Dianne Wheeler is no stranger to the demands of owning a home. Long before HomeHub AI existed, she started Fi Home Services. The company took on the maintenance chores homeowners couldn't do, didn't want to do, or didn't know they needed to do: changing filters, purging the hot water tank, refreshing caulking. It's the kind of unglamorous work that keeps a house from turning into an expensive emergency.
From Fi Home Services to HomeHub AI
About a year into running Fi Home Services, Dianne noticed something. Clients didn't just want the maintenance done, they wanted proof of it. "It occurred to us that people would want a record of all that upkeep down the road," she recalls, "something that showed exactly how well a home had been cared for over the years."
That idea became HomeHub AI, and it does a lot more than log a chore list. Open the app and you can store every document, warranty, and repair record your home has in one place, get reminders before small maintenance turns into a big bill, and keep every service pro you've ever hired on file so you're never starting from scratch. A built-in guide named VAL (short for VALUE) answers homeowner questions in plain language: when the air filter is due, which vendor to call, what needs attention this month. It's free to download, with optional upgrades if you want more, so there's genuinely no reason not to try it today.
Built on 25 Years of Listening to People
Before HomeHub AI, Dianne spent 25 years in banking, leading learning and development teams. Along the way, she picked up a simple habit that still shapes everything she builds: start with the person, not the paperwork. "You look at who's actually dealing with the problem and build the solution around them," she explains, "not the other way around."
That's why the homeowner sits at the center of everything HomeHub AI builds, not the vendor, not the insurance company, not the app itself.
Like a Carfax, But for Your House
Here's the easiest way to think about what HomeHub AI is building toward: a Carfax for your house. When you buy a used car, you can pull up its whole history, every repair, every owner, every red flag, before you hand over a dime. Homes have never worked that way. You buy a house and hope the last owner told you the truth about the roof.
HomeHub AI is closing that gap. The app already lets homeowners store their home's full documentation in one place, and it's building toward a feature called "pre-loved, professionally documented," where a home's maintenance and repair history can travel with it from one owner to the next instead of disappearing the day you sell.
It also solves a more immediate problem. Upload the declarations page of your homeowner's or renter's insurance policy, and the app shows you exactly how much coverage you have and compares it against everything you've documented inside the app. That's the kind of thing nobody thinks about until a hurricane or a house fire forces the question, and by then it's too late to start. Manatee County sits squarely in hurricane country, which makes this less of a nice-to-have and more of a should-have-done-it-yesterday.
Relationships Over Everything
Dianne is quick to credit relationships, not just technology, for getting HomeHub AI this far. "Nothing has mattered more to getting here than the relationships behind it," she says. She describes it in terms of what she calls the platinum rule, treating people not how you'd want to be treated, but how they actually want to be treated, which only works if you take the time to learn who they are.
That philosophy extends to how HomeHub AI itself is built. The app connects three groups: homeowners, industry partners like realtors and insurance agents, and the vendors who do the work. That way, a home's record can travel with it from one owner to the next instead of starting over every time a house changes hands.
Relationships are also how she found her partners. She runs HomeHub AI with Manish Balakrishnan and Fi Home Services with Derek Kobel. Derek, a licensed public adjuster and Navy veteran, had already been sketching out his own version of the idea on paper, which he called Home Hub. He'd seen that clients with records of their homes and belongings from before a storm or fire stood a much better chance of being made whole on their insurance claims. The two were introduced by Brandon Rimes of The Consumer Quarterback Show and clicked right away over a shared philosophy: take care of people and do what's right, every time.
A Local Vision With a Big Goal
Dianne runs HomeHub AI right from Parrish, in the middle of Manatee County. When she's not building the app, she says she's usually painting or working in the garden, the kind of hands-on creative time she credits with keeping her thinking fresh.
Her goal for the next year is to get HomeHub AI into the hands of homeowners and realtors in all 50 states. Longer term, she pictures a HomeHub AI report becoming as standard to buying a home as an inspection or an appraisal already is. "Eventually, I want people to expect a HomeHub AI report the same way they'd expect an inspection," she says. "Something you just check before you buy."
You can find HomeHub AI on the App Store and Google Play, or learn more at homehubai.info. It costs nothing to download and check it out, so take a minute, support a local founder, and experience the next generation of home ownership for yourself.
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