There are certain thresholds users have to reach before HomLuv.com will start recommending; if your board is full of kitchens but doesn’t have any bathrooms or bedrooms, it will prompt you to diversify. The site is meant to be collaborative, so couples can find the points where they agree and disagree. If one person hearts an image and the collaborator selects the dislike icon, it shows up as a broken heart, while aspects both people like get a double heart. Users can also explain why they nixed their partner’s ski-lodge-themed living room in comments. “If I dislike my wife’s images, she’ll darn well want to know why I disliked it,” said Law.
While all this may seem helpful to homebuyers, the builders get benefits, too. They’ll get stats about how many people liked and disliked each photo, as well as what users are saying about them. It offers more insight than simply seeing that their images are making it onto a site like Pinterest, said Law, where you don’t know whether the pinner is in the market for the house or just likes the drapes.
At launch, HomLuv.com will have over a million photos from 100,000 homes. The recommendations are based on a combination of artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing, so you’ll see dining rooms that users with similar tastes have liked. In addition to matching buyers and builders, Law thinks HomLuv.com’s biggest benefit will be getting some of the arguments about pricing and decor out of the way before people get too far into the process. “I think we could save a few marriages,” he said.