HomeIQ Academy
Homebuyer education, simplified.
A homebuyer-education platform for real estate agents and the buyers they work with. Buyers learn for free; agents get a readiness score for each buyer and a reason to stay in touch. Live on the web and the iOS App Store.
- Launched
- March 2026
- Platform
- Web + iOS
- Stack
- Next.js, Supabase, Capacitor, Claude API, Stripe
- My part
- Founder, sole builder
The problem
A mortgage denial is a snapshot of a few numbers on one day, not a verdict. Most first-time buyers are closer than they think, but nobody shows them which number is holding them back or what moves it.
Agents feel this too. They have no tool for a buyer who is six months out, so those buyers drift and come back with someone else.
What it does
Buyers answer a short readiness check and get a score from 0 to 100, built from credit (30%), debt-to-income (25%), down payment (20%), lessons completed (15%) and quiz results (10%). At 65 they are mortgage-ready. Below that, the app names the gap and hands them a reading path to close it.
There are 112 lessons, reading paths with XP and streaks, a set of simulators, and short nurture messages written by Claude for buyers who go quiet. The 300 Rule section on the home page makes one point interactive: a car payment competes with the house, because the lender caps what you can owe each month.
For agents
Agents enrol their buyers, see every buyer's score and gap on one dashboard, and put their brokerage's branding on the whole experience. Starter is free for two buyers; Growth is $49 a month. Buyers never pay.
Decisions that shaped it
A compass, not a grade.
The first version was a diagnostic: it graded a nervous first-time buyer before it gave them anything. Operators reported buyers signing up, seeing the score, and never coming back. The April 2026 onboarding rewrite flipped the order: value first, the ask later, and the score framed as a direction rather than a verdict.
Buyers are free, always.
The agent is the customer. A paywall between a worried person and the thing that helps them would be wrong, and it would give agents no reason to invite anyone.
One codebase, one push.
The iOS app is a Capacitor shell over the live site. A git push updates web and app together, so there is no second release process to fall behind.
Lessons live in code, not the database.
Changing a score weight or a lesson is a product decision that goes through review, not a row someone edits at midnight.
A guard against price drift.
After the site once advertised one price while Stripe held another, checkout refuses to run unless the two agree.
No fake numbers.
A standing rule in the repo: no invented testimonials, no inflated stats, no placeholder text. The same rule applies to this page.
Where it stands
- Live at homeiqacademy.com and on the iOS App Store since March 2026.
- 112 lessons, about 85 API routes, 46 database migrations, 182 automated tests.
- A September 2026 security pass tightened row-level security and stopped accounts editing their own plan from the browser.
- The Android build is ready and waiting on Google Play's closed-testing requirement.
My part
I founded it and built it end to end: product, code, database, App Store submission and the lesson content. I am a licensed California real estate broker and mortgage loan officer, so the readiness score and the lessons come from the numbers on real files, not from a content brief.