Ep 027 - Severe Weather Alerts - How Homeowner AI Keeps You Prepared

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts. With the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I'm Beth Dodson, and with me is John Bedrosik. We are your hosts for today and also the co-founders of HomeZada. And we wanted to talk about— during this podcast, you're going to learn more about how to be the best homeowner you can. With all the tips that we have learned and ones that others have shared with us, including our customers as well as other people in our network. So today we are going to talk about AI again. You know, we told you we'd come back and forth to AI and specifically within HomeZada because we found that the more AI we could incorporate into HomeZada, the more effective it can be to help you be the best homeowner possible and streamline your process of understanding Your home. So with that said, I am gonna bring this up with John. John, we're gonna talk about AI and specifically severe weather notifications, I guess.

That's correct. Yes. The whole— just maybe a little backdrop. The whole concept around generative AI and incorporating that into different tools, it really gets into— there's We've talked about this in previous podcasts, that the entire homeowner journey, right? It's the continuous journey of maintenance and moving in and doing remodels and all these kinds of things. And we've also talked about the geography of the United States and the fact that climate is so different in many different places.

Totally.

And people oftentimes get caught off guard with severe weather. And so the AI bit that we're gonna talk about today is severe weather, not reminding you that it's gonna be partly cloudy and 72 today.

That's what weather.com is for.

To help you sort of planning your party events this weekend. No, it's more about severe weather that could actually damage your property and/or, you know, your family.

And impact your overall life.

And affect your overall life and talk about how You know, the AI of essentially knowing where you live and understanding how the National Weather Service, 'cause that's where we're getting our weather alerts come from, understanding how that gets matched to your property. 'Cause let's face it, we have customers, you know, all across the country, Seattle to Florida to Maine to Arizona and everywhere in between.

That's true.

So as we all know, weather is different every single day across the country. So we may have different alerts at the same time, How does the system know how to alert me to my house for my issues on my severe weather alerts kind of mentality and give me time and to make some last-minute preparations if I need to, to kind of protect myself and my home? So I'm quite excited about this. As you know, so many different ways that we've incorporated AI to live up to our mission of make homeowners smarter about their home. So happy to talk through that today, but—

That's awesome. So just to get us started, Let's talk a little bit about severe weather, just so that we're clear on what that means. So I'm assuming— shouldn't be, but I'm assuming— that we're talking about tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, high winds, hail, wildfires. I'm trying to think. Earthquakes. Anything else that— Oh, like hard freezes, maybe. And those northern sandstorms. Yeah, 'cause Arizona gets sandstorms.

Absolutely. We learned a lot about this when we did the integration with the National Weather Service. So we had basically understood how the National Weather Service determines severe weather. And we did a lot of learning and it was all those things. And everything from like gale winds because you live on the edge of a lake in Wisconsin in the wintertime. Freezing rain can be considered a severe weather event. A tropical storm could be considered a severe weather event. High wind warnings.

Yeah.

And those high wind warnings can become— think about this as a high wind if you live in a mountain area with snow, therefore blizzard, or high winds in a desert fire brush area in terms of what they call red flag warnings. They can either have severe weather around extreme hot and humid dry conditions. So the National Weather Service does an amazing job of essentially determining every single type of weather event that you can think of. And then they've got a way to classify them as it relates to severity, because you could have wind, but not really considered severe, you know, 10, 15 mile an hour winds.

Right.

But if the gusts are gonna hit to 30, 35, 70 mile an hour winds, then you start to, you could sort of see how winds turned into a severe thing. So that's definitely how the National Weather Service does it. And it was a huge learning curve for us over how to incorporate that. But that's good knowledge for any homeowner across the country to understand that severe weather can be classified differently depending on where you are.

Now, okay, so we talk about severe weather. This is amazing. We got all these elements of what severe weather is. But what— let's talk about the impact to the house. I mean, let's face it, when you've got hurricanes or floods, that's a lot of water that can get in your house if you're not protected properly. I mean, and that can just cause havoc. On that house, mostly on lower levels versus upper levels. Sometimes, sometimes it can get to upper levels, but we've got water that can cause damage. Obviously, we've known friends who've lost houses due to wildfires and what have you, and that just destroys the whole thing. Like, you've got nothing left.

Mm-hmm.

