New Home Portals: A Game Changer

The final instalment of our series on home portals will examine the features that make them so valuable, why they have the potential to change the way we think about buying a home and potential future uses as they become a standard.

Transferability is the most important feature of a new home portal. The average number of homes owned in a lifetime is going up due to the rising cost of real estate; in short, people are trading up as they progress through life. The number of exchanges combined with the long life of a home means that information disclosure from one owner to the next will become increasingly important.

In the age of information, content is king. From manufacturer documents, maintenance schedules and contact information for those who worked on the home, content is vital for the home portal to have any kind of impact. The original owner, armed with this information will be able to maintain the value of the home and keep any new home or extended manufacturer warranties they may have intact. This has the potential to impact the resale value of a home.

Universal access to the home's information through a portal can make a difference never before seen with homeownership. A home inspector, with access to the product documents such as operating manuals, maintenance & care guides and warranty information would be able to provide detailed reports as to how the upkeep of the home's components has been done over time and what extended warranties are still intact. This information will also allow the inspector to privide training on how to properly operate and maintain the home based on the manufacture's recommendations.

Looking to the future, home portals could allow standardization in terms of information disclosure, which will give variuos real estate related industries the ability to offer more advanced consumer protection. Insurance companies will be able to calculate replacement & repair costs more accureately based on the reocrds kept in the portal. History records simular to CarFax in the automotive industry will be easy to access for potential purchasers. As noted above, home inspectors could give a far more thorough home inspection and analysis with more information at their disposal. Standardization is the first step toward consumers having more tools at their disposal to make more educated buying decisions.

Transferability, information sharing, universal access and standardization; when you combine these attributes, a clearer picture of what is to come starts to appear. The only question now is "when?"

Home vs. Homeowner Portals

Part 2 of our New Home Portal blog series will examine the two distinctly different types of portals being offered: Homeowner Portals vs New Home Portals.

New Home Portals are very new, but have the potential to completely change the way we think about buying a home. What makes the MyLowe's portal so exciting is that for the first time, it allows the service history of a home to be tracked and shared in a reliable and consistent way.

The reality of this day and age is that most people use homes as stepping stones, your first house will very likely not be your last. For this reason, a home portal that provides information specifically about the home and can be transferred becomes a valuable asset to subsequent homeowners. Transferability is the defining feature of a home portal.

Homeowner Portals at first glance appear similar to home portals, but in reality they serve a completely different purpose. A typical homeowner portal is utilized to aid in the buying process and for customer serve between a developer and their client; the purchaser. The color & product selection process, customer care instructions and legal contracts are typically stored and delivered through homeowner portals.

Because these portals are specific to the homeowner and not the home, transferability becomes impossible if any personal information is stored due to privacy laws. Although this may be a good customer serve platform, the value is lost once the original homeowner sells and moves on. A homeowner portal is a useful customer service tool and important in the building process. A home portal is an important part of ownership throughout the life of the home.

In Part 1 of this series, we suggested that home portals could be a game changer. In the conclusion, we will examine in detail the attributes of a home portal, and why they are so significant.