Ep 033 - How to Inventory Your Home—Photos, Videos & AI

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.

Hello everyone and welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast. I'm Beth Dodson and with me is our co-founder John Bedrosik, and we are here today to talk to you about how to take a home inventory. It has been a common Requested question from John and I on a variety— from a variety of different areas. And you would think that this is something very easy to do, but I— my personal opinion is I believe a lot of people get in their own way and struggle and stress over getting started on taking a home inventory. John, Are you hearing the same thing from even some of our customers and people we talk to?

Absolutely. People know that they should have a home inventory. Maybe their insurance company is telling them to do it, but then it's the, it's the trepidation over like, oh, how do I start and what should I do? And nobody's really telling them what makes a good home inventory. So, you know, there's that sort of initial struggle of like, what should I do and how should I do this? Because I know it's important to me.

Yeah, and it's funny you said that word good. Like, what's the definition of a good home inventory? I think all of that is variable. But we wanted to get into just taking some simple steps on getting yourself started. And so one of the reasons why I do think some people are overwhelmed is, you know, there was that, that documentation out there before that said the average American homeowner has 300,000 items in their home. And that's if you count every fork, every knife, every plate, every cup. So and so forth, which doesn't surprise me, but I can understand why people would feel like this is overwhelming and where do I start? And with that said, one of the easiest things that we suggest to people, John, is start by just taking photographs. Photographs are really simple. We've all got smartphones.

Right.

We've all got devices. You can just walk around and take photographs. Now, it's great when we say that, but what we find, at least this is from my perspective, I have to get a little bit more granular every time I say something high level to address the specific person that's talking to me. Are you in the same boat?

Yes, 100%. It's the— and photographs is the primary way that all of our customers take a home inventory because it's sort of the natural thing that everybody agrees is like the best way to start taking a home inventory is photographs and using their mobile phone. Now granted, some people might still have an old digital camera and take it that way, but given the fact that everybody's mobile phone has cameras in them, that device is the most common device they use to take photos. But like you said, it's like once I start with the photos, well, where in my house should I start is the next question.

Yeah. And so with that said, I know what I see with some of our customers and what suggestions I give. What suggestions do you give to some of our customers on where do I start? Now I've got what I'm going to do from a device perspective and the actual action I need to take, but where, where do I start now?

My first advice is taking 2 to 3 photos over every room inside the house and outside the house, exterior, like front yard, backyard, side yard, this, that, and the other. And The reason why it's 2 to 3 photos is like, if you walk into like your family room, you take a photo from one angle where you're standing. Oftentimes you may be in that particular photo, you don't have items from where you're standing, so you gotta walk across the room and take it from a different angle. So literally just having 2 to 3 photos of every single room inside your house.

Mm-hmm.

And 2 to 3 photos of like the exterior part of your house. Is an amazing place to start.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, I was gonna— you can tell I was anticipating that question. I was like, but why multiple room, room photos? But it makes sense. It's— there's various angles in a room, and you may miss something if you are not hitting all the angles.

One other piece of advice I give people is a lot of people are used to holding their device in what I call portrait mode, where the phone is vertical.

Oh, good tip.

And they take photos that way. Don't get me wrong, that works as well, but rotate the phone into the landscape, then you're gonna capture more things in the composition of the photo because it's in landscape mode, not portrait mode. And that little, little tip is a great tip to basically capture more things in the composition of each one of those photos.

Oh, totally. You, you're basically widening your perspective.

Correct.

You know, even on the outside of the home, you talked about taking photographs. One of the things that I've also noticed with some of our customers, they sometimes forget like the sides of their home. They take the backyard, the front yard, but they forget the sides of their home, which is sometimes where a lot of their equipment is.

It's predominantly there. Yes, absolutely. It's the equipment. It's the water shutoff valve. It's the HVAC. It may be the dryer vent that's, you know, coming out of your house in terms of exhaust. You know, you've got obviously lots of windows there and A lot of people have landscaping on the outside of their house, on the side yards. Very important.

