HouseFix, the CarFax for homes
Named in the 60 Genius Brands to watch in 2012 list, HouseFix.com is already making moves just days into the new year, after launching barely four months ago to bring social recommendations to the home repair industry, giving homeowners a place to opine with known social connections about contractors in context rather than blindly reading strangers’ recommendations of repair professionals. The service also seeks to give contractors a way to have a stronger web presence, but more importantly, scores them based on user input and gives them a tracking mechanism for their projects. HouseFix acts as the CarFax for homes, giving every address a repair history – brilliant.
The company has now launched a brand new website, and new notifications so homeowners and contractors can work together seamlessly and with existing users. The company is currently focused on Philadelphia, where they have pre-populated over 16,000 contractors into the system which is how we believe they will roll out in all cities across America, which we are hoping happens in 2012.
Regarding what is next for the company, Co-Founder and CEO, Adrian Talapan tells AGBeat, “We will continue our focus on building an awesome social utility for our users. It is a more complex concept than your typical info sharing app that’s happening everywhere nowadays, so we are learning the best ways to present the idea and guide our users on how to live in this new world.”
Talapan added, “We strongly believe in our mission to make home ownership enjoyable, and to reward the contractors that do great work. The best homeowners and contractors really have an implied partnership going on, and we’d like to see that scaling to their respective neighborhoods and service areas. It will benefit both, and we’re simply enabling this transformation to take place.”
Talapan describes the HouseFix mentality, telling us, “Someone recently asked me, “Aren’t you just another Angie’s List or Service Magic?” To which I answered, “No, we’re more like Facebook limited to the home improvement contracting, combined with a transactional platform like eBay’s. Besides finding the best contractors and the best homeowners, our users actually do things in HouseFix, not just look up information. They engage and communicate with each other. They collaborate on projects and track their progress. Contractors enjoy a direct link to potential clients – what we offer them is like watching HDTV for the first time. And we love the fact that homeowners now have a simple tool to automatically build their house history, having all the information they need to maintain their home all in one place.”
Photo tour of new features
HouseFix gave AGBeat an exclusive photo tour of the new features and we have also featured the redesign below:
