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Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

• soperj 2y ago
  Can you use the word realtor? I thought it was copywrite protected?
  • Veuxdo 2y ago
    Trademark, but yeah, that was my understanding as well.
    • greenfish6 2y ago
      Our agents have real estate licenses and we are registered with a real estate brokerage.
      • Gerardo1 2y ago
        Does your product produce any work that isn't examined and approved by one of those licensed agents?
      • pxx 2y ago
        lol. it's not too late to delete this. the fact that you don't have the fundamentals together does not inspire any confidence.
        • BubbleRings 2y ago
          I don’t understand, what about this says they don’t have their fundamentals together?
          • somehnguy 2y ago
            Realtor is a trademarked term for members of the National Association of Realtors. You essentially can't use the term Realtor to describe anything you're doing unless you're a member. They do actively enforce this with lawyers. Google: "realtor vs real estate agent"
• rootsudo 2y ago
  I had this idea, it’s cool someone ran with it. I can see how “AI” can work the deal. Really should review submitting to ycombinator in the future :) always feel my ideas aren’t good to pursue.
  • noleary 2y ago
    Speaking as a YC-backed startup founder myself, you should have more confidence in your ideas! But not for the reasons you might think. It's not that your ideas are good or bad. Most of us have mostly bad ideas. Some of us sometimes have good ideas. But there's really no way to tell if your idea is good or bad until you try. No amount of intellectualizing will give you a trustworthy answer. We started our business with what seemed (to me and my smart friends) like a great idea. It made tons of sense. I had this whole 48-phase plan for how we'd conquer the world. And then ... it turned out that people didn't really want the thing. The idea was actually bad. By contrast, the business we're working on now has started to work pretty well. I have to admit, the business didn't make much sense to me at first. I could conjure a million reasons we'd struggle to compete. And then ... when we went to market, the thing started to work. Still early days, but there are lots of positive indications. My biggest lesson in the last year-and-a-half has been that I just don't know that much :)
    • keeptrying 2y ago
      Great name for your startup btw. :) Didn't even need to click on it to know what it does.
    • greenfish6 2y ago
      I would also strongly recommend talking to customers and building out your idea ASAP as a mandatory first step to determining if it's a "good idea". the YC mantra :)
• pj_mukh 2y ago
  So amazing! Strongly considering using this for my next purchase. Two quick questions: a) How do offer + contingencies work (contingent on financing, home inspection etc.), will a human immediately have to get involved when any contingencies are involved? b) Your service will text the sellers agent, and get me the lockbox number so I can tour a property myself without having to schedule with a buyers agent? Just that service alone would be amazing
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    a) When you draft an offer, the contingencies are fairly standard w/r/t mortgage, inspection, title, insurance, etc. Realtors use standard language here to cover these on the offer form, we use the California Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Agreement form, which is the standard offer form. b) Yes. Technically, a licensed agent has to open the door, but ours will stand outside.
    • runako 2y ago
      First -- congratulations on your launch! I'm curious about b). If you are sending a licensed agent to the property, wouldn't the typical buyer want the benefit of their knowledge? Personally, not a huge fan of the cartel. On the other hand, I have worked with agents who have saved me tons of time & money by spotting problems before inspection. If the agent is going to be present, it seems logical to have them contribute their knowledge.
      • Raffi_Isanians 2y ago
        An agent will still look at the property and provide a check/advice, so you wouldn't miss out on that benefit if you use our service. Regarding point b), while we send a licensed agent to the property, we understand that different buyers have different preferences. Some may want to fully leverage the agent's expertise, while others might prefer a more hands-off approach. We believe in giving clients the flexibility to choose their level of engagement.
• oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
• danfunk 2y ago
  There are good realtors and bad realtors. I could imagine an AI chat bot that was better than some of the mouth breathers out there. But I wouldn't use those people anyway. But there are good people in the real estate business. if you want someone that can negotiate a good deal, and answer complex questions specific to the local laws, who knows the local neighborhood, and the local realtors, who can handle last minute changes and help you buy that house when your approved loan suddenly falls through ... you want someone on your side in those cases. Not some damn chatbot. ( my wife is a realtor) Now ... an AI powered tool to helped realtors and buyers communicate, schedule, track progress, .... that would be a great application.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Is your wife looking to join a startup? I think many parts of being a realtor are already automated by realtors. They are already trying to automate themselves. They use scripts to get first clients and negotiate. They use automated email campaigns to advertise their market and local expertise. They use automatic mailers for algorithmically selected properties. They use APIs & software services to determine similar property suggestions. So these pieces are already automated by softwares that realtors use. Our difference is we'll wrap everything up with a bow and just fully acknowledge that we are an automated solution.
