Built a "Carfax for homes" web app. Want inspectors to poke holes in it. Free year for your clients if it survives

Vendors
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Inspectors, first post here, so I hope this is the right room for it. I would like your honest take on something. :waving_hand:

Quick background so you know who is asking. I am Wally Beddoe out of Trumbull, Connecticut. Marine Corps, 81 to 85, corporal. My day job is engineering director at Volvo Cars, which is where the Carfax comparison got under my skin, because I live in a world where every vehicle has a documented history and it always struck me as backwards that a $50,000 car has better records than a $500,000 house. On the side I run a Marine Corps history blog, and I built Bodie nights and weekends with my son Kirk.

Bodie is a Carfax for homes. Every repair, every vendor, every dollar. Who you paid, what you paid, when, and why.

Today Bodie runs in the browser, phone or desktop, nothing to install. The mobile app is in development and launching this summer, so anyone who starts now will have it on their phone shortly. I would rather tell you that straight than have you go looking for it in the App Store.

Here is why I am posting in your house. Ever since I started showing Bodie to people, the feedback keeps coming back the same: you need to partner with home inspectors. I heard it enough times that I figured I should stop nodding and come ask you directly. And the logic holds up. You are the first person who ever documents a home properly. You hand a buyer the most thorough record their house will ever see, and then in my experience it goes in a folder and is never opened again. That seems like a waste of your best work.

How it works, the whole thing:

  1. You get a personal code from me. Takes one email.
  2. At closing or report delivery, you hand the buyer one line: “Here is a free year of a service that keeps your home’s records. Your inspection is document number one.”
  3. Buyer registers at bodie.io with your code. No credit card, nothing to cancel, the year is just free.
  4. They upload your inspection report, and it becomes the foundation of the home’s permanent file. From there they log every repair, vendor, receipt, and warranty as they go.
  5. Your name and company stay attached to that record. When they need an inspector in five years, or their neighbor asks for one, you are the first name in the house’s history.

That is it. Thirty seconds, zero dollars, and your report stops dying in a folder.

What I want from you: tell me where this breaks. Would your clients actually use it? What would Bodie need to do with your report to make this worth adding to your closing routine? If the answer is “this is useless and here is why,” I want that too. I would rather hear it from you than find out after building the wrong thing.

I will answer every reply. Site is bodie.io if you want to look first.

Respectfully,
Wally Beddoe
Trumbull, CT

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Wally,

It’s virtually impossible to see a homeowner doing that, and in the way you envision.
There is no central repository for home repairs, and in the H.I. industry, there have been several maintenance / records keeping systems introduced to inspectors.

Home buyers as a group are inundated during the purchase/closing process with offers that are too-good-to pass-up, and won’t find the benefit of this type of system worth the time. And my job isn’t to help them run their household or organize their record keeping, so mixing this into my process has no appeal. (less than zero actually, I want them to pay attention to the report & the information therein, not some app or gizmo).

And this means it’s another subscription in a never-ending offer from a vendor wanting a monthly or annual payment.

Hard pass from me, I don’t see it going anywhere as it relates to what I’ve seen in this industry.

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Hello Dominic,

Thanks for the honest reply. That’s why I posted.

Funny thing is, your first line made my argument better than I did. You put more work into that report than anyone else in the deal, and then it goes in a folder and never gets opened again. I’m not trying to pull the buyer’s attention off your report. I’m trying to be the place your report is still alive five years later, when they’re standing in the basement trying to remember what you flagged about that water heater.

You’re right about homeowners, though. Most won’t log anything. I didn’t for 30 years, shoebox and all. I’m counting on the stubborn few who got tired of not knowing, not on human nature changing.

And your point about the closing table might be the most useful thing anybody’s told me yet. Maybe that moment is just wrong, period. Everybody’s pitching, nobody’s listening. Maybe the right moment is six months in, when the first thing breaks and they’d give anything to search that report instead of dig for it. Worth me chewing on.

Either way, I appreciate the candor. This is exactly the poke-holes-in-it I asked for.

Wally

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I read through this and what I came away with was;

“Here’s how my company would like to take advantage of your work.”

And if you think making our report front and center to the homeowner when something breaks after the inspection is a selling point to us, you’re mistaken.

1 Like
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Hey Ryan,

Fair enough on how it read. The intent was a free tool for your clients, full stop. I asked this forum to poke holes and you did, so no complaints here. Back to the drawing board on the framing.

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Seems an awful lot like another Al widget.

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Honestly Dave, if I were in your seat I’d figure the same thing. And you’re not wrong about what’s out there. Half these tools are a chat window with a logo slapped on, and most of them won’t see 2028. I went the other direction on purpose. Yeah, there’s a monthly AI summary in there, the site says so, but that’s a bell on the bicycle. The bike is the record: who, what, when, how much. Paper outlives fads. I basically built the software version of paper. Anyway, appreciate you weighing in.

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And as the owner of several vehicles, I despise CarFax! It just ticks me off that places I pay to have my oil changed or service done report everything to CarFax! Even my onboard computer reports to CarFax! When and where I gave folks permission to obtain this information, I have no idea, but I’m sure it was in some form that I was presented and signed unknowingly!

I can see the same thing occurring with this type of service for a home. I’m sure I’m not alone with my opinion of CarFax.

2 Likes
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“…after a year and then we start charging them!”

1 Like
10

That’s an interesting perspective Scott. Hadn’t thought of Carfax that way. So, not a good marketing angle for some people. Got it. Thanks for that.

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OK Richard, guilty of bad wording, not of the trap. But fair callout. No card on file, no auto-renew, and their data stays theirs whether they ever pay or not. If a year in they don’t think it’s worth a few bucks a month, they walk with everything. That’s the whole scheme, such as it is.

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I don’t pay Carfax to log records of my truck, why would someone pay you to log records of their house? And then what, pay you again for records of a new home they’re looking to buy?

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Carfax doesn’t need your truck logged because the DMV and the insurance company already did it. Your house has no DMV. Nobody is recording anything, which is why the answer to “what year is the roof” is a shrug in 40 million houses. So yes, the owner builds it, because the owner is the one holding the bag when it’s missing. And the buyer doesn’t pay again. The record transfers with the house. That’s the point of the thing.

But this thread has been tagged as spam for some reason, so I get it. Thanks for the responses. I do appreciate it.

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If you’re here long enough you would know the delicate relationship between a home inspector and our clients. Protecting their data is priority one for most of us. Inspectors are dropping major inspection report software companies because of their desire to acquire our client’s data.

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A homeowner’s record in Bodie is theirs. Nobody else sees it. Not their contractor, not their agent, not their inspector, not other users, nobody, unless the owner deliberately shares it. I don’t sell the data, I don’t rent it, I don’t feed it to advertisers, and I don’t build a side business on aggregating it. The business model is embarrassingly old fashioned: they pay a subscription, I keep their records. If the product is free, you’re the product, so mine isn’t free forever, and that’s on purpose.

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There are a lot of companies out there trying to make a buck on the backend our home inspection. This is probably the type of product that would have more interest in the mortgage industry.

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Thanks again Richard. I appreciate the convo.