Owning a Home Shouldn’t Hurt

And what I’m going to try and do about it

My name is Ahmad Taleb, Tucson native, product of the 90’s with terrible grammar and a sarcastic sense of humor.

I solve problems for people by working with others to build solutions, and those solutions usually take the form of software products. Deeply understanding problems and solving them is genuinely what I enjoy doing, even on the weekends…it drives my wife crazy.

One of the biggest problems I’ve had for the last two years; maintaining our family home.

It’s our first home, so yes, I’ve probably made all of the first timer mistakes. And I’ll be the first to admit, my ‘handy’ skills are probably more on par with Tim Taylor than Bob Vila.

I know how to use a hammer and nails. I grew up helping family & friends with random projects, and of course there was my parents putting my siblings and I to work when they bought their house 20+ years ago (brown parents 😝).

But I was definitely not prepared for what was waiting after signing on the dotted line.

The problem I’ve had wasn’t in that I didn’t know how or couldn’t complete the work myself, because in most cases even if I could I didn’t have the time.

The problem was in the experience of hiring others to work on our home.

Without fail, regardless of the issue or who we hired, the entire process was filled with fear and uncertainty. Also known as the perfect recipe for anxiety.

I would describe my last two years of dealing with hiring home maintenance and improvement services, as a series of anxiety inducing stress riddled and wallet draining painful experiences…I think that summed it up pretty well.

After talking with family, friends, neighbors, it didn’t take me long to find that this is just what we have come to expect when we need any kind of service to our home, it’s going to be painful. It is going to leave us with a sense that our homes lack safety, that they are uncomfortable, and we lose the sense of love for our homes.

Now, there’s one big thing to call out here.

In most cases, it had nothing to do with the people doing the work. It was the systems and processes in place that made these experiences so painful.

So, of course as someone who studies problems and user experiences I couldn’t take it anymore, I decided I need to understand and solve this problem. There is much to unpack and breakdown on this experience, and that will come in subsequent posts.

For now, I leave this as the starting marker for my documented journey of researching this problem, building products to solve it, and starting a company that operates with a genuine and human approach to business that will strive to make every home Safe, Comfortable, and filled with Love.

Read the next post in this series Why the Pains of Homeownership Must be Solved.