How Two Immigrant Are Changing the Way America Does Home Search

This is the story of how two immigrants built ThinkHome  and how they are trying to build the Future of Home Search, but before that....

Something About Us......

We (me and my friend) are two immigrants with killer product which will change the way America does home search. I came to this Great Country 15 years back to get 'Master of Science' degree. After M.S., For last 11 years I am working in financial technology. This country is great to us and has given us many opportunities to fulfill our American Dream

Real Estate Investments and Buying our First Home

In 2011, when real estate prices were still depressed and interest rates were low, we first started buying and renting small condos. In 2012, we decided to buy homes.

For me, following parameters were important:

1. I was working in New York and any town which is in  1 hour Commute Distance was suitable choice for me.
2. I also wanted a Good School District as I wanted to give better education to my daughter.
3. I wanted to put down only 35K - 40K as Down Payment.  I had money for 20% down payment, but I wanted to put only 10% and use the rest to buy another investment condo
4. I knew the impact of Property Taxes. Essentially if you save $250/month in property taxes, you can afford home which is worth $50K more.
5. I knew the impact of Commute Costs. Similar to taxes, if you save $250/month in commute costs, you can afford home which is worth $50K more
6. I knew Detrimental Impact of Increased Commute time on Health and Happiness, so I wanted to avoid Long Commute

So armed with this knowledge, I started my home search and found out how difficult it was to search my Dream Home which can satisfy above requirements. There was no intelligence in home search marketplace. There was no website which was offering end-to-end solution. What I had to do was :

1. First find all towns which are in 1 hour commute distance from downtown NYC.
2. Now discard those towns which have high property tax rates. You can get this information from different sources. Because I was looking in 1 hour radius from New York, I had to analyse hundreds of towns. It took several days for me to go through all the available towns and find towns having lower property taxes.
3. Then further find school ratings for the schools in these towns and filter out towns which don't have good school ratings. This was another monumental task. GreatSchools.org  is a very good school rating website where you can research schools.
4. Once you narrow down towns, start finding homes for Sale in those towns. Personally I liked simple look of Weichert.com  than Zillow or Trulia, so I did most of my search on Weichert.
5. Once you like the particular house, go to Google Maps to see actual door-to-door commute time.
6. If it fits the commute time, do the cash flow analysis to see if  Monthly Mortgage (Bank Installment + Property Taxes + PMI + Property Insurance + Association Fees)  fits within my budget
7. Once all above requirements are satisfied, then go and see the house

You can see how tedious is the process of home hunting.  Many times people do reverse, first they see house and then they see if it fits all their requirements. Some times house fits all requirements, but deal fails on Mortgage Approver's desk as the Monthly Mortgage is not within User's reach because of user's inadequate Gross Income to serve the mortgage. Buyer's real estate agents also suffer as they have to show many houses to buyer and if deal fails due to mortgage, they have to start all over.

My friend also went through this whole process while buying his home and that's when we decided to address this huge product gap in home-search market and we decided to build the website to address these issues and that's how ThinkHome was born.

ThinkHome - Intelligent Home Search

1. ThinkHome takes all the hassle out of home search. It is the only home search engine that allows you to search for homes based on preferred commute time, school rating preference, available down payment and mortgage budget.
2. When user comes to ThinkHome, he/she specifies his/her work location, preferred commute mode and maximum amount of time user wants to spend in commute. User can also enter same information about spouse. Next User specifies minimum School Rating Preferences for Elementary, Intermediate and High School. Finally User specifies the Down Payment he has and Monthly Mortgage he can afford.
3. When search result is displayed, it shows homes which match user's/spouse's Commute Criteria, School Rating Preferences and which fit user's budget. As you see, we don't even ask the price range to user, but we calculate it for user.
4. ThinkHome goes even further, It assigns “ThinkHome Score” to each home.  Higher score implies lower spending on property tax and commute cost; thus making sure that more of your hard-earned dollars are going towards building equity in your home.
5. ThinkHome’s comprehensive search result page shows commute time to work location (powered by Google), GreatSchools ratings and a detailed breakdown of all costs.

Our Goals at ThinkHome

WE want to give home buyers all necessary tools at one place to Make Smart and Educated Home Buying Decisions. We want to reduce Commute Time and Costs to make people Happier and Reduce Carbon Footprint. We want people to send their Kids to Good School to get Great Education. And we want people to reduce wasteful spending on commute and taxes and build more equity in their homes.

We hope that ThinkHome will help you find your next Dream Home.