Porch.com: Every real estate transaction will have the "Buy Your Home Back" Guarantee

[jdeoliveira2 (John Paul de Oliveira, GB-2 #86934 / AB #44580)]

So to summarize if I understand correctly:
Porch is affiliated with Lowes. ISN was bought out by Porch. Nick personally invested in Porch. CMI also bought into Porch. Nick founded, and still represents InterNACHI. Somehow Realtor.com, and NAR by extension, is involved.

Somehow I think it is even more complicated than that.

Nick thinks Porch will be soon worth $1,000,000,000.00. Porch is offering $5. One billion divided by # of home inspections per year times say 12 years minus $5 per total transactions gives an approximate value of what each lead is worth to company valuation. *unless Porch has other revenue streams]

Nick has a potential large upside if Porch hits a billion in valuation. Which is ok. Legally, these are are all separate entities. It is a type of schizophrenia which mirrors reality, but the wearer of the mask sometimes gets confused which hat they are wearing:cool:

Since Home Gauge got bought by an insurance company, I am considering dropping their cloud based service, and just sending a pdf HI report. Too bad, as it is convenient and clients like it.

Getting spammed is one thing, having possibly detrimental information available to an insurance company to deny an insurance claim can cost a client how much?? 4 figures? 5 figures? Will they use it to make certain homes insurance costs higher? HIGHLY probable. A lot of downside for the clients, not much upside. Why? Because HG presumably got a batch of dineros.

I have not thought through the implications for clients with porch, but if you are of a meticulously ethical bent, this seems like a wrong direction. And if you are of a seriously unethical bent, then this would not be nearly not enough compensation. Come on, if you are really greedy you can get more than a Starbucks out of it:p

Marcy, Your first, and second, responses were condescending to Bob(and others). Which is ok, Bob has been insulted much worse. You still seem to have not understood what he was talking about. Which is ok. Linas has posted some highly sexualized content in the NFE section, the laser lights in the shower was memorable. Which is ok.

You made some good points Bob, but you are OCD with your HIP endorsements, bad mouthing HG - LOL while ignoring that some software developer has directly incorporated vendor integration (some unscrupulous btw) into a decent, but bloated, report system. HG options this at the cloud level, not at the program level. Whatever, it is a boring topic, it detracts from your valid arguments, even if it does exemplify schizophrenic reality.

I like the Open nature of the MB format that Nick has encouraged

[escanlan (Emmanuel Scanlan, TREC# 7593)]

@jdeoliveira2

So to summarize if I understand correctly:
Porch is affiliated with Lowes. ISN was bought out by Porch. Nick personally invested in Porch. CMI also bought into Porch. Nick founded, and still represents InterNACHI. Somehow Realtor.com, and NAR by extension, is involved.

Somehow I think it is even more complicated than that.

Nick thinks Porch will be soon worth $1,000,000,000.00. Porch is offering $5. One billion divided by # of home inspections per year times say 12 years minus $5 per total transactions gives an approximate value of what each lead is worth to company valuation. *unless Porch has other revenue streams]

Nick has a potential large upside if Porch hits a billion in valuation. Which is ok. Legally, these are are all separate entities. It is a type of schizophrenia which mirrors reality, but the wearer of the mask sometimes gets confused which hat they are wearing:cool:

**Since Home Gauge got bought by an insurance company, I am considering dropping their cloud based service, and just sending a pdf HI report. Too bad, as it is convenient and clients like it.

Getting spammed is one thing, having possibly detrimental information available to an insurance company to deny an insurance claim can cost a client how much?? 4 figures? 5 figures? Will they use it to make certain homes insurance costs higher? HIGHLY probable. A lot of downside for the clients, not much upside. Why? Because HG presumably got a batch of dineros.**

I have not thought through the implications for clients with porch, but if you are of a meticulously ethical bent, this seems like a wrong direction. And if you are of a seriously unethical bent, then this would not be nearly not enough compensation. Come on, if you are really greedy you can get more than a Starbucks out of it:p

Marcy, Your first, and second, responses were condescending to Bob(and others). Which is ok, Bob has been insulted much worse. You still seem to have not understood what he was talking about. Which is ok. Linas has posted some highly sexualized content in the NFE section, the laser lights in the shower was memorable. Which is ok.

You made some good points Bob, but you are OCD with your HIP endorsements, bad mouthing HG - LOL while ignoring that some software developer has directly incorporated vendor integration (some unscrupulous btw) into a decent, but bloated, report system. HG options this at the cloud level, not at the program level. Whatever, it is a boring topic, it detracts from your valid arguments, even if it does exemplify schizophrenic reality.

I like the Open nature of the MB format that Nick has encouraged

Interesting concept that a software company with cloud based storage and/or delivery of the inspection report might be accessing the report for reasons other than its intended purpose? If so then would that also extend to the software packages where the Inspector is actually creating the report itself online before delivery?

[jbushart (James H. Bushart)]

@escanlan

Interesting concept that a software company with cloud based storage and/or delivery of the inspection report might be accessing the report for reasons other than its intended purpose? If so then would that also extend to the software packages where the Inspector is actually creating the report itself online before delivery?

We are back to fifteen years ago … when perfectly happy home buyers were employing skilled and knowledgeable home inspectors to provide an accurate and unbiased description of their purchase with easy to read and understand checklists reports and narratives for around $450 that (1) provided them with ALL of the information they needed and (2) with no third party having access to it without their knowledge and permission.

Today, these same checklists are simply in digital form, say actually less when you consider the superfluous disclaimers that dilute almost every description, are sold for the same or less money, and can be used to exploit the homebuyer for years and years to come.

