Homeowners sell their homes for less than they’re worth, giving up billions of dollars a year in the process.

We started Freemodel to fix this.

Everyone knows renovating a home before you put it on the market dramatically increases its sale price. Buyers overwhelmingly prefer turn-key homes, which means that renovated houses spend less time on the market and sell for more. Yet, the data shows that homeowners too often sell their homes as-is and miss out on a ton of cash.

We know this because house flippers raked in a whopping $15 billion in profits last year, buying as-is homes at a discount, renovating them, and capturing the lost value for themselves when they sell. And companies like OpenDoor and Zillow purchased more than 50,000 off-market unrenovated homes last year — these “iBuyers” purchase as-is homes up to 7% below market price and turn around and sell them for more. So house flipping and iBuying are booming now… all at the expense of homeowners.

Why don’t homeowners just renovate before they sell?

Sure, motivated sellers who have the required money, know-how, and contractor relationships can manage their own home renovations, but these are high hurdles that limit the practice to an alarmingly small number of homes sold.

Major real estate brokerages are increasingly offering concierge services that loan money to homeowners so they can fix up their homes, but not all houses qualify, the cash available per project can be extremely limited, and homeowners (or their agents) are on their own to plan and manage everything. So this route is still a massive headache… if you even qualify.

No widely available pre-sales renovation services exist today.

Today, it’s a monumental task to renovate before you sell: the time, money, and knowledge gaps are just too large for homeowners or their agents. And ultimately that means homeowners sell their homes unrenovated, leaving massive amounts of money on the closing table.

This strikes us as fundamentally unfair to homeowners. Homeownership has long been one of the most reliable methods of building and preserving wealth in America, and a system that prevents sellers from realizing the full value of their biggest asset erodes that opportunity.

We started Freemodel to fix this.

We believe you should be able to maximize the value of your home when you sell. And we believe agents are in an ideal position to help homeowners achieve this goal, because an ever-increasing number of homeowners rely on real estate agents, with an all-time high of 89% of all homes sold via agents last year.

We believe a new breed of technology company will emerge to help homeowners and agents tackle this problem: pre-sales home renovation services will deliver a great customer experience and compelling profits for homeowners.

To shift control of the sale back in your favor, pre-sales home renovation services should be:

• Free until the home sells — zero out-of-pocket costs and no fees until closing
• No effort for the homeowner or agent — full-service management that provides end-to-end planning, execution, and payment for projects
• Accessible to everyone — every home should qualify, as long as there’s profitable upside for the homeowner
• All-inclusive — everything the homeowner needs to sell including renovations, staging, and even moving expenses should be included
• Fully transparent — complete visibility into scope, pricing, and progress on the path to putting the property on the market

It’s time to give every homeowner the power to maximize the value of their homes, and we’re excited to help them do it!