I was going through and cleaning out some old files last week and found this, I was responsible for the logo and landed on this one. Many here will still remember when we made the pledge.
It’s a good read and a nice synopsis. Thanks Nick for not selling us out, if that would ever happen it would change InterNACHI for the worse forever in my opinion.
Nice!
Thank you for mentioning me.
That is a very interesting tale. I did not appreciate the size of the money involved in home inspection software. That’s eye-opening for me. No wonder there are new companies popping up, a new one today. Even a tiny piece of that pie is a comfortable retirement.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil.”-Yehoshua Hamischiah.
It’s crazy, huh?
The article says there are roughly 30,000 inspectors. Annually there are 4-6 million homes sold in the USA. Porch and Radian capital hold access to roughly 90% of the inspectors via the software. That is a huge churning vat of constantly changing “fresh” leads, every year. The software? Eh, that’s just the key that opens the door and they don’t give a crap about it beyond making it functional enough that inspectors don’t leave. The acquisition is left up to us, so there is ZERO(effectively) cost per customer lead. Hell, they make inspectors pay for their software! They get it coming and going. Keep us inspectors happy with a scrap here or there and use our access to open the door to the Emerald Kingdom.
A buddy of mine started his tree business back in the 70’s.
I remember one job I helped him on when he was getting started. He was removing some trees.
The neighbor of the client asked if he could also deliver him some good firewood. Tom asked him when he was going to burn it and the guy said next year.
We were cutting down some maple trees so we charged for that and cut and split the wood before loading several cords into the truck and drove it to the neighbor’s house and made the delivery and charged for that.
Nowadays he is further in than that. He turns most wood he hauls away from customers’ homes into quality lumber, firewood, mulch etc. He gets it coming and going.
Here’s his company today:
I would only argue in that a tree service is doing the original homeowner a favor by removing the wood. Most tree companies will leave the downed trees if you ask, I had 11 hardwood trees removed from my property in NJ and just had him leave the logs. He even told me “Thanks, I’ve got enough firewood to sell right now”.
The difference is that Porch, Radian Capital and other similar actors, to them the data(wood, logs, Mulch) IS the product. It would be as if you had a tree service aggregator that would lease you chippers and saws and then take the wood from your yard at night when you aren’t looking. You had to find the customers, do the task that can be dangerous and they get the product. That the saws they give you are dull, the chipper likes to stall, but mostly works is immaterial. They get the wood and you don’t have any say in it.
Speaking of this reminded me that I captured a barber chair when he was removing one of the ash trees.
He was ok, the but they were scrambling to get that tree tied up so it couldn’t come down. The house in this image is the neighbors, this video was in a camera I had in my 2nd floor bedroom. This was the 3rd of 3 enormous entangled ash trees that were in the process of dying due to Emerald Ash Borers.
It’s a good metaphor for us taking all the risk…
I did the same for years. I still own the brand. It’s for sale: www.forestmaster.com
It’s an interesting article. The writing is on the wall.
Lon’s point about the size of the software pie stuck with me. I work on report tools, and the client-data angle in that article is the bit I keep thinking about. Curious what people look for in vendor terms now.
This works for me.
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