Home Ground: Home Purchase
Personal decision toolkit for home buyers
Opportunity
Three questions nobody else separates: what can I afford, what can I sustain, and what supports the life I want? Home buying tools treat the transaction as the problem. The real problem is the decision.
Approach
We traced the live experience of how people actually navigate affordability, sustainability, and livability. The real constraints surfaced: financial capacity, ongoing cost burden, and life fit are three different questions with three different data shapes. The tool holds all three without collapsing them.
How we built it
Jobs to Be Done
- •
Buyer: "Help me see whether this place supports the life I actually want, not just whether I can sign the papers."
- •
Household: "Help us make this decision together without one person holding all the information."
- •
First-time buyer: "Show me what I am actually committing to, not just what the monthly payment looks like."
Sample from full framework
Desired Outcomes
- •
Reduce confusion between affordability, sustainability, and livability when comparing homes
- •
Increase confidence in purchase decisions by surfacing life-fit data alongside financial data
- •
Minimize time spent reconciling information across separate budgeting, listing, and lifestyle tools
Sample from full framework
Opportunity Solution Tree
- •
Top opportunity: buyers collapse three distinct questions (afford, sustain, want) into one
- •
Existing solutions fail: affordability calculators ignore sustainability, listing tools ignore life fit, no tool holds all three
- •
Solution path: separate assessments for each question, then a synthesis view that holds all three without forcing a single score
Sample from full framework
OOUX Object Mapping
- •
Home, Neighborhood, Budget, Lifestyle Profile, Decision Snapshot as distinct objects with their own data shapes
- •
Each object has its own attributes, relationships, and calls to action rather than living as tabs in a listing tool
- •
Decision Snapshot captures the state of all three assessments at a point in time for household coordination
Sample from full framework
Design Principles
- •
When affordability and livability conflict, show both clearly rather than blending them into a single recommendation
- •
The person makes the tradeoff, not the tool
- •
Financial projections always show sustained cost, not just purchase price
Sample from full framework
What comes next
Integrating local data sources for livability scoring and building shareable decision snapshots so households can coordinate on the purchase decision together.