Um, when it comes to winds, What kind of damage can occur to a house?

Absolutely. I mean, wind, right? You, you've got trees that are overhanging your house. Wind is the driver to basically create branches from breaking and/or the entire tree from falling. So obviously a preventative measure you could do to try is to try to trim those trees and branches. Winds could also— high winds could rip up Oh yeah. If you haven't, if you haven't secured them, you know, let's say you have a roof and some spots where the flashing is has gotten a little loose and this, that, and the other, and it's kind of not quite secure. A high wind comes in there and starts taking that off, and then that creates more damage. Um, other things like patio furniture that could be left outside, high winds pick those things up and they become flying objects. that basically could A, hurt people, which is really bad, but B, could be the cause to break the window.

Yeah.

And now you've got the high wind with rains and torrential rains coming in, pushing in water into your house through a broken window. So it becomes such a cascading effect. And this is really what the National Weather Service does a fantastic job, happy to get into the details, which is like, for instance, hurricanes, we think of them as, You know, high winds and rains.

Yeah.

But there's storm surge, right? Which is if you live, you know, within a half mile of the beach or on the beach, the hurricane winds push the flood, the waters. And so the National Weather Service will actually break down a hurricane into specific weather alerts based on specific neighborhoods in, let's say, Tampa, Florida, because you may be living in an area that's getting hit with storm surge. But you may also live on the other side of Tampa that's not really susceptible to storm surge.

Right.

But the eye of the storm is going to create higher winds in your area. So a lot of sort of moving parts as it relates to understanding, A, how the National Weather Service breaks down these complex events, which geographies are going to be affected, and how all these different events can impact your home either initially or in what I call the cascading effect.

Yeah. And we've seen a lot of people over the last several years start moving all over the country. I mean, we see people going from one location to another. Some of them moved back to where they grew up and maybe a little bit more small town, rural, and what have you. Or people are moving to cities which don't always see the same kind of natural weather. I mean, You can get earthquakes and stuff like that in the cities. But when it comes to being in various locations, I know from my own personal experience moving from one part of the country to another part of the country, it's definitely a learning curve to understand weather patterns and the impact that weather patterns have on our homes, just standard weather patterns. And so when you start introducing severe weather, it becomes challenging for people who are unfamiliar with it. And we do have friends who moved from California to Arkansas and they were very lucky. They did not get hit with a tornado, but it was, they said it was about 10 miles away.

Wow.

And they said there was devastation everywhere else. And they said, we got very lucky, but we now realize as homeowners, we have to add some other elements to our property In order to make sure we're protected should these situations occur.

Yeah, without a doubt. The whole people moving across the country, you know, to different states, not really being aware of what the severe weather issues is, is a big thing. Even people that have lived in, you know, an area their entire life, sometimes you get caught off guard because you're so busy about something else in your life, right? So Kids, parents, travel, work, whatever. All these things are going on and you're really not paying attention to the news, and you may not be aware that some severe weather is coming your way in the next, you know, 12 to 24 hours, and you sort of forget to take care of those other things— move the patio furniture in and those kinds of things. So there's the category of homeowner who sort of knows where they've been for a long time and, and they're just distracted with other life events, not really paying attention what's going on with the weather in the next 12 to 24 hours. And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum of, like you said, people from, you know, the West Coast move to Arkansas, not really familiar with, are they in a, you know, floods or tornadoes, et cetera. And that also stems into essentially 2 things that I wanted to show today, which is on the AI.

Okay.

One is clearly the severe weather alert of like something is gonna come hit my neighborhood.

Yeah.

And then perhaps in the next 12 to 24 hours. 24 hours. But then the flip side of that is more proactive. I've moved to this area. I don't really know what I don't know. Can the AI tool give me, you know, advice when there is no severe weather so that I can sort of understand what is the severe weather that is most likely to hit my home so that I can start that educational process? And that educational process could lead into— What can I do to harden my home against these things? What can I do to make sure that I'm properly insured? What can I do to sort of look for additional insurance coverages? Lots of sort of proactive things that you can do prior to the severe weather actually approaching your home.

So basically, this part of this AI tool is allowing preparation in understanding weather patterns or weather conditions In your local geography.

