Online Tool Makes Home Renovation, Better
Renovate America, a leading provider of home-improvement financing, has launched a new online marketplace that fills a previously unmet need for homeowners by giving them an easy-to-use, one-stop shop for browsing helpful renovation project advice, finding and selecting highly rated, quality-tested contractors, and comparing multiple financing options.
With Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies expecting healthy growth in homeowner spending on remodeling through 2025, and with sustainability and energy-efficient upgrades among the fastest-growing market segments, the new marketplace at the revamped renovateamerica.com is well-positioned to capitalize on key trends in home improvement.
The new renovateamerica.com connects homeowners to vetted, performance-monitored contractors in three states – California, Florida and Missouri – while also providing helpful tips on home-improvement projects that can save energy and water. Homeowners can search by project type for contractors that do projects in their zip code and the surrounding area, and view a detailed profile page for each contractor.
While on the site, homeowners can also check their eligibility for HERO, the country’s largest form of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, as well as Benji, Renovate America’s unsecured home-improvement loan product for well-qualified borrowers. HERO rates can be as low as 2.99%, while Benji rates are competitive with credit cards and other forms of unsecured financing.
“As we aim to become the most trusted resource in home improvement financing, our new marketplace enhances the customer experience while giving small businesses the tools they need to grow,” said Dan Stevenson, SVP of Product, Marketing and Technology at Renovate America. “Homeowners can access financing solutions like HERO and Benji while seeing social-media ratings for quality contractors in their communities. And contractors participating in the marketplace potentially can gain access to hundreds of new business leads.”
In keeping with one of Renovate America’s signature consumer protections, all contractors listed on the website must maintain a passing grade in the company’s landmark Contractor Quality Rating (CQR) system to remain listed. In addition to the company’s own behind-the-scenes vetting and rating system, the marketplace provides homeowners access to each contractors’ customer ratings from Google, Yelp and Facebook, directly in search results and on the contractor’s storefront page. Currently, the average aggregate social-media score for contractors listed on the site is 4.2 stars.
The online marketplace also provides excellent exposure for contractors, showcasing their business to tens of thousands property owners monthly and generating quality leads, unmatched by any other PACE or unsecured financing provider.
All contractors listed on renovateamerica.com receive their own virtual storefront, featuring their social-media ranking, as well as a summary information of the type and volume projects they have completed using HERO financing.
About Renovate America
Renovate America offers a tech-enabled financing platform for home improvement retrofits that empowers communities to modernize and make their housing stock more efficient, while giving small businesses the tools they need to grow. In addition to financing home improvements through an unsecured lending product, Benji, Renovate America offers communities HERO financing. HERO is the leading residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the U.S. and has been used by over 110,000 homes to make energy and efficiency improvements. It is estimated that HERO is on track to save billions of dollars in energy and water bills, and has created over 20,000 local trade jobs that cannot be offshored or automated. Renovate America has built the world’s largest green bond platform, with a volume of originations that enables securitization of HERO PACE bonds multiple times a year, attracting international investment to meet U.S. clean-energy objectives.
SOURCE Renovate America
