Home Zero Know what a home will cost —
before it costs you.
Marketing Brief · Internal · 2026-06-20

How Home Zero works — the deep version.

You've seen the homepage. This is the rest: what we're really building, who it's for, how the experience works in plain language, and where the money is — everything you need to talk about it with confidence.

For the marketing team Audience non-technical Read time ~8 min
In one minute

Home Zero is the buyer's side of buying a home. You keep house-hunting on Zillow like always — but now you have an AI advisor that works only for you. It learns what you actually want, watches the homes you like, and tells you the truth about them.

When a home catches your eye, you "zero in" on it. Behind the scenes a team of AI agents pulls together everything knowable about that house and its area, and hands you a clear read: what it'll really cost you to live there, what to watch out for, and a single Home Zero Score. The more serious you get, the deeper it goes — right up to prepping your in-person walkthrough.

It's free to start (your advisor + a few home briefs a week), and $25/month for the full thing. And it's only ever on the buyer's side — we never work for sellers, and we never put a real person's name on anything public.

01 — The idea

A home that takes care of you.

Buying a home is the biggest financial decision most people ever make — and they make it with the least reliable information.

Listing sites are built to sell you the dream. Agents are paid when the sale closes. Nobody in the process is actually paid to tell you what the house will cost you to own — the repairs, the systems, the taxes, the water, the things you only find out after you've signed. Home Zero exists to close that gap, on the buyer's side, before the decision is made.

The word we own — a "zero"

A zero is a home that takes care of you: one whose true costs and risks are fully known, and whose running costs trend toward zero. Our whole job is to get a buyer to that certainty before they commit — with depth no listing site or single agent can match.

"Know what a home will cost — before it costs you."

That's the promise on the homepage, and it's the whole product in one line. Everything below is how we keep it.

02 — How it works

The journey, in four moves.

We don't try to replace where people look for homes. We attach to the journey at the moment interest forms, and get deeper from there.

01 · BROWSE

Stay on Zillow

Keep house-hunting where you already do. A small Home Zero button rides along on every listing.

→
02 · ZERO IN

Tap to go deep

Found one worth a look? "Zero in" on it. That's the moment the team gets to work for you.

→
03 · VISIT

Walk it prepared

Before you tour, you get the questions to ask and the things to check — then capture what you find.

→
04 · KNOW

Decide with the full picture

Everything you learn deepens the read. If an offer comes, you make it with eyes open.

The magic is that it compounds. Every home you look at teaches your advisor a little more about what you want — so the next read is sharper, and the homes worth your attention surface faster. It gets better the more you use it.

03 — The team

Three agents, all working for you.

Under the hood, Home Zero isn't one chatbot — it's a small team of specialized AI agents, each with a job. You mostly talk to one of them; the others work behind it.

A

The advisor

Knows you

Your one point of contact. Learns what "home" means to you — your budget, your must-haves, your life — and holds it. Watches your homes, flags what matters, and pulls in the others when you need depth. One person on your side who never sleeps.

M

The market

Knows the place

The local expert. Reads everything public about an area and its homes — records, water, permits, hazards, what's sold and what's stuck — so the advisor's read on any specific home is grounded in real ground truth, not vibes.

H

The home

Knows the house

Born when you get serious about one specific home. It studies that house, preps your visit (what to look at, what to ask), and absorbs what you capture — becoming the richest record of that home anywhere.

The pitch in one breath: imagine a buyer's agent who works only for you, a local expert who's read every record on the street, and a home inspector who preps your walkthrough — all in one, all in your pocket, all getting smarter every time you use them.
04 — The ladder

The deeper you go, the more it gives.

The experience is a ladder. You only climb as far as your intent takes you — and that's also where the value, and the price, steps up. This is the spine of the whole product and the shape of how we charge.

1browse

Your advisor

Free · day one

Sign up and your advisor comes to life. It gets to know you and starts watching homes. You get a handful of home briefs a week — a quick, honest read on any home you point it at.

2zero in

The deep scan

Get interested in a specific home and the market agent does a full work-up — the records, the costs, the risks — and the read gets sharp. Unlimited, on every home you care about.

3visit

The walkthrough

Going to see it? The home agent preps your visit and captures what you find — notes, photos, measurements — turning a 30-minute walkthrough into real, lasting knowledge about that house.

← casual browsing serious buyer →

Most people start at rung one for free. The ones who are genuinely buying climb — and that's exactly who's happy to pay, because that's where the money is on the line.

05 — The signature

The Home Zero Score.

78illustrative
One number, plain English

How close does this home get to taking care of itself?

The Home Zero Score is the one thing we want people to remember us by: a single, honest read on what a home will actually cost you to live in — and how far it goes toward covering itself. It's the proof behind the promise, and the thing worth screenshotting and sharing. (The number shown is for illustration.)

Think of it as the credit score of home-buying — except it's working for the buyer, and it answers the question nobody else will: can I actually afford to own this, not just buy it?

06 — Pricing

Free to start. $25 a month for the real thing.

Simple and honest. The free tier is genuinely useful; the paywall sits exactly where the value gets serious — the deep work on a home you actually care about.

Free
$0

Enough to fall in love with it.

  • Your own advisor, day one
  • A few home briefs every week
  • Home Zero's read inside Zillow
The value framing: $25/month — less than most streaming bundles — set against the single biggest purchase of someone's life. The pitch isn't "cheap tool," it's "cheap insurance against an expensive mistake."
⚠ One thing to know

The live homepage still shows the older one-time "$25 Deep Scan" framing. We're moving to the $25/month subscription above, and the homepage is being re-cut to match. Use the subscription story in anything new — the page will catch up shortly.

07 — Why us

What makes it different (and defensible).

We're not a listing site. Discovery stays on Zillow — we don't ask anyone to switch where they look. We're the layer of truth on top.

We're not a lead machine for agents. We never represent sellers and we never sell anyone's information. The whole system works for the buyer, full stop.

We protect people. We work from public records and the buyer's own observations, and we never put an individual person's name on anything public. It's a privacy posture and a brand value at once.

It compounds. Because it's a team of AI agents that remember, the product gets sharper with every home a person looks at — and every brief is shareable, which quietly brings the next buyer in. The moat isn't a feature; it's the relationship getting smarter.

08 — The toolkit

Words to use, words to dodge.

Lean in

  • "A home that takes care of you"
  • "Know what it'll cost — before it costs you"
  • "Your advisor — works only for you"
  • "Zero in on a home"
  • "The Home Zero Score"
  • "Only ever on the buyer's side"

Steer clear

  • Calling it a listing site or "a Zillow"
  • "Find your dream home" (we're the reality check, not the dream)
  • "First-time buyers only" (the buyer is anyone serious about a home)
  • Naming real buyers, sellers, or owners — ever
  • The infrastructure words (agents-as-software, the tech stack)
  • Over-promising national coverage today (see status below)
zero · a home that takes care of you zero in · commit to looking deeper advisor · the buyer's agent Home Zero Score · the number cost-to-zero · what it really costs to own
⚠ Keep it honest — what's live today

We're early and real. Our first live market is the North Fork Valley in Colorado, with real homes and full briefs, and a working advisor you can talk to. We're building the full end-to-end experience over the coming weeks, and the product expands to any market a buyer brings us rather than city-by-city rollout.

So: market it as "early access / our first market, expanding to yours," not "available everywhere." Real-but-early is a better story than over-claimed-and-thin.