Yes, absolutely. It's both the preparation piece as well as the event is actually coming. Sure, that's awesome. And those are sort of 2 different things, but they're still severe weather that we, given everything that goes on in the country, we think every homeowner in America should be better knowledgeable about both the more preparation side as well as the reactive side of something is actually going to happen.

Yeah, and that does make sense because sometimes we'll get severe weather unexpectedly, and getting our arms around what we need to do immediately is important as much as preparation. So that's awesome. So are we going to see some of this?

Yeah, but before I do that, one other quick thing just to talk about a little bit about the National Weather Service. So the National Weather Service, I don't know exactly how many regions they have across the country, but they do have quite a bit, and it's almost like a regional office. So Tennessee probably has 3 or 4, and North Carolina probably has 3 or 4, because obviously the Outer Banks on the, on the East Coast versus the mountains are different. And those regional weather services are the ones that are constantly issuing these weather alerts.

Oh.

And they Not only, like I talked about, which is leveling the severity, it's also the timing of these things. So think about each one of these regional locations issuing these weather alerts almost on a continuous basis.

Mm-hmm.

And as we all know, as good as they are, they're not perfect. So how can you predict the weather? Which is, they, they can try to give you a lead-up to what's the likelihood of this actually coming and hitting my neighborhood versus a different part of the state. So there's the, there's the severe weather sort of categorization, and then there's the likelihood of it actually happening, and then there's the time period upon which they might estimate it to happen.

So what you're basically explaining is the National Weather Service is actually going hyperlocal as well.

Yes.

Which is important when you are living in various locations, or even if you have multiple homes in different locations.

Yes.

Yeah, okay.

Yes. So, and one other quick thing that I wanted to also explain is when you sign up for Homesota, you enter in an address, and based on entering in your address, we also will determine your latitude and longitude.

Yes.

Because the latitude and longitude is actually a more specific location for where your house is. And the reason why that's important is when the National Weather Service issues an alert, a severe weather alert. So let's say it's a high wind warning in, you know, Marquette, Wisconsin.

Sure.

It's going to issue that weather alert. It's gonna issue about, we think it's gonna happen in the next 12 to 24 hours, but it's also gonna create a geometric shape. Think of it like a polygon, like a multi-sided sort of shape. And each point in the shape is a latitude and longitude point.

Okay.

And now if your house falls within that polygon, then you're more— you're obviously— so your, your, your property is susceptible to that alert, where somebody could be living on the opposite side of the town in Marquette, Wisconsin.

Okay.

And they're not part of that particular weather alert. So understanding the pinpoint of your latitude and longitude is essentially one of the ways that we work with What's called polling the National Weather Service, 'cause we do this every day, and then understanding your latitude and longitude. And then if we know your latitude and longitude and there's a severe weather alert and it's gonna happen in the next 12 hours, then we're gonna push you this alert. Does that make sense?

Yeah, this goes back to our example of our friends who live in Arkansas who were 10 miles away. It's brilliant. So they missed the tornado.

Exactly. It's definitely a, a learning curve to learn the level of detail that's required to kind of do this on scale. So while I've been talking about that, I pulled up my screen, so I'm assuming you can see that.

So for anyone— yes, again, for anyone who is on audio, you can always come back at this time and you can see, um, some screen work that John is going to demonstrate. As it relates to this weather service and Humzada AI?

Yes. So I'm on a sample house, and the sample house is actually located in Kansas City, Missouri today. And I was able to do this literally 10 minutes before our call, which is I essentially went to the National Weather Service and looked across the country and said, where are there severe weather alerts today? And then I went back into the application to kind of configure this house 'cause there's a flood warning in Kansas City, Missouri. So for the people on screen, you can see that you've got the dashboard. In the very top of the dashboard, you can see it says flood warning issued April 22nd at 8:33 Central Time until April 23rd at 2:05, issued by the National Weather Service. That's what the NWS stands for.

Okay.

In the Kansas City Pleasant Hill, Missouri area. And it essentially starts to give you text around a flood warning, which counties are affected, what minor and major flooding, which river may crest, et cetera. And that essentially is what the user gets when they log into their Homesada application. Now, one thing I'm not demonstrating, which is equally important, which is Homesada will also push this severe weather alert to you via email. Because let's face it, most people are not logged into HomeZada on a frequent basis. They're more or less once or twice a day, but they are checking their emails a lot. So you're getting an email alert about this weather service, as well as if you have accessed your HomeZada account with your mobile device, Android or Apple, and, and chosen to subscribe to push notifications.

