A sea change in home repair habits is occurring, as consumer segments begin to shift from Do It Yourself to Do it For Me models where people are seeking professionals to do everything from changing light bulbs to building decks. As Home Depot Silicon Valley head Anthony Roddio noted at our ILM 2014 event in December, “The market is ripe but no one is there yet.”

To date, Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor (formerly ServiceMagic) have been the ones to beat in the home repair online marketplace. But relative newcomers such as Home Depot (Red Beacon), Pro.com, Handy, HomeJoy, Serviz and Thumbtack are also revving it up. Looming in the background are skunkworks from giant “directory” players such as Amazon.

Home Advisor and Serviz have recently talked to us about their respective approaches. In fact, HomeAdvisor has just formally announced its entry into on demand scheduling for contractors; a new model that will complement its traditional model of providing several referrals in which consumers have to pick and choose, schedule and call themselves.

To HomeAdvisor CEO Chris Terrill, the demand for scheduling vetted professionals at pre-set prices is something that may develop over a period of time. It won’t cause a sudden change in business models. But it will serve two key functions: attracting new customers outside of the company’s traditional 35-60 year old customer set; and begin the process of repositioning the company as a comprehensive provider of information and services for home repair.

“We are building a robust marketplace,” he says. “We have tools that work for pros. If pros want to pay the company to book services for them, fine. If they want to pay for advertising, fine.”

Terrill notes that On Demand scheduling has been in a test mode in several cities. It will now be rolled out nationwide, but won’t receive dedicated marketing – at least, at first. It will mostly remain under the radar in pilot/learn model for three or four months. “We’ll expose people to it as they come in,” he says.

He also expresses confidence that the company’s ability to scale scheduled services will prove to be its ace in the hole. As a longtime leader in the space, HomeAdvisor has the most robust cost guide with real prices for each geo market, he said . It is not survey data. We do it at scale. A lot of people are introducing similar services, but they are not very satisfactory because they can’t meet the demands in each market, he says.

Serviz CEO Zorik Gordon — who formerly served as CEO of ReachLocal — notes that his focus is entirely on creative on demand home services, rather than a marketplace.Serviz, which has 20 plus employees at headquarters, in addition to about 100 technicians, has recently raised a $12.5 Million Series B equity financing round led by PointGuard Ventures.  With the money, Serviz will expand beyond its five core categories. More critically, it will also expand its operations beyond its home base of the Los Angeles and Orange County markets.

The key to its success will be to provide super-efficient, mobile-based services that allow booking and buying to be completed in 30 seconds, says Gordon. Another key: focus on the transparency of pricing, enabling independents to lower their pricing for high-end services in return for more business. Under the Serviz model, Gordon claims that all prices are “substantially lower” than existing home service companies.

“We are taking an Amazon-like approach of being a real price disruptor,” says Gordon. “We are building a horizontal platform around higher end home services such as HVAC and electrical work.”

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A few years ago, it became apparent that IAC’s ServiceMagic had stalled. While the 1,200 person company has continued to show growth, and had expanded to several international markets, it was clearly vulnerable to new challengers, ranging from Angie’s List and Yelp to new companies, such as Repair.com and RedBeacon (now owned by Home Depot.)

Part of the problem may have been that its assortment of services didn’t reflect how people look for service information. Part of it may have been that after 12 years, it was a tired brand to those in the industry, and unknown to those outside of it.

Now the company has pushed the reset button under the leadership of Chris Terrill, who’d served executive stints at Nutrisystem, Blockbuster and Match.com. Terrill’s been on board for 18 months now, and has extensively studied what he has determined is a “half billion dollar plus opportunity.”

“It’s about more than improvements and home projects,” says Terrill. “It’s all things in the service space.” Looking at the competition, Terrill sees a lot of potential to carve out a unique role for Home Advisor. “There is no go-to, ‘Trip Advisor’-like brand in the homes space,” he notes.

Rebranding is key to much of the company’s next steps. Home Advisor, the name of Microsoft’s real estate portal, was purchased from Microsoft for “less than six figures,” says Terrill. “It was the deal of the century.” The new name does a lot more for the company than the limited idea of “service” and the generic “magic,” he notes. Terrill adds that a major branding campaign, including TV, kicks off in January.

“We didn’t want to stop at the name change,” Terrill emphasizes. “We have completely changed the user experience.” New elements include a project cost guide, which users can use to project the actual cost for projects right down to local zip codes. Another new feature is Home911, which is an emergency service app. There is also content for home remodeling. Users can research it to “get beyond aspirational,” says Terrill.

What isn’t changing very much is the business model, although Terrill says it continues to evolve. There are basically two options. Consumers will still receive several qualified paid leads when they are looking for work. Different pricing is in effect for the standard lead or leads from Home911. What won’t change is that consumers will receive services for free. The company’s surveys showed that 90 percent of consumers would never pay for service information.

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