Homing In
Homing InHoming In, the app providing expert-sourced home values in real time, competed in and won the San Diego Startup Week 2016 Idea Competition, powered by Ideator last month.
Spearheaded by Todd Miller and Kristian Peter, Homing In gives people a value for their home that is more accurate than an appraisal and completely free for the home-owner. Homing In came to be after the founders saw the problems that arise with inaccurate online estimates and how that influenced their decision making.
As detailed on their idea profile, Homing In is “lifting the veil of secrecy about real estate home values and the $400 “appraisal” fee that is charged to get a single “opinion of value” that is otherwise meaningless since it’s not necessarily what a buyer would be willing to pay for your home.”
How does the solution work exactly? “Using our iOS or Android mobile app,” Todd said, “a home owner can take a few pictures of their home and add any information they believe gives their home value. Nearby real estate professionals can respond through the app, with the homeowner being anonymous, and provide the homeowner with valuable information about their home’s value and what things they could do to improve it prior to selling. Homeowners can get numerous values back from agents to really get a picture of what the house might actually sell to a buyer for.” (Full profile details here).
They make it easy to get a home value, and keep up to date about the value of your home.
Winning the competition helped the team gain:
1. more awareness in the San Diego entrepreneurial ecosystem
2. feedback by the panel of judges
3. a one year subscription to ScaleFlex, the on-demand cloud platform for development and testing (ScaleMatrix ScaleFlex Cloud Service)!
The hardest challenge the team has faced in driving adoption for the mobile application? “Getting people to take photos when they submit a home value request. Without them the estimate is less accurate.” Todd said.
“We don’t share the photos with anyone [and] we are making it easier for homeowners and agents to communicate so that they can gain some trust and provide the agents with pictures.” They tackling this hurdle “by implementing a completion indicator and letting users know before they submit their home value request that their valuation will likely be inaccurate and as they load more pictures and enter more notes the user is notified that they are getting a more accurate value.”
Homing In App
Currently Homing In is using Ideator as a means to collaborate with a community of ideators, advisors and investors. Competing in the SDSW idea competition helped the team experiment and validate a new pitching style for them. “We tried something new,” Todd said. “Instead of doing the same pitch we did to 500 Startups and SXSW and every other pitch competition that everyone does, myself and my co-founder did an alternating conversation where we were talking to the group separately as a homeowner and a real estate agent, starting with the problem, and then how we solved it for each of us. We believe that the open format showed that we were innovative and also helped people understand what we are doing from a common sense easy perspective that we solve problems for consumers and real estate agents.” Well done team, it clearly worked!
If you’re in the market to sell your home or interested in testing out their app, you can download it for iOS here.