Yeah.

You will also get this in your phone via push notification. So that also gets to, you know, we've talked a little bit about the complexity of understanding latitude and longitude and the weather. Now it's like, how do I get this alert in front of the customer in a timely fashion so that they can actually see it, read it, and take action on it?

Yeah.

But from here, all of this data that you see here is essentially authored by the National Weather Service. And what Homesada has done is we're pulling this figured this out, made the match because this house is located in Kansas City. And now the user, all they have to do is click on that and it's going to pass all of that text to the National— from the National Weather Service. And now you can see in real time it's starting to give you summary advice over what you should do to sort of— what you can do to help minimize damage to family and property.

Which is amazing because you can take these actions very quickly. And with the preparation you were talking about before, by learning, you can have the tools or the products on site in your home should you need them. For instance, I'm very familiar with, um, a lot of people who experience flooding. They may want to have, um, sandbags available, and some people actually store them in their garage or in their basement just for the time when they were gonna need them.

Correct. And so for those people who are listening on audio, I passed the weather alert about the flood in Kansas City to the AI tool. Now the AI tool in less than 10 seconds basically created a table with essentially about 8 to 9 recommendations and the details. And just to read a couple of them real quick, it says avoid flooded roads, don't drive through flooded roads, you know, turn around, secure outdoor items. Move items to higher ground. Check your basement and drainage, right? We know that going back to every home is different. If you have a basement and you have a sump pump and there's going to be flooding, you want your sump pump to be working. But you also want to be able to clean your gutters because, you know, there's maybe heavy rains. Elevate your valuables even inside your home, right? Maybe you've got stuff laying on the, on the floor. You can move that to higher ground, move it to the second floor. Prepare emergency supplies. Inspect the property post flood. So it's giving you essentially a step by step set of instructions over what you could do for this particular weather alert. And just like with all of our AI, you can see as I scroll down to the bottom, it's it's it's an it's a discussion that you're essentially having with the National Weather Service via the AI about your specific house because it's giving you four additional questions.

Yeah.

What maintenance tasks should I priority? What should I include in an emergency flood preparedness kit? How can I protect my basement from future flooding? Are there insurance considerations for food-related damages? Or you could obviously enter in your cursor and essentially type in whatever you want. I'm just going to click on, what should I include in an emergency flood preparedness kit? And again, the AI does its thing and it's going to come back with a list of things that you could do to, you know, create your to-go bag, which is what we've talked about before. Now, again, we want people to do this, you know, a month beforehand and be preventative, but let's face it, if they haven't done it and they're not predicting the floods to hit for 12 hours, you still have time to put this together.

Correct.

But if you get this when it's actually happening, maybe it's too late and you need to take action to protect your family, and because you don't have time to do all these things.

And by all means, just so that everybody's clear, evacuating if you need to evacuate for any severe weather is more important than making sure you get a go kit. I mean, I'm just saying that right now because sometimes, like, fires and tornadoes will sneak up on you as quickly as possible and you don't have time to think about it.

You're right. And so for our audio listeners, as I did this additional AI action on the weather, the On the to-go kit, it talks about water and food. Create a 3-day supply of water for each person. First aid kit. Bring some tools and supplies, batteries, multi-tools, duct tape, waterproof matches. Bring some clothes, personal items, important documents, insurance policies, any communication device, radios, phones, hygiene, your cash and your keys, electronics, any special needs for pets. Family members. It's a pretty exhaustive little list. And you can again see the value of this thing for, again, all those situations that we talked about where people have moved to a different area. Because if I— I didn't get a chance to set this up, but imagine right now today at the same time there is, you know, a red flag went— a red warning in Tucson, Arizona because they have high winds and there's dry brush and it's a fire.

Yeah.

It's a potential wildfire. Completely different, a weather event in a completely different home because it's a completely different climate. The AI tool is going to create the recommendations for your home in the region that it is in based on the actual severe weather alert that's coming to you, uh, authored by the National Weather Service.