As recently as last Friday, I was consulted by homeowner fighting a claim with his insurance company for roof damage from a storm and needed to prove that the hail damage to his roof occurred AFTER he bought his home two and half years ago. I asked if he had a home inspection and he did. We looked through his report for a description of the roof to see if it described the condition of the roof to either include or exclude the present damage from hail.

After reading the ambiguously worded and heavily disclaimed description of the roof in the inspection report, we were unable to ascertain from that description if the roof did or did not have hail damage at the time of inspection. It was a useless description of the condition of the roof that said nothing more than that the homebuyer should consult a roofing contractor if he needed to know more about his roof than that it was covered by composite shingles that appeared to be fifteen years old, or more. This useless information was, however, presented digitally with an expensive looking software program that cost his inspector a few bucks more than the $299 he charged for it … and the homebuyer his privacy.

[frotte (Frank Rotte)]

@jbushart

We are back to fifteen years ago … when perfectly happy home buyers were employing skilled and knowledgeable home inspectors to provide an accurate and unbiased description of their purchase with easy to read and understand checklists reports and narratives for around $450 that (1) provided them with ALL of the information they needed and (2) with no third party having access to it without their knowledge and permission.

Today, these same checklists are simply in digital form, say actually less when you consider the superfluous disclaimers that dilute almost every description, are sold for the same or less money, and can be used to exploit the homebuyer for years and years to come.

As recently as last Friday, I was consulted by homeowner fighting a claim with his insurance company for roof damage from a storm and needed to prove that the hail damage to his roof occurred AFTER he bought his home two and half years ago. I asked if he had a home inspection and he did. We looked through his report for a description of the roof to see if it described the condition of the roof to either include or exclude the present damage from hail.

After reading the ambiguously worded and heavily disclaimed description of the roof in the inspection report, we were unable to ascertain from that description if the roof did or did not have hail damage at the time of inspection. It was a useless description of the condition of the roof that said nothing more than that the homebuyer should consult a roofing contractor if he needed to know more about his roof than that it was covered by composite shingles that appeared to be fifteen years old, or more. This useless information was, however, presented digitally with an expensive looking software program that cost his inspector a few bucks more than the $299 he charged for it … and the homebuyer his privacy.

No roof warranty?

[jcrewdson (John Crewdson)]

I’ve looked into this a bit more and am finding a lot more negative reviews than positive for Porch, from homeowners and contractors. Interestingly, as of today, The Better Business Bureau (BBB) gives them a 3.8 rating out of 5, but the customer reviews are 91% negative, 3% neutral and 6% positive (about what I’ve found elsewhere).

Also BBB has 76 closed complaints, 17% are for Advertising/Sales Issues & 58% are for Problems with Product/Service. Am I missing something or is Nick seeing something I don’t?

As an aside I also heard Nick’s interview with Preston on The Successful Home Inspector Podcast, as well as Matt Ehrlichman’s interview (Porch owner). Things don’t appear to be adding up, but considering the direction this business is going, I’m trying to keep an open mind.

Can anyone else shed a bit more light on this? I’d love to hear something on this directly from Porch. Program sounds good on paper but not sure from what I see right now.

[jdeoliveira2 (John Paul de Oliveira, GB-2 #86934 / AB #44580)]

Manny, I thought of writing up your response, but thought it was too long as it was.

I would go further, if it is created on a computer offline, then printed, it could still be uploaded anyways. Vendors may have embedded codes in the HI software that does this automatically.

James suggestion of going back to paper reports would be the only safe solution. Also, what about contacting the inspector, maybe they had backup pictures of the roof that may not have been included in the report?

But it would be simple, and probably legal, for an umbrella company to access a subsidiaries cloud data bases. Whether it is HG, HIP, ISN, Porch

If the NSC, CIA etc which intentionally created these system back doors gets hacked themselves, the simple owner of a business has no real control over their data, even if it is Lockheed Martin. Assurances would be meaningless.

[escanlan (Emmanuel Scanlan, TREC# 7593)]

@jdeoliveira2

Manny, I thought of writing up your response, but thought it was too long as it was.

I would go further, if it is created on a computer offline, then printed, it could still be uploaded anyways. Vendors may have embedded codes in the HI software that does this automatically.

James suggestion of going back to paper reports would be the only safe solution. Also, what about contacting the inspector, maybe they had backup pictures of the roof that may not have been included in the report?

But it would be simple, and probably legal, for an umbrella company to access a subsidiaries cloud data bases. Whether it is HG, HIP, ISN, Porch

If the NSC, CIA etc which intentionally created these system back doors gets hacked themselves, the simple owner of a business has no real control over their data, even if it is Lockheed Martin. Assurances would be meaningless.

Anymore one never knows what is happening when they are logged onto the internet! I am way pre-internet (close to mesolithic era LOL) and was there for the first widespread access. It has gone from very simple to so distributed you can’t tell how many sites you actually interface with before getting to the actual URL you loaded in your browser. Watch the interactions if your browser has the ability and just getting to this site there are a half dozen or more sites that are involved.

With the unlimited bandwidths and all the viruses these days nobody cares to watch their usage so it is always probable some additional data or information is drawn from your computer and sent elsewhere. All we can do anymore is best effort to make sure private data is not distributed around the world.

With your comment about other subsidiaries accessing various cloud databases neither you or I would ever know if they did until they were caught in some nefarious action. Any data uploaded to some server, no matter what its format, is ripe for reading and use by others it was not intended for. This is only limited by the difficulty in located the information desired. When you have large databases of the same information it is easy to locate it in contrast to us sending a report via email.

We’ve reached a sad point in this world where consumers are treated like sheep to be sheared and many businesses out there are happy to make their dollar helping in the shearing!