AffordableHousing.com

Brand Evolution
and Category Expansion

AffordableHousing.com is currently part of a White House task force to help protect consumers from unfair fees and costs.

The first announcement from July 27, 2023, lauded affordablehousing.com for its transparency, highlighting its role in promoting fair rental housing practices, while the subsequent announcement on July 19, 2023, further underscored the platform’s significance by recognizing its efforts to eliminate junk fees, aligning with the administration’s commitment to equitable housing solutions.

Key Strategic Challenge
Privately held GoSection8.com wanted to expand its audience, reaching a wider community of government agencies, landlords, and renters by including all eligibility-based housing programs. This expanded vision raised critical brand and business questions:

  • Could the team create a new identity and new products without sacrificing the brand equity and trust they had built over the last ten years with Gosection8.com?

  • Could the team scale the CEO’s voice for a robust business development effort, creating a unified narrative and sales approach for AffordableHousing.com across the market?
H&S worked with company leadership to develop a brand roadmap, design strategy, and a sales narrative and approach for new partners:

  • Conducted in-depth interviews, focusing on culture, mission and future vision with a cross-section of team members to identify alignment with leadership and identify potential gaps of understanding
  • Conducted stakeholder interviews with agency and industry partners to better understand daily pain points against the backdrop of the pandemic
  • Developed brand fundamentals, roadmap and design strategy to evolve the existing brand for new audiences while preserving established trust and brand equity
  • Developed holistic, scalable sales approach focused on benefits and solutions for existing and new partners
“We are pioneering the standard for affordable housing by taking complexity out of the process.”
Rich Cupelli, Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Transforming the Affordable Housing System, for Good

Historically, eligibility-based housing programs have been highly fragmented and nearly impossible to navigate for all stakeholders involved. With a background as a Section 8 landlord, the CEO of AffordableHousing.com understood the need for a national, platform-based hub that could serve all parties involved seamlessly and efficiently – think Zillow for affordable housing. His vision of transforming the affordable housing system began with a singular focus on Section 8 and then expanded to address the inefficiencies across the spectrum of eligibility-based program transactions and affordable housing options.

At a moment in history where the affordable housing crisis has reached historic proportions, AffordableHousing.com addresses the gaps in service with the largest inventory nationwide for tenants and landlords on the front end. The only platform with eligibility determinations and affordability requirements directly integrated into search, the site provides tangible help to those trying to navigate the system.

For institutional partners, the site hosts a Housing Hub -- a collaborative dashboard and suite of solutions specifically tailored for government agencies, non-profit agencies, and municipalities to reduce friction in the system, coordinate waiting lists and speed up placement for those in need.

Brand Strategy and Category Expansion

H&S created a brand position and a distinct, differentiated narrative, mission and vision that embodied the CEO’s vision for AffordableHousing.com. To extend the equity and trust established in the GoSection8 brand, we developed an integrated design strategy that preserved key assets of the former brand to signal continuity to current stakeholders.

We developed a product matrix and naming approach to integrate planned and future products and a coordinated communications strategy to market a revolutionary waiting list product called RevoList. We identified on-the ground needs of stakeholders through a series of in-depth interviews and developed a framework that allowed the team to chart and evaluate new data-driven products that answered agency and government needs.

Integrated Design Strategy

We introduced the evolved brand in the form of a strategic roadmap during a town hall meeting to align a geographically dispersed team both in the U.S. and overseas around the founder’s vision. We also developed a holistic and modular sales approach that captured the founder’s voice and vision. This approach was also presented to the entire team. It allows the company to scale its targeted business development efforts across the leadership team as well as onboard an influx of new, global team members consistently and efficiently.

Modular Sales Apprach

Ongoing Client Relationship

  • Trusted thought partners to founders and company leadership
  • Repeat engagements to support the team as it grows and faces new challenges and opportunities