In 2015, America seems to be well on its way to living the quantified life: With straps for your wrists to count all your steps, apps for your phone to keep track of your financial accounts, and thermostats for your wall that let you tweak the temperature in your living room from 1,000 miles away, could apps that let you keep track of all the mundane tasks of homeownership the next big thing?

Homezada, a new startup, sure hopes not. Founded in California in 2011, the company aims to be a sort of Mint-for-your-home, an online one-stop shop that lets homeowners keep up with all the little niggling details of homeownership: Scheduling routine long-term maintenance, keeping track of things that need to be fixed or tallying up valuable property for homeowner’s insurance. The site encourages homeowners to create detailed, photo-rich inventories of each room in the home, which helps when planning out costs for a renovation project or, if need be, making an insurance claim in the event of a disaster.

The startup received $2.1 million in funding from a group of angel investors last year, and is now set on helping to conquer the real estate market:

HomeZada has added new features in recent months that allow data about the home to be transferable and customizable. That means that when a homeowner goes to sell their home, they can use their existing HomeZada data to create a sort of public-facing super-listing – not only can buyers see a beauty shot of the living room, they’ll be able to tell what kinds of appliances are in the kitchen and when they were purchased.

Having access to every little detail about the home is appealing to savvy Millennial buyers, said HomeZada founder Elizabeth Dodson. If a HomeZada seller recently had their roof redone – and the listing down the street has not – “now you can expose that [info to buyers],” she said. “That could be the difference” in making a sale.

Moreover, once the house changes hands, the new owners can be given access to all the data about previous repairs or maintenance that’s been done (the old owners can delete any info about their personal belongings).

For agents, HomeZada hopes that it can incorporate some of the firm’s data about the home’s past life into its own marketing. But it also suggests agents gift a subscription to the site to a client as a kind of housewarming. In exchange, the agent gets free ad space for their own branding/marketing within the app, so that every time the homeowner logs in to use the site, the agent is right there, and right in position to get the call when the current owner decides to sell in a few years’ time. Agents will be able to renew the branding for a small fee each year and they’re able to see which of their clients are still using the app, so they don’t have to waste money buying ads for an account where the homeowner has stopped using it.

“The marketing for a lot of agents stops [when the sale is complete]. This gives you a way to stay present and relevant” in a homeowner’s mind while they remain in the home, Dodson said.

Potential Pitfalls

The idea of having access to scads of data on exactly what’s going on with their home, as well as reminders that help them maintain it, could certainly be appealing to some of her tech-savvy, plugged in buyers, said Deb Agliano, tech-focused Re/MAX agent in Medford who runs the “Deb on the Web” site.

But Agliano foresaw some potential problems with some of HomeZada’s features. She spends a lot of time and effort on having a selection of well-lit, high-resolution listing photos taken for all her properties – and she’d rather not have those professional shot competing with amateur snaps of every last detail in the home.

But more importantly, the idea that a new homeowner might gain access to all kinds of information on prior renovations and repairs to the property, post-closing, “that scares me,” said Agliano.

It could create situations where the new owners are finding out about issues that their building inspector might well have missed in the traditional pre-sale home inspection; for example, past flooding in a renovated basement, or sub-par sub-floors under the new carpet. In general, if an agent is aware of issues with a home that turn up in a traditional inspection and fails to disclose them to buyers, they could face legal liability. It’s not clear whether, if a homeowner shows their agent their HomeZada account, the agent will then be responsible for disclosing when the chimney was last swept or whether the roof is due for new shingles.

“What if an owner did some repair work themselves, and it really should have required a permit, or a licensed professional?” said Agliano. “Now you’re opening up the seller and the agent to liability.”

But as more and more apps and technology crop up that help people track all kinds of info they may not have had access to before, this issue may be one more and more agents face.

Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com