That's fantastic. Yeah. So that's the basic way to get started. Then from there, if people want to get more granular and they want to go in deeper, what are some of the suggestions you give? I'll go over some of the ones I give as well. But what are some of the suggestions that you give in with regards to where to go even deeper? into taking this home inventory?

Yeah, it's again sticking to photos, but it's really now, do you want to take close-up photos of individual items? And my example is, let's say you have a family room, and most family rooms have furniture, TV, sofas, this, that, and the other. Well, when you take the picture from the wide landscape perspective, It knows it's a TV, but you don't see the brand or any of that information. You want to walk up and take a detailed photo where you're taking just a photo of the TV where you can actually see the brand name in the front. That gives you more composition over those specific items. And then you can apply that to pretty much every item in your house, whether it's important to you to take those detailed closeups.

Now, if some people are overwhelmed because We're talking about items, which I think is also very important, especially as you get more detailed information. And we just talked about the average homeowner probably has 300,000 items. People are probably already thinking, oh my gosh, that's going to take me forever. Oh my gosh, it's— I don't— where do I start? One of the suggestions that I make to a lot of people is start from one end of your house to another, room by room by room, Oftentimes I'll even suggest that, you know, get the whole family involved, you know, have everyone sign up for HomeZada.

Yes.

And literally have like a competition or something or a game of it to get everyone to take photographs room by room by room. But one of the things I found as I recommended this is to take— start at one end of the house, take photographs from room to room, do it Um, from the room perspective, but also the item perspective, and then carve out a small bit of time every day or every week to do that. And then you will find out that you're actually finished. Now, some people get distracted and they don't always finish in timely fashion. So I also suggest people schedule it on your calendar as Also another reason why I said make it a game with the family. But some people don't really love all the things in their house or don't care. Do you have other suggestions on what they would want to take photographs of, even if they have to get very granular item by item, that maybe— that may not overwhelm them? That's my question. Sure.

Yeah, I mean, I think it starts at the top with what's, what's the reason why you're creating the home inventory. Most of them are doing it for insurance purposes in case the house has a water leak, fire, natural disaster, or whatever, and you need to file a claim, which then focuses their attention on the items that are most valuable to them, right?

Yep.

So it's the, uh, this— the sofa and the furniture and the TV is probably more valuable than maybe The stack of magazines on the, on the, on the, on the kitchen table kind of mentality. But if that stack is a stack of books and those books are really valuable to you or very sentimental to you, then you want— may want to take a picture of the stack of books. And like you said, it's the composition. It, it's up to you. Do you want to take a detailed photo over each book or just the stack of books?

Right.

And estimate that, okay, that's probably worth $100 worth of book. Or are those really valuable books and every single one of them you want an individual photo? And therein lies the— we see so many different strategies with our customers because some people are very detailed, other people are not so detailed. And so what makes a good home inventory to them really relies on what they see as either financially valuable or emotionally valuable.

Yeah, no, that's a good one. I— we have even some customers that what's important to them is their collectibles. So customers who look at their sports memorabilia or their wine collection or some other collection— I know we have some customers in the LA area that have designer clothes— they are really in tune with taking, uh, those photographs. And that's where they start. They start with things that are perceived as most valuable to them and work from there versus the room-by-room strategy, which is also a decent strategy. A lot of things that, um, I have to remind our customers of and other people who are taking home inventory is to open drawers, cabinets, and closets, because oftentimes those are areas where there's a lot of information or a lot of items But they're not in some pretty photograph. They're— let's just take, um, everyone has probably one of those excess or junk drawers. That's what we call them.

Yep.

And they have just stuff in there, but there's stuff that's actually valuable, and taking a photo of that is worth it. I don't know that I would take a photo of every individual item in that drawer, but I would take a photo of that. And I remind people because oftentimes they forget What is in those drawers, cabinets, and closets? Are there other areas that people seem to forget and need some reminders of where items are?

