Indy startup aims to provide local context for online house-hunting
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Indianapolis-based Dwellane, a real estate tech startup that had its public launch last month, aims to add local flavor to the experience of online house-hunting.
Dwellane offers users a website where they can both browse local homes for sale and learn about the neighborhoods in which those homes are located.
Longtime F.C. Tucker Co. Realtor Sam Hawkins, who is Dwellane’s founder and CEO, said he saw an opportunity to build a locally focused home-search site that could offer an alternative to sites like Zillow and Redfin.
Dwellane users can browse online home listings, but they can also browse neighborhoods to get a sense of what various parts of town have to offer. For instance, a user who clicks on the “Broad Ripple” portion of the website can see home listings in that neighborhood. They can also see photos and descriptions of selected Broad Ripple amenities such as the Monon Trail, the Broad Ripple Dog Park and numerous shops and restaurants.
Dwellane is still adding to its site, and some neighborhood profiles contain more information than others. Hawkins said the initial focus is on neighborhoods that fit one or the other of two criteria: homes in the price range of $400,000 to $800,000, or areas that see a large volume of home sales.
The goal, Hawkins said, is to give users information not only about homes for sale, but to help them get a sense of the Indianapolis area’s distinct neighborhoods. This local emphasis is something people can’t really find on the behemoth home-search sites, Hawkins said.
“From my perspective, the most important thing is the neighborhood,” Hawkins said. “The house is important, but the neighborhood—the people who are the happiest [with their home purchase] are going to love the neighborhood. They’re going to have that attachment.”
Users also can connect with a local real estate agent if they wish. All of these agents, Hawkins said, have been vetted to make sure that they are caring, experienced, and knowledgeable about the specific neighborhood in which they operate. “I am proud to say that these are great agents that are going to serve the clients incredibly well.”
If a home buyer engages with an agent through the website, Dwellane will earn a fee if and when that buyer ends up closing on a purchase.
Once users connect with an agent, Dwellane can also connect the buyer with other professionals such as home inspectors, insurers or home-security firms.
For now, Hawkins said, neither the neighborhood businesses nor the professionals are paying to be included on Dwellane’s website. That may change in the future, generating additional revenue streams for the site.
Another potential goal is to expand Dwellane to other markets, but that’s not the focus right now, Hawkins said. First, he said, “I am 100% committed to getting the entirety of the greater Indianapolis area built out and doing extremely well.”
Hawkins has a handful of other people working with him on Dwellane, including photographers and videographers who create the images for the website. For now, Hawkins is still working as a Realtor with F.C. Tucker, but his goal is to shift over to working for Dwellane full-time.
Dwellane’s website was developed by another Indianapolis-based startup, the technology services firm Stellar.
Brett Flinchum, Stellar’s California-based CEO, said Dwellane’s hyperlocal focus should actually help it compete with much larger websites like Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com.
“I do think it’s a huge differentiator compared to those three,” Flinchum said.
A site like Zillow, for instance, might be the top search result for a general phrase like “new home search,” Flinchum said. But Dwellane could be a top search result for a more geographically specific search like “Fountain Square homes.”
“It’s really a very creative strategy around search engine optimization,” Flinchum said.
The Dwellane site went live in December, and between then and Feb. 27 the site received 9,961 page views with an average engagement time of 7 minutes, 3 seconds, Hawkins said. That includes 5,595 page views received during Feb. 1-27.
Flinchum said those numbers represent good traffic for a startup website, especially one that hasn’t yet really ramped up its search engine optimization efforts.