Location, location, location.

The age-old adage in the real estate industry suggests it’s a business all about the “L” word. But Josh Cowman and Jon Kettler know there’s plenty more to it than that: timing, too, plays an important part in the buying and selling of homes. “We know,” Cowman said in his Dream Big Grow Here pitch video, “that even though we’re ready to buy a home, maybe the right home isn’t on the market at the right time.”

It’s with that in mind that Cowman and Kettler started Skowty, which aims make the real estate process, specifically online, as frictionless as possible for all parties.

Skowty is an entry in the Dream Big Grow Here Innovation Gateway contest, which seeks the top tech-based business ideas in Story, Marshall, Tama, Poweshiek, Jasper, Marion and Mahaska counties in central Iowa. The top vote-getter in an online poll of the DBGH Innovation Gateway entries wins a $5,000 prize and a spot in the statewide Dream Big Grow Here contest, which has a $10,000 prize. Votes for DBGH Innovation Gateway can be submitted until 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 15 at DBGH Innovation Gateway’s polling page. 

“Skowty.com will change the way real estate is done online by giving buyers and sellers access to the true housing market instead of the perceived housing market,” Kettler said in the video, “and give agents and brokers the tools they need to better serve those buyers and sellers.”

Cowman and Kettler, who are based in Pella, pitch Skowty as a service that flips the house-buying model on its head, starting with interested buyers and driving them to potential sellers. The advantages of that system, as Cowman and Kettler tell it, are threefold:

• For buyers, it provides an avenue to tell agents what homes are appealing, whether they’re listed or not
• For sellers, it allows for better, more informed decisions on when demand is high and the time to sell is right
• For agents, it offers a tool that is directly connected with their clients on both sides, so communication lines are always open