I think so, yes. The, the, the, the pantry in the kitchen is an important one because, again, it also varies. There are some people that are very enthusiastic as it relates to cooking, and they've got a lot of high-value items stuck in a pantry. Other people aren't maybe so enthusiastic. And so somebody may want to take individual photos over all their important gadgets that they've spent hundreds of dollars on. Another person may just want to just take a broad photo of that.

Sure.

The garage is another huge area in terms of taking detailed photos because the garage is oftentimes the place where power tools are stored. Very high-value items, Christmas ornaments and decorations. Another set of high-value items. Somebody that may live in a suburban/rural area may actually have motorized farm lawn equipment where they actually have a riding lawnmower, all these sort of things. So the garage—

Or recreation.

Area in the house to decide that question of, am I okay just taking one broad photo that captures all these things, or is it important for me to take individual close-up photos?

Yeah, no, those are good ones. I actually thought of another one that I forgot about underneath beds. Underneath beds, you never know what people have got underneath beds. So, um, so yeah, so part of our trick is to help people. The attic is another one. Oh, attic is a really good one. Yes, because there's a lot of mementos up there too. Yeah, so we've talked a bit about photographs and the, the widening of photographs from a room perspective. The detailed photographs. We've also talked about photographs in unique spaces, but one of the things we haven't talked about is photographs of items that maybe have other notification or detailed information about the item. For instance, like a serial number or manufacturer number. When in that case, a lot of that information is on the side, on the back of an item. And the easiest thing I can think of is a television, even the flat screens.

Yep.

You, before you mount a flat screen or before you do something, you can easily take a picture of the front of it, but you can take a picture of the sides and the back and what have you to know the depth or the thinness of it, but also the back which has your model number, your serial number, and any other type of details. If we suggest to people, which we do, to take those photos if they really want to, and this also goes with computers, electronics, appliances, equipment like HVAC equipment and everything else, why would that be valuable for them to add additional photos on these minutiae-type details that may seem frivolous?

Yeah, great question. I think it has to do with that, you know, unfortunate scenario where you have to file a claim and your insurance company's asking you for the documentation of what you had in your house, right? And so first recommendation is if an item has a brand name that you can see on it, take a photo of that 'cause that's usually easier because the brand name instantly will get you into a closer spot as it relates to what that item is worth. Um, and then yes, it's the— if, if you need the make, model, and serial number, taking the photos of the, of the back, it makes it just a greater level of documentation because now you're not arguing that it's a Samsung 65-inch TV. You know that this Samsung, based on the make, model, and serial number, you bought literally 2 months ago, and it's an 8K TV that costs $2,000 versus you bought the Samsung 65-inch 5 years ago and it's, you know, a 1080p and it's only worth $500.

Yes.

So therein lies that additional level of detail. If you can, for those items that do have serial numbers and make and models on those, just capturing that photo will allow you to be in a better position if you ever had to prove the value of that item.

No, that's fantastic. So we've talked about detailed photos, we've talked about room photos, we've talked about outside photos. Are we missing any other And we've talked about hidden areas that people forget about. Are we missing anything as it relates to taking a simple home inventory and how to get people started? Because that's the biggest thing is just people feel overwhelmed and they're afraid to get started, which we want to help them understand. It's not that hard. You just have to carve out some time to get it started.

Yeah, I'd say maybe 2 things come to mind. One is the evolution of mobile phones is that the cameras are getting better and better and better. And oftentimes lifestyle photos, they become the default setting on your phone is like maximum number of pixels. So when you go on vacations, you want to eventually frame that great photo of, you know, Hawaii or wherever you went. But the size of that photo that's stored, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, right?

Mm-hmm.

And when, when you're doing an inventory, you can still get high fidelity photos, but not be on the super max setting. And a lot of that has to do with the downstream of uploading those photos to Homes Auto or sharing it with your insurance company. It's just going to take longer if you have the super duper high quality ones. You could probably get away with sort of mid-tier quality when you're doing the home inventory. I think the other thing to bear in mind is what I call the composition of the photo.

