Homa · 770 qualified buyers · approval as the outcome

Who actually approves

Every qualified lead Homa has produced, scored on whether they reached approval. The spread between the best and worst segment is 2.7× — and the largest single segment is the worst one.

The matrix

Two independent factors decide approval: whether they have bought a home before, and whether they took time. Neither explains the other — both hold within every level of the other.

Considered
(returned later)
Same day
(qualified on arrival)
Buying a home again
46.8%
188 buyers · 88 approved
36.9%
130 buyers · 48 approved
First-time buyer
40.9%
164 buyers · 67 approved
17.4%
190 buyers · 33 approved

The worst cell is the biggest. First-time buyers who qualify the day they arrive are the single largest group at 190 people, and they approve at 17%. Every fast-moving optimization signal — clicks, leads, same-day conversion — points directly at them.

Speed is a quality signal, and it runs backwards

Half of everyone who qualifies does it the day they first land. Those are the weakest buyers. Approval climbs steadily the longer someone takes to raise their hand — measured on a fixed 30-day window after qualifying, so nobody benefits from having been around longer.

Same day485 people — 49% of all qualified
21.5%
1–7 days185 people
25.2%
8–30 days143 people
28.3%
31+ days181 people — the long tail
29.1%

The tail is longer than it looks: 18% of all approvals came from people who took more than a month, 8% took more than three months, and the longest was 374 days. Any campaign judged on a 30-day window is scored before a fifth of its buyers have decided.

The five kinds of people

Self-declared at onboarding. Repeat buyers and investors approve at roughly 40%; the two segments that aren't really buyers barely convert at all.

Buying again

42.2%
Qualified
327
Homes saved
1.9
Homes added
4.2
Tours booked
4.5
AI questions
8.3

First-time buyer

28.7%
Qualified
362
Homes saved
0.7
Homes added
1.8
Tours booked
2.9
AI questions
4.5

Investor

40.0%
Qualified
60
Homes saved
1.7
Homes added
2.4
Tours booked
2.0
AI questions
3.6

Real estate pro

7.1%
Qualified
14
Homes saved
0.6
Homes added
0.8
Tours booked
1.2
AI questions
5.5

Selling only

14.3%
Qualified
7
Homes saved
0.9
Homes added
1.7
Tours booked
1.3
AI questions
1.4

The repeat buyer does roughly twice as much of everything: 2.7× the saved homes, 2.3× the properties added, 1.8× the AI questions. The investor is the exception — high approval on the fewest tours, because they transact without needing to stand in the house.

They all use search. Depth is what separates them.

Search isn't skipped by the fast movers — 83% of them use it. They just run one query and act. The considered buyer refines, paginates, and interrogates the AI at nearly double the rate.

Behavior before qualifyingSame dayConsideredGap
Reached the search page86.0%97.4%1.1×
Used autocomplete49.9%49.7%
Refined a search44.9%76.8%1.7×
Used AI search33.0%59.7%1.8×
Paginated results15.5%39.5%2.5×
Any search at all83.1%93.9%1.1×

Autocomplete is identical across both groups — it's the universal first move. Pagination is the sharpest divider at 2.5×. Someone on their third refinement or fifth AI question is behaving like a 47% buyer, and nothing in the product currently treats them differently from a first-click bouncer.

Texas buyers are worth more than Florida buyers

Florida carries five times the volume. Texas converts at more than half again the rate.

Texas96 qualified · 65% mobile
51.0%
New York17 qualified
35.3%
Washington9 qualified
33.3%
Florida516 qualified · 63% mobile · the volume engine
32.0%
California18 qualified · out-of-market
22.2%
Georgia23 qualified · out-of-market
21.7%
New Jersey9 qualified · none approved
0%

Roughly 76 qualified leads sit outside Florida and Texas and approve at about half the in-market rate. Two thirds of buyers are on a phone regardless of state.

Budget predicts approval

Based on the average price of homes a buyer adds to their list. Higher budgets approve at roughly twice the rate of the middle band — the cheap end correlates with the fast, weak profile.

$750K and up27 buyers
40.7%
$500–750K43 buyers
37.2%
$200–350K33 buyers
27.3%
$350–500K40 buyers
20.0%
Under $200K10 buyers
20.0%

How they say they found you

Self-reported at onboarding, independent of any tracking. This disagrees sharply with UTM-based attribution, which credits paid social with a fraction of this.

A friend or family member56 people — referral
39.3%
Facebook / Instagram / TikTok284 people — the largest single source
38.4%
Web search205 people
34.6%
News article or blog72 people
30.6%
AI search — ChatGPT, Gemini43 people — a channel nobody is working
30.2%
Podcast8 people
25.0%

Where to land them

Approval by the first page a buyer ever saw. Property pages beat search pages; both beat the marketing site, which currently absorbs almost all the traffic.

First page seenQualifiedApprovedRate
App — a specific property261142.3%
App — search351234.3%
Marketing site70123433.4%

701 of 762 buyers land on the marketing site — and 418 of those land on the homepage alone, arriving from a Google search for the brand name. That isn't discovery, it's brand capture: demand created somewhere else, collected by someone typing "homa" into Google.

Meanwhile app.tryhoma.com returns Disallow: /. All 20,560 listing pages — each with a real address-level title tag — are invisible to search. The landing page that converts best is the one search engines are not allowed to see.

What this argues for

Target the mover, not the dreamer. A repeat buyer who takes time approves at 46.8%. That is exactly the person the seller and move-up outreach already targets — someone whose house just hit the market and who will buy again within months.

Land people on a property, not a search. Property-page entries approve at 42.3% against 34.3% for search. It's also the only landing type that gives a first-time visitor something concrete to react to.

Treat search depth as the live signal. Pagination separates the segments by 2.5×. A visitor on their third refinement is announcing themselves, and nothing responds to it today.

Stop paying for pros and sellers-only. 21 people between them, approving at 7% and 14%.

Unblock the listings. The best-converting page type is the one excluded from search, in a category where every competitor is built on those pages ranking.