  • DrillShopper 2y ago
    Imagine how easy it would be to influence the AI to redline. Slumlords, racists, and other CHUDs are salivating over this
    • bbor 2y ago
      A) this is a buyer’s agent, not a seller’s agent. B) I don’t think you tell the agent your race, and traditional bias protections (namely doing the whole process without meeting in person) would still be in place AFAIU.
      • greenfish6 2y ago
        A) Correct. B) Yes, I think the AI agent actually can more easily ignore your race / age / gender because it is not programmed to go look up those things and people don't text their agent what they are - hard for the LLM to know these things and start to bias
• CalRobert 2y ago
  I prefer not to use Google, do you offer signin for people like me?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    I'll take a look at offering other sign in variants. What do you prefer? username-password?
    • CalRobert 2y ago
      Ideally yes, thanks.
• Finnucane 2y ago
  When the seller's agent tells you they have another offer, and this is a lie, will your AI be able to figure that out?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    We forward a lot of the text communication from agents back to the client, so if it's said in a way that it's possible to figure out, then it can be figured out. For most seller agents, if they will send you that one text that says there's other offers, and that's a lie, and they don't respond to other inquiries about it... is there a way to tell that this is a lie? I'm not sure this is possible even for the best buyer agent
• noleary 2y ago
  Guys, this is so cool! I am strongly in favor of anything that cuts out rent-seeking middlemen. Every time someone mentions real estate to me, I immediately think back with intense resentment to the thousands upon thousands of dollars I paid brokers just to unlock crappy studio apartments for me in Boston. I was just out of school and barely had any money, but I was still paying a huge premium over the cost of rent for ~nothing. So annoying.
  • candiddevmike 2y ago
    > Guys, this is so cool! I am strongly in favor of anything that cuts out rent-seeking middlemen. This company is another rent seeking middleman.
    • knodi123 2y ago
      And has been openly sneering at competitors whose prices are too low, and at the idea of price transparency.
  • Raffi_Isanians 2y ago
    Same. Its why we started this.
• eagleinparadise 2y ago
  Best of luck. I’m a commercial real estate professional who has spent time as a broker, lender, and private equity investor. Residential definitely is a lot More of a ridiculous market. But ultimately as an agent, you get hired to work with mostly irrational actors (sellers and buyers). As someone who is very interested in AI and taught myself how to code (I don’t know any other real estate people who know anything about code), I think it’s going to be incredible hard to uproot the brokerage industry. It’s challenging to get buy in from many different types of old school, fragmented actors in the space. I’d love to see someone prove this can be done, but I think it’s a challenge, so best of luck. Curious to follow along. I think proptech needs real professionals who have been in the trenches to be involved because there’s just too much nuance in the industry outsiders have no idea about.
  • Raffi_Isanians 2y ago
    Appreciate the support. We aren't necessarily trying to uproot the industry, just want to deliver a better buying experience. People deserve agents who go out and do a lot of the work for them. Our goal is to do everything we think a real estate agent should do. Lots of value to be provided.
    • sahmeepee 2y ago
      Aaah, but can it show you into a room with a toilet, sink, shower and bath in it and tell you "This is the bathroom"? If not, you'll never unseat the seasoned professionals of the UK real estate sector ;)
      • threeseed 2y ago
        Neither can an AI. The whole point of real estate agents is that as a seller I don't trust my house being open to any random buyer.
  • keeptrying 2y ago
    The ludicrous 6% fee is whats going to drive adoption by end users and in turn by brokers. Move that fee to 1% for buyer agent and you have a massive market.
• lasermike026 2y ago
  Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem of over priced houses and property. We don't need these mansions. What is required is cheap land and affordable, maintainable houses. This market requires a complete teardown. I'm not going to be satisfied until trillions of dollars in phantom value is goes to it's ration number.
• bbor 2y ago
  Looks great, hopefully one day I’ll be able to use your services! Has all the features I’d be looking for. Out of curiosity, do you foresee regulatory trouble? Realtors are an extremely powerful lobby in the United States, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were one of the first to do some serious pushback against LLM-related automation under the guise of “protecting consumers”. You mention the recent National Realtors Association changes in your YC profile, which I did not know about (https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/17/business/nar-realtor-settlement-what-changes-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/17/business/nar-realtor-settleme..., TLDR antitrust settlement seeking to protect buyers in particular from predatory realty practices), but inspires both hope for the future and concern that the NAR is on active defense mode. Specifically I guess I’m asking about your use of the word “traditional agent”, since on some level you two (or just the attorney partner?) seemingly would still be considered “agents” of some kind, given that you’re looking over offers by hand, and offering personalized support to users. Is there maybe a legal dance at play there already? On a completely separate note, if you find the time/interest: will this ever scale to sellers’ realtors as well? If you unicorn-to-the-moon-super-scale as Mr. Graham is hoping for everyone in YC, what’s the endgame market look like? My laymen intuition says you’ll always need experts involved at certain points in the process to protect buyers from lemons and sellers from signing deceptive contracts - do you agree, or with the right regulations and AI could this all be as automatic as buying anything else online?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    There will likely be large regulatory movement in the space in the upcoming future. There are more pending suits beyond the August 17th DoJ one. Legally, we are still agents. Eventually the plan is to support sell side as well. We are tackling buyers first. The reasons: Because realtors are paid for on commission, the incentive is to transact immediately and high. This has bad alignment for the buyer, but good alignment for the seller. Sellers also require a lot more in person logistics like staging and photography.