Mm-hmm.

Meaning if you're, if you get too close to the TV, then you can't tell it's a TV.

Fair enough.

If you're too far away, you don't see the brand. It's really trying to get that sort of right framing of what's the composition of it so that you're not too close and you're not too far away, because then it becomes easily identifiable by either you or others downstream over what that actual item is.

Now, so this is just to get people started. Um, I do want to take a quick step into HomeZada a bit because HomeZada can help you track even more information. And I know We're telling people just get started. The basics, photos are the basics. But with Inside HomeZada, we can actually help people track even more specifics. For instance, rooms. Let's just take rooms for a second. You can track size of rooms and the paint colors in those rooms. It may seem mundane and it may not be a priority, and we would not suggest to make that a priority just to get your inventory started because in reality, The insurance company, if you're ever going to make a claim, doesn't really care about that. However, it may be beneficial to you. As it relates to the items, tell us a little bit about the details we can track on the items themselves, whether people choose to manually enter it or use some of our other tools to get that information inside the system. Just tell us what those items, those details are.

Yeah, great question. And the biggest thing is, I'll give you a scenario. You walked into your family room and you've taken detailed photos of all the major items. Let's say you have 10 different photos. Well, now that you've got the photos, that's great, but now if you wanted to know what's the total value of those items in the photos, a system like HomeZada needs to be able to add up those 10 items because one item's worth $1,000, one's $2,200. HomeZada can basically track the item value and the brand— Samsung 65-inch TV, $2,000. If you know it, you can even track the date purchased. As you get into other things, you can even enter in the serial number and the make and model. So all that, all the details about those items are actually stored. Then the value is Homesata summarizes that for you either on screen or in a PDF that you can then send to an insurance company.

Which is streamlining that process even more. And it, that's where we have customers that are lightweight, and take information just about certain items that they value. And those valuable items could be, to your point, truly high-value items that are collectibles or sentimental or material to their business, aka we have construction contractors who are taking purely photographs of all their tools. And that's really important to them. And then from there, you can then continue to add details over and over again. And I also understand, not that this is a podcast for that, and we can go into detail about that on another one, but items generally also have documentation. And if I— I know this, but HomeZada can store this information. What types of documents do you think most people might want to store about these items, especially if ever they have to file a claim?

Great question. And a lot of— first is receipts. Now it's like you bought the Samsung, you took a picture of the back of the serial number and you got that data. But if you actually just bought it, why not take a picture of the receipt and store that as a document in HomeZada? Now you have even better documentation. It's just a layer. Not everybody's going to go through this, but you could sort of build that habit of taking pictures of receipts or invoices. For the people that do have high-value items, they may have even hired an appraiser where—

Yeah.

A third party has come in and said, your sports memorabilia, each item is worth X, Y, and Z. They produce a PDF, then you can upload that PDF as a document to your inventory as well. Those are the 2 big things as it relates to documents. And a lot of that has to do with what I call your personal property. For those other items, if you wanted to inventory them as it relates to the HVAC equipment and the appliance, then those documents become owner's manuals and spare parts list. And how do I, how do I care for these items? Those are those types of documents that sort of apply to the things that need maintenance.

No, that's fantastic. And so basically what we're trying to share with people is there's a layered approach to taking home inventory. We just want them to get started, and there's no wrong, right, or particular way that you can take a home inventory. It's what is comfortable for you. But should there ever be a situation where you need to file a claim— and we've had this recently with a lot of disasters all over the country, and that's one of the reasons we wanted to do this video is getting started isn't as hard as everyone thinks. And the other thing we talked briefly about was, was if people don't feel like taking photographs, they can also take videos. Talk a little bit more about that as well.

Yeah, so with Homes Auto, when you— number one, when you create a property, it's going to predict all the rooms in your home. Then instead of taking, you know, 20 photos of each room, you could walk into a room with your mobile phone and just record a video. And the benefit of recording the video is the voice can narrate what you see. So as you're recording, you're like, oh, over there is the piano, over there's our, you know, uh, guitar set, over there's our games, over there's our whatever.

