This Chattanooga Startup Wants To Help Homeowners Avoid Pesky HOA Fines

Rhett Morgan bought his first home three years ago. And almost immediately, he started running into conflict with his HOA (Homeowners Association).

Sound familiar? For him, it was parking issues. For others, it might be unknown violations around painting, landscaping, or signage.

As a new homeowner, Morgan realized that his “painpoint was everywhere,” since HOA CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions) are often difficult to decipher.

So over the last several months, he started building out Chattanooga-based HomeStand AI to bring “clarity” to homeowners.

Step Inside The HomeStand

Homeowners and prospective homeowners can upload important HOA documents into the platform and receive a Freedom Score, which tells users in plain English about likely fine risks. The score also highlights clauses linked to aggressive enforcement, recurring fines, surveillance, rapid lien escalation, and vague language issues.

HomeStand’s AI chat tool, Praetor, is built with Gemini and helps homeowners decode governing documents, draft compliant response letters, surface due‑process violations, and rate community fairness.

***A look at HomeStand AI in action (photo provided by HomeStand AI)***

The platform draws from three real-time inputs, including the user’s uploaded governing documents (such as CC&Rs, bylaws, or notices), their current state statutes relevant to the user’s location, and a legal hierarchy model that “reflects how federal, state, and HOA rules interact.”

Now, any AI platform today has to work to ensure that their outputs are accurate. For HomeStand, accuracy is enforced through grounding, in which language models (LLMs) are connected to real-world, verifiable data. The system only produces information that can be referenced in specific documents.

“Our system does not rely on generalized legal knowledge or traditional retrieval-augmented generation, which can be unreliable in regulated contexts. Instead, we built a custom Context Engineering architecture focused on source-bound analysis,” The HomeStand team told Hypepotamus.

“When you’re building AI for something as high-stakes as homeownership, you quickly realize it can’t behave like a chatbot. It has to function as an information-grounded reasoning system,” he added. “Early on, we learned that simply “wrapping” a model wasn’t enough. We designed HomeStand AI to prioritize verifiable, enforceable sources over creative generation. If the AI cannot reference a specific statute or governing clause, it does not generate a conclusion.”

The Entrepreneur Journey

Morgan (CEO) co-founded HomeStand earlier in 2025. He had started “vibe coding” the concept before bringing on co-founder and CTO Natnael Zeleke.

This is Morgan’s first time at the helm of a tech startup. A helicopter pilot, he said he is motivated to balance his full-time career with the full-time work of launching a company because he knows the impact he can have on fellow homeowners.

“When a homeowner can quickly understand why they received a notice and how it aligns with their governing documents, the value becomes clear,” he told Hypepotamus.

Morgan said that HomeStand is focused on Automated Compliance Awareness for 2026.

“With major HOA law changes taking effect in states like California and Washington, our immediate focus is helping homeowners identify potentially non-compliant fines and notices based on current law,” he added. “Today, Homestand is focused on homeowners and buyers who need clearer visibility into HOA governance. Longer term, we see natural alignment with real estate stakeholders, including title companies, who want HOA risk surfaced earlier in the transaction. At this stage, our priority is giving homeowners a “Digital Shield” while building the underlying intelligence that enables those future use cases.”