AI fuels HomeZada's compelling upgrade: Tech Review Update

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This article was last updated March 15, 2024.

HomeZada is an AI-based home management and agent loyalty solution.

Platforms: Browser; mobile-responsive

Ideal for: Homebuyers, owners and agents
Initial review: March 2015
Update: March 2024

Top selling points:

• AI home data input
• Home project pricing/budgeting
• Deep ChatGPT integration
• In-depth room-by-room analysis
• Insurance reporting

Top concern(s):

Its UI could use some modernization, and while the app is mobile responsive, in time a fully mobile version that allows for at least some of its high-level features could further its benefits.

What you should know

HomeZada is a digital home management solution that agents can facilitate on behalf of their clients. It is best used by buyer representatives to add value at a time when that very thing is being called into question.

The interface allows users to quickly onboard a home with merely an address and a few initial data entry efforts. The AI backend quickly populates location data and thus, tax information, recorded mortgage data via public databases, as well as square footage, room highlights and other publicly available characteristics.

Rooms, or spaces, can be captured via individual images or video, and Zada AI, a deep integration with ChatGPT, will detail each space’s interiors, identify fixed assets versus personal items, assign values and categorize an entire home’s contents for easy value tracking and reporting, even assembling it all for a quick send to an insurance company via PDF. The application also uses its AI to recommend periodic and recurring, location-based maintenance tasks, estimate major and minor home repairs and provide quality-level-based renovation estimates.

There’s a cool news feed for the user highlighting weather concerns, home to-dos, home value data and other important insights, as well as in-depth cost of ownership reports, templated home projects to follow and in general, a number of ways to fully understand the ins and outs of having a mortgage.

I reviewed HomeZada very early on in this column’s existence, nine years ago, in fact. To get my few concerns out of the way, there are still some of the same interface design elements in today’s version. Time for a new look and feel.

And that’s kind of it for the annoying parts. I had a really good time seeing how far this software has come, as it’s a testament to what AI is capable of doing when applied vertically, that is, on the back-end to power a product from end-to-end. It’s a remarkable time-saver and one of the better ways I’ve seen AI used to improve a product from its initial launch.

My longstanding issue with home management applications was the manual upfront effort required to populate the system with what it needs to create value. (Absolutely no one is going to scan a dishwasher manual.) Those concerns are now gone, making HomeZada and any of its ilk that use it much more beneficial ways for agents to assist consumers.

The Inventory component will pull from a photo and its label (e.g., living room, office, child’s bedroom) a predicted list of items with a short description. It can be edited if needed, as can the predicted value of each. And again, it separates fixed assets (things likely to stay at move-out) from personal items.

The resulting list can be an ideal hand-off to a buyer if produced by a listing agent prior to sale. This means that listing agents can also add some value by agreeing to set up an account for a nicely marketed hand-off upon closing.

In addition to its room-by-room contents analysis, Zada AI can be deployed to generate highly detailed renovation estimates based on high, mid-range or basic level of quality finishes and fixtures. You can ask it to recalculate a kitchen do-over with Wolf appliances, for example. You can choose to hand that estimate off to a contractor as a demonstration of what you expect (no professional is obligated to use it) or tell the system it’s a DIY job. It will then crank out instructions on how to help you get it done. This can be performed for a baseboard replacement or a home office remodel.

The renovation module gives agents a solid baseline in arguing for or against pre-sale makeovers. The listing agent can hand over the report to the buyers for their consideration, too.

Yes, agents can use HomeZada to keep themselves in front of their clients during the ownership phase. They can advertise services within the app, maintain a brand presence above the fold and generally keep track of the owner’s activity. These are table stakes for solutions in this category.

I’m much more impressed with HomeZada’s use of ChatGPT beyond its most common, surface-level scenarios. Company leadership could have easily used the popular product to merely speed home item descriptions, power agent emails or summarize critical appliance documents. It decided on a harder, more valuable path.

Real Brokerage’s CTO Pritesh Damani told me that AI is worthless without proprietary data. Maybe not “worthless,” but certainly “not as valuable.” HomeZada knows this too, and the results of that wisdom are layered all over the latest iteration of their product.

While I reviewed HomeZada in 2015, it’s been around longer. That’s a long time for an entry in this field to stick around, so maybe I’m wrong about the front-end design. Does it look as good as, say, CORE Home or LiveEasy? Maybe not. But its advantages over the former especially is that you don’t need to be plugged into a range of enterprise-level software products to fully realize its benefits. Any consumer can get ramped up in minutes, and their agent can, too.

No one knows where all of these commission lawsuits are going to lead. Maybe nothing will change. I know that at this moment though, what agents offer for what they get paid is being heavily scrutinized, and if there was ever a time to assess what you provide, and how you can offer more than the agent three cubicles away or the next zip code over, it’s today.

Do you have a product for our tech expert to review? Email Craig Rowe.