Sure.

And you're essentially getting that benefit of the narration. Less time to do that because you could probably narrate what's inside a room probably in about a 2 to 3 minute process, maybe 5. And if you did that for 10 rooms in your house, you're done in like 20 minutes.

Yeah, and that's really a good idea even without narration. If you are in a situation where you have to leave, like you're being told to evacuate, you can quickly run around and take these videos and leave. Safely and securely. Yeah, that's a good alternative.

Correct. And what you're essentially saying is, when are you going to take a home inventory? For those of the people that are thinking ahead, yeah, they've got plenty of— well, they think they have plenty of time, but like, I've got a couple weekends to do this. Then you have people like, I should have taken a home inventory, but the National Weather Service says the hurricane may hit us in 2 days. But I've got a lot of other things to do. I don't have a home inventory. Maybe I'll just go into each room in the house and spend 15 minutes taking a video. I'll be in a much better position than not having anything at all. Yeah.

And by the way, for everyone out there, most insurance companies, from what we've seen, will not take video records of, of a home inventory. They just won't. But you, once you have the video record, you can then go back and draft your home inventory item by item to actually get the information out to your insurance company. And it's better than nothing.

Yeah, 100%. You could open all those, like you said, the closets and the drawers, quickly open them. Your video sort of gets all that information. And then you can go back and use that video for your own memory recall. Because again, 300,000 items in the home, nobody remembers half of these things, especially the things that are in the garage and closets and drawers. Now being able to go back and see those things when you actually do need to file a claim, that's the huge advantageous piece of having the video.

Yeah. And I also think having this information is really important and When you are going through a loss of any sort, or even massive damage, you are generally distressed and don't know what is going on, and you may even be displaced for a period of time.

Mm-hmm.

Now, your insurance company may put you up in a hotel or something like that, but you still don't have any of your things. And if you've lost your home entirely, to anything. So for instance, a fire can take the entire home.

Mm-hmm.

Then you have to replace clothing, toiletries, medications that you might be having, any eyewear, glassware, anything like that, any technology that maybe you need to do your job or what have you. But the list goes on and on. And you may be one person, or you may be a couple, or you may be a family I mean, you may even have your pets and you need to replace all of their, their dog bowls or cat bowls or whatever the case may be. So it's really important to understand how to get that inventory done when you least have any challenges going on than waiting for this dramatic situation. And now because you're distressed and you may be displaced and you've got to figure out how to replace the minimum at a short-term conversation. And then at the same time, your insurance company is asking you, where's your home inventory? Where's your home inventory? Where's your home inventory? The pressure is building. And so we're just here to alleviate some of that by helping people understand you can take a home inventory. Now, I do want to close out with a couple different things. The first thing is, I have a question for you, John. You know, we're telling people to take videos and we're telling them to take photos. They can easily use their phones to do that. And at a bare minimum, if you are drastically trying to get out the door, do whatever you got whenever you got it. But what's the value of using HomeZada to take these photos and this inventory and these videos that adds more value that a regular phone or computer or something just cannot do?

Yeah, the biggest value today is we've introduced Home Inventory AI, where all those photos can be processed by AI, which is going to create all— a lot of that data for you. So you take that landscape photo, wide-angle photo of your family room, you just hit AI, it's going to document, it's going to identify the objects, it's going to estimate the value, it's going to create a description in like 10 seconds, and you hit save. Now you've exploded the amount of data that you have with very little extra work. All you did was push a button and the AI did it for you in 10 seconds.

It's brilliant. I do, I love that feature.

That's one of the biggest reasons why Homes.com is valuable on the AI bit. The other reason is, imagine now you've done that for 10 rooms in your house, and now you're like, okay, well, what's the value of my inventory? Homes.com has a report that adds all that up. And you can print a PDF and send it to your insurance company.

Yes. And I love, by the way, I believe in good data in is good data out and good reporting is important in any aspect of your life in order for you to make the best decisions. And man, the inventory report is awesome.

