HomSurfin Case Study

HomSurfin was a social real estate platform founded by Caroline Holden & Michael Pelletier in fall of 2022.

Over the course of 9 months they designed & built the app, conducted customer / client research, developed financial models, pitched investors, & raised $25k.

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The Problem

At HomSurfin, we identified a few key core problems in real estate that we wanted to solve:

87% of new realtors quit within their first 4 years
Drastic change in the industry (high interest rates, low inventory, faltering real estate orgs, etc)
UX design is lacking for users & real estate pro's
Disconnect between massive social media interest and static dated platforms

We believed that we could design a better product that would have viral effects and could help tech savvy realtors get ahead of old school players.

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Which red dot on this map is your dream home?

Our Solution

HomSurfin is a social real estate platform. It allows users to:

Like, comment, and share favorite homes with friends, online communities, & their realtors
Use AI to help find their dream homes faster & search for home styles via images vs keywords

However, that's not all. HomSurfin also gives real estate agents:

More personalizable collaborative search tools (more clients, not 1:1, & easier sorting systems)
Save time with AI to write CMA's & listing proposals, & to find homes for clients faster

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Why HomSurfin?

What makes HomSurfin different? We are giving users what they want: a place to talk about current real estate inventory and trends.

#realestate has over 26.4B views on TikTok (up 6B since Jan). #interiordesign has over 27.6B views
Thousands of users on Twitter ask Zillow to add a comment section nearly every day
Millions of people discuss real estate daily on every platform - except for current real estate platforms

HomSurfin takes this user activity and uses it to help real estate agents connect with potential buyers & sell homes faster.

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What Happened

After working on HomSurfin full-time for 9 months, our team decided to wrap up shop. Why?

Housing data companies (MLS orgs) are anti-competitive
Market is deceptively smaller than it appears due to such a small concentration of successful real estate agents (Zillow only has 75k paying clients)
Every real estate startup founder we spoke to regretted working in this industry due to anticompetitive practices & small size of market

While we may restart this project after a few major lawsuits in the industry have concluded, we determined that our business model was not strong enough to be a venture viable business & that the current MLS system model is too expensive for us to pursue independently.

Caroline's Responsibilities & Achievements

As founder and CEO, Caroline took HomSurfin from original ideation to (almost) launch. This included:

Completing nearly all product design & product management of marketplace
Conducted deep industry research with potential users, real estate agents, real estate startup founders, industry leaders, & industry data experts
Financial modeling, market sizing, and pricing analysis
Developed marketing strategy with a focus on video content, experiential guerrilla in person marketing, & influencer marketing
Recruited team members, advisors, lawyers / accountants, & investors to get HomSurfin to market
Curated marketing / pitch materials, raised $25k in funding from local Angel investors

Collaborated with co founder and CTO on alpha tests of HomSurfin with 50+ test users
Created youtube series about building HomSurfin with over 8k views
Accepted into BETA.MN's Fall 2022 Startup Accelerator
Runner Up in Twin Cities Startup Week BETA Fall 2022 Showcase Competition
Interviewed with startup accelerators and reached the first, second, and final round of programs including TechStars, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Association, & Gener8tor

There's probably more than what is mentioned above, but as you can imagine, it's a bit hard to keep track of everything Caroline did to make this startup possible.

Over the course of the project, Caroline ran a weekly vlog documenting her journey as a first time founder.

Watch Here

Watch the first episode here

HomSurfin was a social real estate platform founded by Caroline Holden & Michael Pelletier in fall of 2022. Over the course of 9 months they designed & built the app, conducted customer / client research, developed financial models, pitched investors, & raised $25k.

At HomSurfin, we identified a few key core problems in real estate that we wanted to solve:

87% of new realtors quit within their first 4 years

Drastic change in the industry (high interest rates, low inventory, faltering real estate orgs, etc)

UX design is lacking for users & real estate pro's

Disconnect between massive social media interest and static dated platforms

We believed that we could design a better product that would have viral effects and could help tech savvy realtors get ahead of old school players.

HomSurfin is a social real estate platform. It allows users to:

Like, comment, and share favorite homes with friends, online communities, & their realtors

Use AI to help find their dream homes faster & search for home styles via images vs keywords

However, that's not all. HomSurfin also gives real estate agents:

​

More personalizable collaborative search tools (more clients, not 1:1, & easier sorting systems)

Save time with AI to write CMA's & listing proposals, & to find homes for clients faster

What makes HomSurfin different? We are giving users what they want: a place to talk about current real estate inventory and trends.

#realestate has over 26.4B views on TikTok (up 6B since Jan). #interiordesign has over 27.6B views

Thousands of users on Twitter ask Zillow to add a comment section nearly every day

Millions of people discuss real estate daily on every platform - except for current real estate platforms

HomSurfin takes this user activity and uses it to help real estate agents connect with potential buyers & sell homes faster.

After working on HomSurfin full-time for 9 months, our team decided to wrap up shop. Why?

Housing data companies (MLS orgs) are anti-competitive

Market is deceptively smaller than it appears due to such a small concentration of successful real estate agents (Zillow only has 75k paying clients)

Every real estate startup founder we spoke to regretted working in this industry due to anticompetitive practices & small size of market

While we may restart this project after a few major lawsuits in the industry have concluded, we determined that our business model was not strong enough to be a venture viable business & that the current MLS system model is too expensive for us to pursue independently.

As founder and CEO, Caroline took HomSurfin from original ideation to (almost) launch. This included:

Completing nearly all product design & product management of marketplace

Conducted deep industry research with potential users, real estate agents, real estate startup founders, industry leaders, & industry data experts

Financial modeling, market sizing, and pricing analysis

Developed marketing strategy with a focus on video content, experiential guerrilla in person marketing, & influencer marketing

Recruited team members, advisors, lawyers / accountants, & investors to get HomSurfin to market

Curated marketing / pitch materials, raised $25k in funding from local Angel investors

Collaborated with co founder and CTO on alpha tests of HomSurfin with 50+ test users

Created youtube series about building HomSurfin with over 8k views

Accepted into BETA.MN's Fall 2022 Startup Accelerator

Runner Up in Twin Cities Startup Week BETA Fall 2022 Showcase Competition

Interviewed with startup accelerators and reached the first, second, and final round of programs including TechStars, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Association, & Gener8tor

There's probably more than what is mentioned above, but as you can imagine, it's a bit hard to keep track of everything Caroline did to make this startup possible.

Over the course of the project, Caroline ran a weekly vlog documenting her journey as a first time founder.

HomSurfin was a social real estate platform founded by Caroline Holden & Michael Pelletier in fall of 2022.

Over the course of 9 months they designed & built the app, conducted customer / client research, developed financial models, pitched investors, & raised $25k.