Fixed-Fee Home Repairs Are Here
A new feature from Angi to bring price transparency and standardisation to booking household services.
A new feature from Angi to bring price transparency and standardisation to booking household services.
Angi Inc., the home services company formerly known as Angie’s List, is rolling out a feature that allows consumers to browse and buy common household services at set prices. Its goal is to offer tasks such as mounting a television, painting a room or repairing a roof in a format that mimics models in industries already transformed by tech, like ordering a taxi via a ride-share app.
The new option, which is available first for certain Angi subscribers, supplements the current system for booking services on Angi in which consumers browse vetted professionals or submit a project request, then take up details such as cost estimates directly with contractors.
Angi executives said they are trying to bring the price transparency and standardization of other businesses to home improvement.
“There’s all these barriers in buying service that we’ve been breaking down piece by piece over the last nine years, pretty much to get to a place where we’re now able to offer a productized service experience across hundreds of different service categories across the country,” said Oisin Hanrahan, chief executive of Angi. “And that’s the big shift that we’re making, so that you can essentially go and buy home services the same way you can buy products for your home.”
The feature comes amid a housing boom as well as a surge of growth in home improvement. Sales of home improvement materials, such as tools, lumber, paint and lawn and garden supplies, totaled $86.4 billion in the 12 months ending this May, an increase of $8 billion from the year before, according to NPD Group, a market research firm.
The Covid-19 pandemic opened consumers’ minds to digital services in areas that had still been largely analog, from car sales to home improvement, said user experience designers, who focus on product usability.
“More people across the board, not just millennials and Gen Z, are going to be more comfortable just going online and using an app to find a service,” said Janvi Jhaveri, founder and chief executive of Jack Strategy LLC, a product design and strategy studio.
Angi added language to the booking process to ensure people understood they weren’t scheduling an estimate with a contractor, but actually employing their services, said Mr. Hanrahan. The layout, designed to resemble an e-commerce store for more traditional goods, also helped, he said.
“The more we can merchandise and display to the user in a visual way, like the same way you’d scroll an Amazon or a Target catalog online, the more we can make it easy for people to digest,” said Mr. Hanrahan.
Other companies have taken different approaches to modernizing home contracting.
Home service platform Thumbtack Inc. in February introduced a feature that lets consumers book professionals for small service jobs like a television installation or to receive estimates on larger projects. The company previously offered information on professionals and their services but left it up to customers to schedule a day and time for the project.
It has stayed away from a model like Angi’s for larger, custom projects because the company believes it is impossible to reliably price many home jobs remotely, said Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and chief executive of Thumbtack.
If a professional arrives at a home and a customer asks for additional services, such as mounting two televisions instead of one, Angi will update the price, the company said.
Not all services lend themselves to pricing ahead of time because every home and homeowner is different, said Liz Young, founder and chief executive of Realm Living Inc., a home property analysis company.
But for tasks that don’t require extensive financing or massive renovations, some homeowners will forgo a human touch, or vetting process, she said.
“For the smaller projects, like a paint job or an installation of a ceiling fan, all consumers care about is this relatively accurate price instantly,” Ms. Young said.
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: July 6, 2021
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
You don’t need to be a golfer to enjoy the benefits of living adjacent to a golf course in Australia
From the Spring 2024 issue of Kanebridge Quarterly. Order your copy here.
W hile water views are usually considered most desirable for property buyers, golf course vistas are snapping at their proverbial heels. This past quarter century has witnessed a golden age in Australian golf course living, with dozens — if not hundreds— of residential courses built around our major cities and tourist towns. These days, there’s a buoyant market for established large golf homes alongside off-the-plan apartments being retro built to take advantage of existing golf course views. So what’s the appeal?
Barbara Wolveridge is a director at Sotheby’s International Realty. She has worked with many of Australia’s most prestigious golf course developments including The National in Cape Schanck Vic, Moonah Links on the Mornington Peninsula, Macquarie Links International Golf Club in Sydney’s West and the Mirage Country Club in Port Douglas where she currently lives. (She was also married to the late renowned golf course designer and former US Tour player Michael Wolveridge.)
“People like to live on golf courses,” she says. “You can walk out of your house onto a beautiful course. But what you’re really buying is the extended view. You have acres and acres in front of you, but you’re paying for a small block of land.”
And while you can’t run across the greens in your bare feet, as soon as the golf is finished for the day, there are tracks and cart paths where you can walk and bike, enjoying the natural surrounds of lush greenery and wildlife.
“Some courses are a haven for wallabies and kangaroos,” says Wolveridge. “Here in Port Douglas the pristine ponds attract the magpie geese. There are the most beautiful birds everywhere — and the odd croc as well.”
While you might expect golfing real estate to be the exclusive domain of well-heeled golf-mad retirees, that’s only a part of the story. Golfing homes appeal to a broad section of the community, especially in the post-COVID era, when home often also serves as an office.
“Probably 50 to 60 percent of my buyers are golfers,” says Wolveridge. “But in some areas people skew younger, in their 40s — not necessarily golfers, but those who want that lovely view. A lot of people like to come up here for the winter and when they’re not here, they rent out their properties.
“My very wealthy clients don’t do that, but the middle bracket come and use it when they like, and then it goes into the letting pool for the rest of the year.”
For most golf course adjacent dwellers, the only potential negative is the odd Titleist Pro V1 ball shattering the serenity as it sails through the bedroom window. But that’s not the worst thing that can happen.
Built in 1990 on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, Paradise Palms in Cairns lived up to its name with pristine rainforest providing a backdrop to rolling fairways and man-made lakes. Home to professional events including the Skins Game and Ladies’ Masters, it climbed to number nine ranking in Golf Magazine’s list of the nation’s Best Public Access Courses.
In 2016, the signature 7th hole was sacrificed to make way for an access road into a residential development of 585 luxury units. Then, horror. The course declined under new owners, was sold again, and a multimillion-dollar redevelopment plan was revealed that would close the 18-hole course and transform it into a new housing estate.
Those who dreamed of seeing out their days overlooking manicured greens are now facing the prospect of a sea of roofs.
“Once a development is established, it has to make money,” says Wolveridge. “The developer has to put in somebody who knows how to run a golf course — and that is the hard part.
“If the developer isn’t making any money, it won’t necessarily devalue the properties, but if the course does so badly it goes broke, that is the danger.”
Happily, cases like Paradise Palms are few and far between.
“I can think of so many golf course developments in Australia that are very successful, and probably only three or four that aren’t,” says Wolveridge.
As always with property, to avoid a triple bogey, it’s a case of buyer beware.
A commonly held belief is that golf courses use vast amounts of water, chemical pesticides and fertilisers to keep those greens pristine. In reality, golf course management in Australia claims to be at the forefront of environmental sustainability, pioneering the use of grey water and efficient irrigation techniques as well as new drought- and disease-resistant grasses.
Following the release of the landmark GC2030 report by The Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) in Scotland in 2018, Australia has joined a dozen or so other countries globally answering the call to action on topics such as climate change, resources, water conservation, pesticides, labour and land.
While golf courses have historically relied on a cocktail of pesticides and herbicides, many are today transitioning to organic maintenance practices, using natural means to control pests and promote healthy turf.
KDV Sport golf course (12 holes) on the Gold Coast and Kabi Organic Golf Club (27 holes) at Boreen Point in the Sunshine Coast hinterland are Australia’s only two organic golf courses to date. But there is no accommodation — yet — at either.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.