An open letter to inspectors from Porch’s CEO March 2, 2018
Dear inspectors,
For those I haven’t had the privilege of meeting yet, my name is Matt Ehrlichman and I am the CEO of Porch.
We invited 12 respected and independent inspectors (see the list at the bottom of this letter) to create and serve on an Inspector Advisory Board to ensure Porch is forever a strong partner to inspectors and providing the right products to help your businesses grow. We had our first quarterly meeting at an industry event a couple of weeks ago, and these inspectors requested I write an open letter to all inspectors to provide an update.
What you likely know:
- Porch has made a strategic long-term decision to partner deeply with inspectors. We believe homeowners need help moving into their homes just as they do ongoing with home maintenance and repairs. Porch fills this void effectively and in doing so, helps our inspector partners in meaningful ways.
- We provide Home Assistant Gold (usually priced for consumers at $350/year) for free to every inspector we are partnered with. You get to provide this service to each of your customers for free forever.
- In addition, we will provide you with $100 of Porch Handyman Service coupons to provide to each of your customers to give them strong value. (We are seeing inspectors using this value as a long-overdue opportunity to raise their prices by $10 to $25.)
- The Home Assistant will help your customer with whatever they need, from changing over their utilities (gas, trash, water, electricity), arrange service or mounting their TV, painting a room, security, or making repairs that come up from the inspection report.
- If you are signed up for Home Assistant Gold, we create great marketing value for your business whether that is paying for InterNACHI’s “We’ll Buy Your Home Back” Guarantee, providing you full ISG Benefits such as RecallChek and/or 90 Day Warranty (and maybe even free ISN as well for qualified ISG customers), providing you with an Inspection Guarantee, paying for your full ISN fees (or $’s back to you), providing an extra $100 of handyman services (for $200 in total), or other options.
What you perhaps don’t know:
Homeowners like the experience:
- We don’t harass your customer nor ever will. The Home Assistant who is assigned to make your customer’s move easier, will send an email to introduce themselves the day after the inspection is finished. If a customer doesn’t want to be called, they won’t be called. A day later, the Home Assistant introduces themselves and helps with whatever the homeowner needs.
- Reasons calls are needed? For one, the first value the Home Assistant provides is as a 3rd party independent review service for your business. We want to cut off the bad reviews before they are posted online (we surface these to you to follow-up with the customer), and we encourage happy customers to post reviews online.
- Another reason we want to speak with each homeowner is to find out exactly what help they need. We don’t do anything unless the customer tells us to.
- Homeowners get called an average of 2 times. On average, 52% of homeowners are using their Home Assistant to help with service requests. On average, a homeowner uses their Home Assistant to help with 2 or more services.
We provide more inspections to your business:
- Based on feedback from members of our Inspector Advisory Board, as of the start of 2018, Porch is no longer selling leads to inspectors. We distribute leads, but notice at the bottom of an inspector lead that these are priced at $0. This will continue into the future. We are not here to charge the inspectors for
anything, but to be strategic partners helping us both assist our collective customers and grow our
businesses. - The Home Assistant stays in touch with your customers and will ask for an annual inspection each year. All
of these inspections are directed back to you. - If your client wants an inspection of any repair or project, these requests are directed back to you also.
- We provide you with $100 of Porch Handyman Services to provide to the Seller as well – a perfect way to
get introduced to both the listing agent as well as the seller; hopefully resulting in working with them as
they move into a different home. - There are many big Real Estate brokerages we are working with who are interested in using inspectors
who are providing Home Assistant Gold to their customers given the improved customer experience. Some exciting things coming for those inspectors we are partnering with and more to come here.
You are protected and in control:
- Porch does not sell the data, nor will we ever sell the data. Only Porch and our team of Assistants and Connection Specialists will call the customer. If a customer specifically requests help with a service, then and only then do we introduce them to others for help. Further, Porch never receives the inspection report – this is the customer’s property and only they get to choose if they want to provide their inspection report to their Home Assistant. Porch does not get the report from any source.
- While Porch is the pro for small jobs and we have a large strong network of professionals for large projects, we have learned that many inspectors either offer certain services themselves, or have specific professionals they want to use. The Home Assistant experience is fully customizable per inspector. This means that you can identify a specific roofer you want used for all your customers, or that you want all of the pest control business routed back to you.
- Porch assumes all liability from the inspector… when we send a Porch professional to the home. If you want us to use your recommended professionals, that is perfectly fine; however, we do not assume liability in these cases. Otherwise, if a Porch pro is used, you can know that you will not have any liability.
Porch will always be an option for inspectors and greater than 800 inspection companies have taken a closer look and turned on this offering.
This includes some inspectors you likely know from the Advisory Council as well as others like: Axium, BPG, Champia, Mike Crow’s TexInspec, Home Team, WIN, Bentley & Associates, Liberty Inspection Group, and 800+ other inspectors. They have clearly done their research to make sure it will work well for their company.
If you have any questions at all, please email me directly at matt@porch.com, call a team member who can help at 844-730-7359, or turn on Porch in ISN (and if not using ISN call and we’ll get Porch setup for you).
Onward,
Matt Ehrlichman (and signed with support and confirmation by our fellow Inspector Advisory Board members)
Bill Compton, Champia Inspections, GA
Chad Hett, Elite Inspections, CA
Dave Klima, Aardvark Inspections, IN
Randy Surette, Cornerstone Inspections, IN Jeffrey Donaldson, Ace Preferred Inspections, SC Jerry Linkhorn, Linkhorn Home Inspections, OH
Mike Crow, Tex-Inspect, TX
Preston Sandlin, Home Inspection Carolina, NC John Shishilla, Honor Inspections, FL
Rob & Michelle Hopkins, Pro-tec Inspections, MD Scott Patterson, Trace Inspections, TN
Wade Williamson, Axium Home Inspections, CO