Quick Tips to Getting Started with HomeZada

Hi everyone, Beth Dodson here. I hope you're having a fabulous day. We're coming to the end of our summer. Thank you for everyone who is joining me. For anyone who watches this later, thank you again for joining us because we're excited to share tips with you. And as usual, I have my notes because I never want to forget anything. What was I gonna say? Oh, today we are going to talk about some quick tips on on using HomeZada and why they're actually valuable, because I always get some questions from customers and they're about, so why do I need to start by entering some data to use HomeZada? I'm going to tell you exactly what this data is. I'm going to tell you the value of it that you may or may not be aware of. So the first thing is, um, what's the first thing? The first thing is when you sign up for HomeZada, you are asked to enter in a property name. So basically what that means is you're just naming the property that you're managing. Maybe it's My House, maybe it's Our House, maybe it's the Family Home, maybe it's, uh, Shay, you know, Dodson. I don't know, but maybe it's any type of name that you want to give it. It could be fun, it could be cute, it could be what have you. And the reason why you want to do this is because you're going to refer back to this naming convention When you need to access the property, and you're also going to refer back to this because let's say eventually you have a vacation home or you decide you want to manage another home. You can actually call each home by whatever name you want to call it. Now, it does not excuse me preclude you from entering in your address. You could simply say, you know, 12345 Anywhere Lane in Anywhere, USA. So you can also do that. Now, I personally don't. I just call it my house when I sign up for it, and then I use other nomenclature if I'm actually managing other houses. But I'm not. So that's the first thing. The second thing, and that's required in the system to have some kind of naming convention. The second thing that we ask for when you sign up for Homes Auto, which is optional, is an address. And not a lot of people wanna give their address, but one of the tips I'm gonna give you is when you put in your address and your zip code, we can actually give you predictive tips on the region in which you live. So that's really, really valuable. So if you live in Minnesota, You are bound to have snow. Snow. Maybe even freezing rain, maybe even just very, very cold temperatures. And with snow and with freezing rain comes different aspects of living in a house than, let's say, if you lived in Arizona. If you live in Arizona, you are dealing with very dry, very hot desert conditions. In the middle of summer, something that many of the other people in the country don't ever see. So one of the reasons why the address, we encourage you to enter it, is so that you can get these predictive tips for the region in which you live in. So it's really just very valuable, and so we want to make sure that you understand that. The second thing we ask for is bedrooms and bathrooms, the specific number of each, and Many of our customers always ask, why, why do you have to enter this? You don't have to enter this. However, if you are in the process of establishing a home inventory, we want to speed up that process for you. And in order to speed up that process, we have algorithms in the back end of our system that helps distinguish between homes. So if you live In a single-family home, so the type of home we also are asking for, the number of bedrooms, in a 4-bedroom house with maybe 2 or 3 bathrooms, you probably have, in addition to those bedrooms and bathrooms, you probably have a family room, a kitchen, a living room, maybe even a dining room, and you have a garage possibly, 'cause it's a single-family home, and maybe you have some of these other areas in your home. We predict the generic rooms and spaces associated with your home— your attic, your, um, like I said, your garage, your front and backyard— because it's a single-family home, we predict those spaces for you so you don't have to start from scratch to add them. Now, if you have a smaller home or if you live in a condo, we also help you by saying, you know, you don't have a garage, you don't have a front yard and a backyard if you live in a condo. So we want to streamline that process for you. So that's why we ask for bedrooms and bathrooms and the type of home that you have. The next step that will then happen is you will see a list of the spaces in your home, and this gives you a chance to review the spaces and for you to delete maybe what you don't have or to leave it, and you can always change the name. So for instance, In my house, I do not have a living room. I have a family room, but I don't have a living room. I had a space that could have been a living room, but I made it an office. So, um, it's just one example. I'm using my personal example here, but, um, I can— I left this space in there as a living room because what I did was I modified The title of the room to something different, an office. You could easily delete the living room, saying I just don't have it, and just click on the X box and say I'm going to delete that. And then you don't have to worry about it at all, making it very easy. And once you've looked at all the spaces, you've determined what you have, what you don't have, you've deleted what you don't have, you've kept what you have. At the very bottom, the system will ask you, are there rooms that you're missing? Maybe you have a sunroom and that wasn't put in the system. You can easily add a sunroom. Maybe you have a shed outside because the system didn't recognize a shed and you want to add it to a space that you want to track because you have belongings in that shed. Maybe you have garden equipment or lawn mowers and that's important to track, so you can add a shed. Maybe you have, um, I'm trying to think of something else that you may have in your house, so I apologize. Maybe you have an attic room that was converted into a bedroom, so maybe you have an extra bedroom or an extra study or an extra loft. You can also add that to