selamhome

Someone in Washington, Stockholm or london spends years paying for an apartment in Addis. Then they collect the keys, fly back to work, and the flat sits closed. A cousin, a neighbour or a guard holds the key. The owner never really knows what happens inside — and can't ask without it sounding like an accusation. Checking in person costs a $900 flight and two weeks of leave, so most people stop checking. SelamHome is the part in between. We fit a smart lock at the property, and our team in Addis does the work the owner can't do from abroad. From the app the owner opens the door for a cleaner or a guest, gets an alert the moment it opens, and sees photos of the job when it's finished. Temporary codes expire on their own, so nobody keeps access they weren't given. One thing we had to solve is specific to Addis: there are no street addresses. A cleaner doesn't get a street name — they get a pinned location, landmark directions and the flat number, sent to them on Telegram. The lock is the easy half. The hard half is people who actually show up — vetted cleaners, a technician when the hardware fails — and that's what we're really building. Why now: an internet-connected lock costs less than the taxes on a plane ticket, and everyone involved already has a phone. This wasn't affordable five years ago.