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April 22 marks Earth Day and a new mobile app is showing homeowners how to track and reduce their home maintenance costs and carbon emissions.
Dwellin is touted as a free, sustainable home mobile app that can help home, apartment, condo, and townhouse owners estimate and reduce annual home maintenance costs and their carbon footprint.
“EV manufacturers, governments, and businesses are all working toward net-zero carbon emissions to slow the global climate crisis,” says Santhana Krishnan, CEO of Dwelling Inc. “It’s time for homes to do their part. On Earth Day 2022, we’re helping U.S. homeowners live more sustainably.”
Dwellin uses an AI-powered platform that sources publicly available data about an address, including its square footage and ZIP code, to estimate annual maintenance costs and home carbon emissions. Within 30 seconds, it’ll also offer up a personalized home maintenance calendar and a customized home appliance and asset tracker. Homeowners can tweak their costs, schedules, appliances, and vehicle information as needed. The app includes tabs for annual maintenance costs (e.g. utility, vehicle, insurance costs for the home); annual carbon footprint (the home’s estimated annual CO2 emissions and steps to take to reduce it); maintenance calendar (by weekly, monthly, and annual tasks); asset tracker (home appliance, mechanical systems, and vehicles’ owners manuals, maintenance schedules, insurance, warranty information, and more).
Homeowners reportedly are factoring their carbon footprint as well as climate change more into their home-buying decisions. With the high costs of ownership lately, they want to know the utility and maintenance costs of a home upfront to know if it fits within their budget. They also want to know more about the climate risks of the property. Indeed, many buyers say they researched climate issues before moving too, according to a study released in December 2021 of about 1,000 U.S. residents who had moved since March 2020, conducted by the real estate brokerage Redfin. After all, 54% of Americans fear that they would not be able to afford the expenses incurred during a natural disaster, according to a separate survey conducted this fall of nearly 2,200 Americans from ValuePenguin, a financial information resource. More than one quarter—26%—question whether they would financially recover from one.