The real estate industry is beginning to pull out of the vicious cycle of lead to close; great firms and agents are looking at their client as a customer for life, rather than a lead. It’s the next step for the real estate industry to truly evolve from a “used car sales” mentality to a trusted advisor role. Repeat and referral clients are 70% or more of every agent’s business, but lost sales are a huge erosion. Top real estate professionals who spend as much time staying connected with past clients in meaningful ways are rising to the top. Tom Ferry calls these “homeowners under management”, and Homeowner.ai is a great tool for doing it.

Homeowner.ai was formerly called Milestones. They rebranded recently. We have been tracking the company since they closed $10 Million Series A funding in July of 2022. By September of 2022, they surpassed 250,000 agent users to give Homeowner.AI portals to their clients. In the month of January 2024, they hit an inflection point where they grew consumer onboarding by over 500% in one month.  Now I believe that the company will continue to see exponential growth as they enable their services through MLSs, Mortgage companies, title companies, insurance companies, and more. CoreLogic’s version of Homeowner.ai is called OneHomeowner.

The Hubs are great

When I log in, I see everything that I would expect to see for my home – much like my healthcare portal, my bank portal, my investment portal, my insurance portal, etc. All of these industries understood well before real estate that consumers like portals to manage their relationships. With Homeowner.ai, our industry can finally get with it.

The “finances” tab tops anything that you can get through Homebot or Zillow. It shows four AVMs and blends them together. More than that – the finances tab gives market insights from the MLS (thanks to my agent pictured below on the right), options for cashing out, and an assessment of my purchasing power. Brokers can add their loan officers, insurance reps, and more within the right column. These are the homeowner’s trusted advisors, standing by and ready to answer any questions. 

My Home is the new feature that I love. This is where I can really personalize the systems in my home so that I can remember the service that is required for each. I have a fireplace in my home, so I selected the fireplace. It asked me if I had gas or wood. Based upon my selection, tasks were added to my Management page. This is what my wife (and partner) Marilyn calls the “Honey-Do List”.

My Honey-Do List

It shows that I need to get my fireplace tuned up and do a safety check. Since I cannot do that myself, I can hire a pro. The pro list shows the preferred companies recommended by my agent or broker, along with other options in a directory format. 

Managing a home is hard work, and consumers have never had access to a one-stop tool to keep it organized — until now. Just sitting here writing this in my kitchen, I can see the water filtration system, trash compactor, gas range, hood, refrigerator, ovens, coffee maker, microwave. Other than the microwave, they all need maintenance. 

Let’s discuss the water filter.

I have the under sink version.

I have Aquasana, when selected, it asks how old it is, because My Home tracks its life use and the required maintenance along the way.

And it knows that I need to change the filters every six months.

Of course, you see where this is going. I will get a reminder to replace my water filter under Management (my Honey-Do List) and the system will email me a reminder. Obviously, the next mile marker is to allow me to click to order and/or click to have a professional come in to install the new filters. 

But wait, there is more. 

Homeowner.ai will show me how to do it if I want to replace my own water filters. I just pop over to the knowledge center for step-by-step instructions.

This is the kind of technology that keeps the real estate professional connected to their customer in a meaningful way.

It’s the perfect client retention tool, but it is more than that. Agents should be setting up everyone with a homeowner portal – friends, family, prospects, even their own home. Amazing stuff, in my opinion.