And the AI also works on the close-up photos. So it, like when you take that picture of the serial number of the TV, it's going to detect the make, model, and serial number and what the model is. And it's the 8K version that just came out, you know, 2 months ago. And all that data gets stored.

Yeah, that's— see, that's impressive, and that speeds up this process. So basically, we're, we're suggesting that people take a home inventory, and at the very basics, just start off with photographs, either of things you find very valuable, whatever that means to you, whether it's high-value items, the items associated with maybe your work or what have you, or your personal momentous type value, or go room by room and start just in the room area or room categories, and then narrow that scope down to more granular items— getting close-ups, getting drawers, uh, cabinets, closets, underneath beds, garages, attics, etc.— and then make It— a project that you're gonna do with some timelines and put it in your calendar to make sure you get that done, or use your videos to take video content that can also help you recall what you have if you don't have the time to do a detailed one right away. Is there any other suggestions you can give to people? On taking home inventory that they may need just to get started?

Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head over all the different choices. You know, it's the literally think about how you're going to take photos of your house, what's important to you, where are you going to save those photos, how are you going to itemize the detail, and how would you share it with your insurance company?

Perfect.

That's the key to this sort of getting to just getting started and getting in a much better place than you were with nothing.

Oh, yes. And so, um, one of the reasons we want to do this podcast too is we have seen a lot of— we've been called and talked to by a lot of other organizations out there from the insurance world, from the insurance adjuster world, to clients themselves asking I didn't have a home inventory. What can I do now? And for those people who don't have a home inventory, John, I wanted— I do want to share some examples of what we were able to do for some people because I think that's also very important. We have some new customers of HomeZada who were affected by LA and some hurricanes in Florida, but they did have photographs of their home in some capacity, maybe through a previous vendor or through, uh, social media or on their phones or what have you. Explain what we were able to do for them to help them craft a home inventory, because I think that's really important if you feel like you've lost everything and you, you think you don't have a way of getting this crafted to some level.

Yeah, great, great point. And I've heard a lot of stories, unfortunately. And but the biggest point was they didn't have a home inventory, but they've lived in their house 10, 15 years and they've had a lot of family events at the house, right? The Christmas party, the Thanksgiving holiday, the barbecue, and this July 4th, all these sort of parties. So oftentimes you have a history of these digital photos Mm-hmm. Based on life events that happened in your house, then you could still use those because essentially, even though there may be people in the photo, behind those people are all the objects of the things that were in those rooms. And that goes back to the emotional aspect of if you had a total loss, you completely forgot what's in those rooms.

Correct.

Going back and looking at your digital library of all the previous photos that you've taken, of being in and around your house, you could still upload those to a solution like Homesada and process it via AI. And it still may be able to detect those things, even though they unfortunately burned up in the fire, but you still had previous photos from lifestyle events.

Yeah, no, and Homesada's AI can actually track all that, which is amazing. And it's something, it still would take work for people to go find all those family photos and what have you. But Our goal is to help people get in front of taking a home inventory now, but we wanted to address all these issues and get people started because of the scenarios we're seeing and because of the need for documentation by the insurance companies. And there's other benefits you will get from having a home inventory, and we have gone into that briefly in some other podcasts, but we will continue To talk about those benefits, we just want people to get started with this podcast, and I think we've explained some great steps for you to get started if you haven't done that already. If you have any questions, I honestly I would say hit us up at homezada.com. You can also hit us up at info@homezada.com, and we will answer any questions that you may have because we really think this is really important. Important to avoid any challenging situations. John, is there anything else you'd like to close out with?

Nope, I think you've touched all the major points of just how to get started, which is awesome.

Awesome. So we want to thank you for being here at Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, and please subscribe. Please share this with anyone you think needs it. If you think anyone does not have a home inventory right now, please, please, please, please share this with them, and they can get started and they can feel comfortable getting started on this. But until then, we'll see you at another Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast at another time. Have a great day.

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