Yes, this is This is actually amazing. It's— and it's amazing because you can take action quickly, and it also spits out the information as quickly as possible so that if you've got 12 hours, you're not hunting for something. You're literally getting the information. Now I can take action within a matter of seconds. I can take action getting the information in a matter of seconds, and then I can take action as quickly as possible. Versus having to go hunt on traditional websites and what have you that will not provide enough value as quickly as possible. You have to read a full text string or a blog post or something else to that effect.

You're— you hit the nail on the head, Elizabeth, which is it's stringing together 3 or 4 of these technologies all together that makes it the most useful. I think it's pretty darn amazing kind of stuff, which is Yes, there may be people who are avid watchers of the local news, therefore they're being informed of the sort of weather event that may be coming, but maybe they're not necessarily thinking about how to take the steps to protect my property. And then, then you have other people that are busy in their life and they're, you know, coming back from a business trip and they're about to get hit with something and their family are not paying attention to it, but you could still get the weather alert because on your phone, you may be, you know, in Oklahoma, but the weather— and on a business trip, but the weather event is hitting Arkansas. You're going to get the weather alert because it's tied to your home and the latitude and longitude. And you can then basically do that, call your family members and say, hey, these are the things that I need to do.

Yeah.

And it's that ongoing dialogue. Right. It goes back to what we've talked about before. So many people are partial experts over what you can do to protect your home. Clearly, there are, you know, federal and state agencies from, you know, FEMA to the state emergency preparedness, a lot of insurance companies. But a lot of those people don't have technology to actually remind you in a timely basis.

Yeah.

About what's about to happen to your home, much less give you access to an expert where you can ask questions and have an ongoing dialogue, because this may be happening on a weekend and nobody's around to give you that information. So it's really stringing together all of these technologies that I think is the real value, because maybe just reconsider what's happened in the last year from Hurricanes in Florida that became torrential downpours and floods in the mountains of North Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee, the wildfires in California. So many things— people got so caught off guard by these things. This is a huge timely impact to minimize not getting caught off guard and then giving you enough time to be able to take action.

Yeah, and one of the things I also love about this is, as you said earlier, this is specific to your property or properties. So you can have specific information for your property being delivered to you so that you can be prepared and you don't have to think about all the other details.

Yes, indeed. So one other quick thing. This is the other part that I wanted to show you on the AI. So what I've done now for the audio listeners is I've moved off the AI chat into what we refer to as our home inventory dashboard.

Yeah.

And over on the right-hand side, we have a section called Actions and Discovery, and the 3rd one is a short phrase that says Disaster Risk assessment for my home.

Oh, that's interesting.

So this kind of goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, which was, yes, when severe weather is bearing down and about to hit my home, being alerted and warned is very important. But what are the things that I can do to be much more proactive? I don't want just 12 hours to make a decision. I want 2 to 3 months to make better decisions over how to harden my home and minimize risk and those kinds of things. And especially for the people that have moved across the country or the people that have bought their first home and they don't even realize this because they've been renters in an apartment and they bought their first home and they don't really think about these disaster risks.

Yes.

Now, sorry, did you want to add anything before I click on it?

No, no, no, no, no, I agree with you.

So now the user just clicks on that short phrase, disaster risk assessment for my home, The AI tool has been programmed to know based on where your home is located. Again, remember at signup, we know that the home is located in Kansas City, Missouri, and then it's essentially creating 2 or 3 different things all in a single AI interaction. And when it— it's almost done here, you can see here it's kind of building that information. And a little bit of a tangent, essentially when the AI tool works, it's getting all the data.

Mm-hmm.

And it's spitting all that data. And then at the end, when it's done, then it formats it in a very nice, easy-to-read format.

So yeah, Kansas City's got a lot of different weather things that can hit them.

Exactly. So for the audio listeners, essentially it returned 2 different tables. And the first table is basically saying, what are the weather and natural disaster risks in Kansas City, Missouri? And the table has 3 columns. What is the different event type, which is more or less the weather event? So tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, winter storms, flooding, hailstorms, and heat waves. The second column is what's the likelihood of those events actually happening in that region? And it's pretty basic. It's high, moderate, and low. So the tornadoes and thunderstorms and hailstorms are high. Winter storms, flooding, and heat waves are considered moderate. And then the 3rd column, it says description and potential damage. So for every single one of these items, it can essentially give you sort of potential over how your home and/or other property could be damaged. So I'm just going to focus in on, for instance, hailstorms common in the region, causing damage to roof siding and vehicles. So even though we're focused on HomesOnline protecting your home, let's face it. The AI tool knows that you probably have cars, and if you've parked your car on the street or in the driveway and a hailstorm is coming, if you have a garage or a covered thing, maybe it's useful to put it in the garage because you're less likely to damage your vehicle.