the system. So that's the flexibility that it gets in HomeZada. You have all these spaces, you click yes, this is— I want to move forward to the next space, and then it will ask you, do you want to add, uh, your possessions and your belongings? It's what we refer to as fixed assets and possessions. And let me explain to you what the difference is for people who may not know. We categorize possessions as things that you will move into a moving truck so that you will take from home to home, whether that's photo albums, whether that's furniture, electronics like TVs, whether that's dinnerware, housewares, cooking utensils, those types of things will go into your possessions. The fixed assets are things that will always remain with the house. It's items like countertops, cabinets, flooring, maybe desk systems that are built into the wall. It could be appliances. Some appliances will stay with the house. It could be all your equipment, your HVAC systems, your hot water heaters, your garage doors, something as simple as that, because we allow our customers to track as much detail as possible. It's one of the things that we want to make sure— we want to make sure it comes out as super flexible for every type of customer. So the system will ask you, do you want to add these fixed assets and possessions to these spaces? And you can say yes or no. My personal opinion is that yes, you click both and you say, yes, I do want them in there. And the reason why you want them in there is for 2 reasons. One, you don't have to start from scratch by saying, I've got a coffee pot, I've got a computer, I've got a drapery, I've got a desk. You don't have to start from scratch. They're already in there. These items are already in there and they're already assigned to specific rooms, which is also very valuable. So you don't have to tag things to specific rooms. You've already got the items in the rooms. So when you click that, you will then receive another notification. Maybe you have an in-ground pool. If you have an in-ground pool, also click that. If you don't, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. You'll just move on. You'll get that built someday soon. So once you've clicked everything and you've moved through this little process, you have your number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms. You have the type of home that you have— single-family, detached, condo, townhouse, those types of things. Once you have all that in there and then you've decided to click yes, I want my possessions and I want my fixed assets added to the system, Homes Auto will then update your home inventory and you will not have a blank slate. You will already have generic spaces and generic rooms inside your system. So you will have your living room, your dining room, your office, your kitchen, your family room, your shed, your in-ground pool if you have one. You'll have all the different items in each room. So a good example of that is a kitchen. So inside a kitchen, we generally have a range, we have a refrigerator, we have a microwave, a sink, a faucet, countertops, cabinets. All of those generic things will be added to the kitchen space. And all you need to do then is walk around with your cell phone, if you've got a smartphone. You take pictures with your smartphone and then you tag it to the item and the space. It's that easy. Once you've done that, you can then decide what kind of details you want in the system. Do you remember how much something cost? If you don't, don't worry about it. It's not required. If you know where you purchased it from or when you purchased from, have at it. Enjoy. If you have warranties or any other type of manuals that you want to upload and tie it to that item, you can do that too. And you can take as many pictures of the items and the spaces as you want. I'm one of these people, I take a lot of different photographs, especially of my spaces, because I take them from different angles, which I love that, so I can get a feel for my rooms when I need to furnish them or redecorate them or Just find things to put in there. So that's what you can do, and that's why these early steps are valuable to all of our users. Most people don't understand why they are, so I'm just here to try to share with you. If you take these simple steps— naming your property, providing your address, counting the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, identifying the type of home, and then clicking yes to I do want my possessions and fixed assets uploaded into the system, you will have the easiest path to entering a home inventory that you've ever seen. The other thing that you will have a benefit to is maintenance tasks. When you're ready to conquer them, those maintenance tasks will be personalized To your home in your region. And by the way, if you have a home in Minnesota and then you decide you want to have a winter home in Arizona, you can track those and they will also have different maintenance tasks. So I wanted to give you these friendly tips on why these tasks are important. And if you have any questions about these tasks, please let us know in the comments. I know a lot of people don't always understand the nuances of how software programs work, so I want to make sure that you know that we are here for you and we will answer all of your questions. So please let me know if you ever have any questions on the things I just gave you in this video, or if you have them for anything else. At HomeZada, we are always looking for feedback on our product. We are always looking for feedback on the information that you need to be successful, and we are absolutely looking forward to Talking to you as our users as well. So please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for joining me today on this live video and or watching it later, as you may have been doing that. And we really, really, really, really appreciate all of the support and also all of our users who are just tracking all their home inventory and getting their homes organized with. digital home management. Have a great day. Enjoy the rest of your summer for as long as it, as it can stay. And then we are looking forward to fall.