Seven years ago, my wife and I bought our first home in beautiful city of Austin.
We were excited – after all, with our first kid on the way, this was going to be Our Home. We told ourselves we’d take care of everything that came with home ownership.
With every little change we made to the home (adding blinds, ceiling fans to the rooms that didn’t have them already, etc), we stashed the home improvement receipts away. Over the years, we ended up adding solar panels, changed out our thermostat to be “wi-fi”, swapped out outlets to support USB, and updated our light switches to be controllable via our smartphones or Alexa. All of these upgrades came with warranties which need proof-of-purchase receipts so we stored these away as well…I think. Are they in the kitchen drawer? The file cabinet? On my desk in the study?
I wondered why I couldn’t just save the receipts by taking a picture with my phone and then chuck the paper receipt.
After a few years of owning our home, I started getting a little confused about when to take care of routine maintenance items – simple things like changing the air filters I was forgetting to do. And I was wondering just what impact missing maintenance was having on the overall “health” of my home. Most cars have a notification system built right into the driver console – you know when to check your tire pressure, add more windshield wiper fluid, or change your oil because you’re notified that it’s time to take care of these sorts of things. But there really is no “check engine light” for the home. As a result, homeowners are forced to either learn through experience what goes into being a good homeowner or react to problems as they come up.
Seeing that there was no compelling app solving these sorts of problems (getting alerts when your home needs attention and conveniently saving receipts/warranties), I set out to build HomeBit with some great people I’d worked with in the past. Over a few iterations of the product, our mission became clearer: a mobile dashboard app for homeowners to manage their homes better.
To that end, we’re excited about enhancing the lives of homeowners through each new release of HomeBit. We’ve got an exciting roadmap of features and as as we roll these out, we’ll be sharing updates right here in the HomeBit blog. The easiest way to get notified of new release details is by following us on Twitter (@GetHomeBit) or liking us on Facebook.
While we have our own vision on what we think makes HomeBit a great app for homeowners, some of the best ideas come from our users like you. So feel free to send us a note and share your ideas – we’re all ears and we promise we’re listening!