Or if you're moving to Kansas City, you may look for a home with a garage.

Absolutely.

That may be a priority.

Absolutely. So that is a huge, it's essentially like, hey, give me a risk analysis over my home, all the different types of issues. Now, if you look at the second table underneath it, it says the table is labeled Recommended Additional Insurance Options. So this kind of ties weather to insurance. Most people in America have an insurance policy 'cause obviously it's required most, Yeah. Especially for those who have a mortgage. Mortgage companies usually require the insurance, so people go out and get a standard insurance policy. But what many people don't realize is the standard insurance policy covers a lot of the, what I call, standard type stuff, leaks in your home and maybe a fire and trees falling down on your house, whatever, lots of sort of different things. But there are a lot of things that a standard insurance policy may not cover. And a lot of homeowners don't understand that a standard insurance policy may not cover these things. So, but the insurance company does provide additional coverages if you want to engage in them and having that discussion of, should I or should I not pay a little extra money to get some additional insurance coverage?

So again, specifically like for earthquake insurance, flood insurance, tornado and windstorm insurance, high damage insurance. There's, there's more you can actually get from an insurance company if you need to cover your home where you're more comfortable.

Correct. And even if something is covered, for instance, like it may be covered for hail, but it also may be capped at a certain amount, meaning it's only going to pay out X amount for hail damage. Well, if you've got a lot of stuff on the outside of your house, maybe you actually do want to double-check that and increase the coverage on the hail damage. Here's an example also of, you know, especially for people that live where they're susceptible to flooding, the 4th item there says sewer backup insurance, right? Your home has a toilet system. All the water goes into the sewer lines, goes out probably into the house, or if you live in a rural area, in a septic area. But But most people tied up to the local city sewer. Well, the sewer backup is more likely to happen in a flooding event, but sewer backup may not be covered in a standard policy. Again, educate.

Yeah, it's just an education. And it's just, this system is giving you feedback on if you really want to be covered, Here's some other alternatives to make sure you're covered. And now the trick, first and foremost, is to read your existing policy first. I'm going to be the first one to say that to anybody. Before you start running around getting all these extra insurances, you definitely want to read your insurance policy first to see what you're covered. And then from there, have the discussion with your agent or broker to determine what you feel comfortable having in addition to and what they would recommend as well.

Yep. The— it's, it's— I think that there's, uh, my experience in talking to homeowners, both friends and family as well as customers, there's 2 ends of the extreme. There's one end of the extreme of like, ah, I, I just want to get basic insurance coverage and Hmm. Trying to minimize the cost, because let's face it, costs are rising and people may be under economic stress and they're trying to minimize those things. I get it. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people that are like, I just want to know what's in my policy, what am I covered, what are the caps, what's not in my, in my, in my policy. And maybe it is worth spending an extra $50 a year or $100 a year or $200 a year on additional coverage because I'm going to get peace of mind because I've analyzed those high-risk areas, the high-risk probabilities of where I happen to live are very high risk, and I want to have what's called financial resiliency. I want to get back to where I was prior to the event if it actually does damage or destroy my home, and I don't want to get issues. And learning these things about what was covered and what wasn't covered until after the event actually happens.

No, I agree.

And every— we essentially, our goal is really just to inform everybody of what are the issues.

And what's available.

And what's available. Then it's let them choose what makes sense for them in their life. And as long as we're trying to do, again, our job at making people more aware over severe weather and how to be proactive and manage that, as well as when the severe Weather is coming down and about to hit your home, what are the few last-minute steps that you can do to minimize that damage?

And I will say this AI functionality as it relates to severe weather is giving me more data than I have ever received from any of my insurance providers. I'm not knocking them. I'm just telling you this is more than I've ever received from any of them. And I've had multiple homes across multiple places in the country and I'm pretty impressed because this allows me to make the best decision for me.

