Watch your home's maintenance plan being written

Add your home and you land on it straight away. At the top of the page, Handyman finds out about your house and writes its upkeep plan while you watch, and everything under it already works.

Most home apps hand you a form and then a spinner. Handyman does the work in front of you instead: each thing it learns about your home appears the moment it's found, and then the plan writes itself, task by task. You can start using your home before it finishes.

You land on your home, not a waiting screen

When you add a home on the web, the home is created right away and you're taken to it. The top of the page shows Handyman at work. Everything below it is already yours to use: ask a question, add a receipt or ask for a repair before the plan is done. Nobody waits for the plan to finish to get something fixed.

What it finds, one step at a time

• Where: the address you gave, confirmed, with the kind of home it is.
• The neighbourhood: how many homes nearby Handyman already looks after, what those homes tend to have in them, and what's going wrong in them right now. Real counts from its own records, not estimates.
• The climate: the published climate normals for where you live (Environment Canada's for a province, NOAA's for a US state or metro), so the plan is built for your winters and summers, not an average one.
• The plan: the jobs your home needs, each with when and why, written one after another while you watch.

Each step appears when it really finishes. The first three take a moment; writing the plan takes a little longer, and you can see it happening.

It says what it doesn't know

Some things aren't on any record. There's no public list of the year most houses were built, for example, so Handyman asks rather than guessing. A few quick answers (how old the furnace is, whether there's a sump pump, what heats the water) make the plan fit your house. Answer when it suits you, in the app or by text.

A plan you look over, then keep

The plan arrives as Handyman's draft. Every task says what it's for and when it's due, so you can see why it's there. Keep it as it is, or tell Handyman what's different ("we replaced the water heater last year") and it changes the plan. Nothing is booked or paid without your yes, and when the house changes, with a new appliance or a renovation, the plan changes with it.

Try it on your home

It's free for every home. Add yours here. It takes about two minutes.