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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ReachLocal cofounder Zorik Gordon left the company last year after veering sharply to the left with ClubLocal, a consumer-facing brand that would collect home improvement pricing and reviews, and assign jobs to home improvement pros.

Now, Gordon and several ClubLocal alumnis are back with Serviz, a similar service that has launched in southern California after running a beta since February. Groupon is Serviz’s largest investor, with an undisclosed ownership share. ReachLocal, where much of the intellectual work was developed, still controls 19.8 percent of the company.

Groupon could theoretically apply its sales forces to recruit home improvement pros, but Gordon tells us that Serviz is being launched with its own sales forces. Most of the core concepts remain the same from ClubLocal –recruit consumers with convenience, price and service guarantees and a strong review base, and recruit home improvement pros with guaranteed work. “They are fundamentally on demand home services,” said Gordon. “”What we’ve done is focus on transparency, and transparency of pricing. Uber has shown what it takes to really hold and disrupt the conventional ecosystem.

The key differences this time take off from this theme: there is a focus on sole practitioners, who have more flexibility in their time and ability to charge, and ultimately, much lower prices. “You don’t need to charge $250 for a home visit from a home tech, who is being paid $15 an hour,” said Gordon.

Gordon acknowledges there is a lot of competition in the space, with the emergence of players like Thumbtack, Pro.com, Handy, Home Joy and even Amazon coming in, all building on a base that already has Angie’s List and Home Advisor.

Amazon will come in as a marketplace, and won’t be a direct competitor, he says. In fact, he hopes to participate in the Amazon marketplace. “No one is going to come to your house with an Amazon shirt,” says Gordon.

The other services range from what Gordon characterizes as directory listers, like Thumbtack and Pro.com; to low end service fulfillment players like Handy. Serviz will work at higher point in the value chain by focusing more on specialized service providers like HVAC and electrical. “We’re building a horizontal platform around higher end home services,” he says.

Zorik Gordon and Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta are among the initial speakers appearing at Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, Dec. 3-5 in San Francisco. Get early pricing now.

Zorik Gordon, CEO, Serviz

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Local sales leaders are now jumping into the deal-a-day phenomenon. Yesterday, Citysearch said it would push deals hard to its thousands of advertisers. Today, ReachLocal announced that it was buying DealOn Media. Specific terms weren’t disclosed, but ReachLocal is valuing DealOn at $10 million. DealOn will be keeping its name for now, and CEO Rich Razgaitis will become GM of Reach’s new deals division.

DealOn operates in 18 markets and is based in New Jersey. The 30-person company — of whom 20 have been sales — provides white-label services for publishers and has done especially well with restaurants, powering Zagat Exclusives and Nation’s Restaurant News, among others. It recently launched an exchange for offers that permits publishers to pick and choose the best offers for their users. More than 20 partners were using the exchange after its launch in December. Exchanges are clearly hot right now, and becoming central to the strategy of several white-label providers.

The deal with DealOn continues Reach’s evolution beyond being a simple search reseller. Suffering from high churn last year, it began an effort to provide its advertisers with a variety of engagement tools via its acquisition of SMBLive, and social networking tools via Bizzy. The connecting point is Reach’s 700-person-strong sales team.

ReachLocal CEO Zorik Gordon told ClickZ that he expects that the company’s deal flow will be helped via partnerships with pure plays such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, Yelp, OpenTable and travel sites. Traditional publishers, however, are less likely to participate, he says, as they still see ReachLocal as direct competition.

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