Yeah, I mean, and it kind of goes to what I call homeowner behavior, right? You bought the policy, whatever, 2 months ago when you had to renew it, and then you're busy with life. The value of HomeZada is we're sending you these alerts. in a device, in your email, in your phone, that you're getting them and they're timely. And even if it's not severe weather alerts, maybe you're getting an alert that says, hey, Elizabeth, it's on the maintenance calendar. It's time to clean your gutters. So, you've built— you're building what I call a consumer behavior of you're checking your home's auto once a month. So, when in the middle of the month you get a severe weather alert, you're like, wow, this thing is actually proactively informing me of something.

Mm-hmm.

And not relying on me to go to my insurance company's website to kind of Google all this stuff because that's just candidly, it's not a behavior that a lot of consumers are used to doing. So you've got to do it in a way that they are used to consuming new content.

Yeah. And it makes reaction time more efficient and more effective. No, this has been amazing. I mean, you don't think about this when you're buying a home that lives in areas where there's unique weather patterns, and you don't think about this— like, I think about things from a preparation perspective, but the fact that you can understand a full location, or I mean location specific to my home, on what kind of insurance I can get, what kind of task I can take, for the specific weather pattern that I may be experiencing is important.

Yeah, just a little FYI, Elizabeth, because it's an open chat box. Now granted, you live in a— let's say in this example, you live in a home in Kansas City, Missouri.

Yeah.

But let's say you're contemplating moving to Tucson. Oh yeah, you could just literally go into the chat box. I'm considering moving to Tucson, Arizona. Give me a climate and risk analysis if I choose to move there.

Yeah, which, which actually helps people decide, is this really what I'm— where I want to go? Because I know people will move places because they follow the whatever trends are going on. I put air quotes, whatever trends are going on. And then they realize that's not where they wanted to go.

Wait.

They, they often make such rash decisions. that they oftentimes don't have the capital to go back to where they once were.

And this is why I'm so excited about sort of homeowner AI embedded in these kind of digital home management platforms, because it's so conversive in a conversation. And as long as homeowners start to think about asking complex questions, a lot of what we tried to do, and you saw the user interface, is like, give me a climate risk analysis for my home. One click, the user didn't even have to type anything in and got all that information.

Yes.

So that's the, that's the secret sauce over homeowner AI is minimizing the user to do data entry.

Yeah.

But once you do that, if you start to, going back to what we talked about consumers, the better your question, the better the AI answer is going to be. So if you are living in Kansas City and like, should I move to Tucson or Tampa, Florida? Just key in more data and you're going to get the same level of response, but you got to provide it some information.

Yeah.

And I think that's what is just better than traditional. We've all been, don't get me wrong, used to so many web searches in the last 20, 25 years since the advent of the internet. This is why I'm so excited about AI, because it's context-specific to your home, minimizing data entry, not in a cluttered bunch of links. A bunch of, you know, advertisers trying to sell you something about that.

Correct.

But it's just data and you having an ongoing conversation that's open to you 24/7.

Which is specific to your properties.

Exactly.

Just blows me away. So is there anything else you want to share about this before we sign off?

I think I'm exhausted.

Oh, okay.

It's great. I'm so happy to share this with people. I hope they get value out of this because we just want everybody to be more knowledgeable about what it takes to manage their home as it relates to severe weather.

I feel like severe weather always brings you and I down a little bit. Like, I'm so tired of talking about severe weather. It's like horrible. But at the same time, we know it exists.

It's a, it's a reality. And, and it's, it's the— hey, it's— what is it? An ounce of preparation is worth, you know, a pound of pain? Or I don't know, I can't remember.

Something like that. Something like that. Or prevention. An ounce of prevention, something, something, whatever. Whoever knows this, please tell— you share the—

Yeah, I butchered it. Yeah.

Totally. So, um, thank you all for joining us for this episode of Be a Smarter Homeowner, and we look forward to seeing you in the next one. I apologize, a little bit of a cough. Um, and then if you like this, if you think someone else could use this, please by all means share it with them. We appreciate that so much, and we're going to keep bringing you great content on how to manage your homes, What we've heard from our customers, what we've heard from other people, and we'd be surprised at how many people actually need help managing their homes. So we want to do that for you, and we'll see you again at another Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. Have a wonderful day.

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