Super
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Somehow the COVID-19 pandemic led to the housing market heating up, instead of cooling down, solidifying the popular belief that the price of real estate only goes up. Meanwhile, inflation speculation and expansionary monetary policy fuels interest in anything a central bank can’t print. All of this makes real estate seem like an excellent investment, but owning real estate comes with its own set of problems and liabilities. Today’s company: Super wants to remove these liabilities and give owning a house the same user experience as renting.
👽 What?
Super, a play-on-words, making reference to both “very good” and “a superintendent“ offers a subscription-based model for home maintenance. As a homeowner, you can pay a fixed monthly amount to outsource the responsibility of fixing any appliance or plumbing issue your home might encounter. The concept entails that you can live in your own property, enjoying the perks of someone who rents, being able to call someone whenever something breaks down.
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The standard insurance covers most popular appliances by default and offers a whole list of other appliances via optional coverage. At this moment they also charge a $75 dollar copay whenever you need an intervention which kind of negates the service model. They are working on removing this charge once they get their operations optimized.
Super doesn’t operate any of the maintenance crews themselves, instead, they build up a network of trusted contractors and a smart software solution to match service providers with specific issues of their clients.
🤷 Who?
Super was founded in 2015 by Jorey Ramer, Ryan Donnelly, and Bill Davis. Jorey Ramer came up with the idea after selling its previous company Jumptap. Finally deciding to buy a property, he was worried that dealing with possible repairs would be too much of a hassle. This combined with some past bad experiences with maintenance companies made him decide to re-invent the home-repair sector. Up until now, they raised almost $130 million to build out the service.
🕵️♀️ Who else?
Super’s marketing messaging is capturing the zeitgeist very well with a solution aimed at busy millennials that grew up focused on experiences instead of owning stuff and are now looking for a continued care-free lifestyle while also enjoying the equity building and hedge against inflation that comes from owning real-estate. However, the solution isn’t all that innovative. Home warranty providers like Choice Home Warranty and American Home Shield are established businesses providing similar services. Certain electricity suppliers even offer home appliance warranty programs tied to a certain contract tier.
👍 Why
Providing fixed-cost repairs at least aligns the incentives between homeowners and service providers. Instead of providing short-term fixes in the least amount of time, service providers are now incentivized to provide more thorough fixes to prevent do-overs. In the same way, there is now a shared goal to provide guidance and follow-up to do proper maintenance, resulting in fewer incidents, an increased value of the building, and longer life-spans, and in that way, with a little exaggeration, helping to create a more sustainable world.
👎 Why not?
As with any insurance product, the terms might be tricky and not always apply the same way you would want them to apply in the specific case that you are encountering.
We agree on the premise that the home repair industry isn’t exactly known for being the most customer-centric industry in the world. However, we aren’t sure that having to work with an insurance company whenever you need a repair done is necessarily a better alternative.
📚 Further reading?
✨ Giphty
On the question:
Doing home repairs is never the correct answer.