than $18,000 a year to maintain the typical home, which adds up to $1,510 a month on top of an already hefty mortgage payment. That’s up 26% from 2020, when the same costs were $1,202 a month.

Resilience with AI information

As increasingly intense storms compromise homes, homeowners are concerned about resiliency features to stay home safe and protect their home’s equity.

“Once you know the location, you can ask HomeZada what natural disaster risks the home will face,” Brodozic said. “It will identify and explain why it is a risk, identify those that may not be covered by insurance and then recommend insurance options.”

HomeZada is integrated with the National Weather Service to share severe weather alerts from the app based on home longitude and latitude. The homeowner can initiate HomeZada’s AI to understand any mitigation they can perform in 24 hours that would help protect their home.

Durability and its impact on home insurance premiums is another critical factor putting pressure on housing affordability. According to Insurify, the average annual home insurance rate increased by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023. In addition, costs are expected to increase another 6% this year.

Remodeling The Remodel Process

HomeZada can leverage artificial intelligence to compare various project options, along with their trade-offs and iterations, to determine the overall home improvement project beyond simple design. The process includes overall scope and budget, specific brands and products, professional resource requirements, project schedule and duration, and expected impact on home value.

For example, a bathroom renovation has an average of about 15 different options, which are pre-defined in a HomeZada template. So when the user starts a budget for a renovation, this template is combined with HomeZada data on the home’s specific address to guide the user through the price range, from lower-end products to higher-end luxury products, for their remodel.

The user then provides rough room dimensions so the AI ​​that HomeZada builds can estimate quantities and unit prices for all line items with 90% accuracy.

Then the user experience becomes even more interesting because now they can have a continuous dialogue with the AI ​​tool to ask for specific elements.

“As the user provides more data, it could completely redo the estimate for them,” Bodrozic said.

The AI ​​has been taught options over time, so it’s smart about home renovations, and the data is returned to the user in a structured chat window as take-off material, including items, quantity, unit and price.

“It works for any project in our template as well as projects that are not in our template,” he said. “The user can still get a suggested list of items and can also start from an open remodel, for example asking the tool to prescribe improvements to make a home more energy efficient.”

However, having the list is only the beginning. The homeowner also has to find a contractor to get the job done, and while this technology can greatly reduce the time contractors have to spend educating prospective or new customers about the process and what’s possible , contractors are in high demand right now and in some cases, hard to find.

The last Construction Labor Market Report from the Home Builders Institute shows that there were more than 400,000 open construction jobs in early 2024.

Another AI powered tool, Shovelful, helps find the right workforce in today’s tight market. The data-centric company tracks all contractors, knows how many active jobs they have and how long it takes them to complete a job. This dataset allows a user to filter by service area and availability.

Shovels also provides a directory of contractors with unbiased, objective ratings on a number of factors based solely on data. The contractor is rated based on permit type, inspection pass rate, and time to complete a permit. The AI ​​constantly refreshes the data and incorporates weather, topography and other factors that may affect their success.

Making the professional’s life easier

HomeZada also has a professional platform that offers something for all stakeholders in a home, including the real estate agent, mortgage broker, remodelers and builders.

“The layout and design element of a remodel and the architectural issues are not part of the process — we don’t have that capability,” Bodrozic said. “It’s about the financial aspect of getting the consumer to a place to know if they spend $8,000 what would the results be compared to if they spend $20,000 so they can be a smarter consumer when engaging a professional and helping them maintains its budget. “

The HomeZada platform helps a homeowner prepare for the home improvement process as a whole before calling an architect or contractor, saving the contractor time and money needed to train a homeowner. Additionally, it allows the contractor to screen leads, shortens the sales process, and eliminates at least some of the non-revenue down payments.

HomeZada estimates that this savings could be as much as 2 hours for an initial project consultation meeting and 10 hours of project planning and design, which at an average of $160 per hour would be more than $1,900.

Then there are the big wins with improved homeowner leads and contractor profit rates. By focusing on better leads and eliminating the pursuit of bad leads, the contractor could save another 10 hours per month. The new wins and referrals they bring would be of incalculable value to contractors.

This time savings also frees contractors to focus on the other areas of their business that provide a more immediate opportunity to generate revenue, reduce costs and maximize efficiency.

For homeowners, HomeZada offers three different pricing models. For the professional, HomeZada is transaction based and the professional can pay to manage a customer’s home and then share the information with the home owner.