• enahs-sf 2y ago
  CAR and NAR are going to have a field day with this one.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    I think the DoJ is having a field day with NAR as are the many individuals currently suing them
• DowagerDave 2y ago
  Sellers, sure but I don't understand why a buyer would NOT want to use an agent? You mention better prices, but I don't believe I'm in a unique environment where the seller covers all costs and agents work on commission. >> The founders of Modern Realty realized that since buyer agents are paid for by commission, they will encourage you to buy immediately and high. Modern Realty allows you to transparently control your transaction. I believe this could be a flawed premise. It's no secret agents are after the quick sale, but it is far easier to convince the seller to accept an offer 20 under than talk up the buyer.
  • lillu 2y ago
    They've basically looking to automate the agent process but want to still take the 3% commission for shittier AI service. I as a buyer have to do the work of looking at the market stats in my area to determine a good offer, while they take all the commission. Absolutely ridiculous.
  • truk5828 2y ago
    Buyer agents are not free. The buyer agent commission has historically been felt more indirectly by the buyer, sure, but sellers pay them out of proceeds. The recent NAR settlement agrees that this needs to be clear. This is also a contributor to higher transaction costs and inflated commissions that Modern Realty seems to be addressing.
• thinkmorebetter 2y ago
  I think it’s a bit misguided in the pitch by too boldly trying to replace all buyer agents. A lot of what realtors offer, especially to first time buyers (~1/3), is emotional support and confidence/security for making the biggest financial decision in their lives. I don't believe an AI isn’t going to be able to do that. But if you’re a second+ time buyer, then I think it makes more sense.
  • alfalfasprout 2y ago
    Is emotional support worth $60k on a $2mm house? No, it isn't. Lots of realtors are trying to justify their worth but the reality is a large number of transactions still involve the buyers/sellers doing their own research + due diligence.
    • jrflowers 2y ago
      > Is emotional support worth $60k on a $2mm house? No, it isn't. There is no practical ceiling on what people will spend to feel comforted and encouraged, or to have their choices applauded.
    • thinkmorebetter 2y ago
      I am not defending the realtor fees here. The free market should decide what is worth to anyone. My take is simply that an AI realtor doesn't do all that a (good) human one does.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    I actually do believe that AI can make someone feel more comfortable with their purchase. Let's break down the communications that realtors currently do to comfort buyers (mostly over text, which is also how we communicate): Tell you comparably priced properties - we do this. Remind you the steps in the process - we do this. Tell you basic stats about local transactions (such as telling dejected buyers that only 1/6 home offers get accepted in the bay) - we do this. Send newsletters for market updates - we do this. Tell you what other agents are telling them - we do this. I think if someone really needs a person putting a hand on their shoulder, then we aren't that. But we have implemented many of the typical comforting realtor actions
• henning 2y ago
  I can't wait to try to buy a house and have an AI that tells me that a 5.11% interest rate is higher than 5.9%.
• gycom 2y ago
  Hey, can you send your AI agent over to this house I'm looking at and measure out the bedrooms for me? Also, there's tile in the kitchen; was it laid correctly (tile under baseboard) or was it laid badly (burying the bottom of the baseboard)?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Human buyer agents wouldn't do these things that you're asking
    • gycom 2y ago
      My buyer's agent did those things for me yesterday, and would do them again today if I asked. That's what a buyer's agent is for.
      • greenfish6 2y ago
        I, like many of the other people in this thread, had a buyer agent that did nothing. If you need someone who can do these things, looks like you've found that person!
        • replwoacause 2y ago
          So the value prop is that you’ve built a service that does the same job as a lazy buyer’s agent? If I’m paying someone to help me buy a house, they better be Johnny on the spot handling my requests, which include measuring a room or advising if something was installed properly or not. If they can’t do basic things like that they are useless to me.
    • poulsbohemian 2y ago
      You are grossly underestimating the things I will do for a client. I've shown houses on holidays, measured and filmed everything under the sun, crawled through muddy bug-filled cellars; the difference between a good agent and an average agent is even higher than the difference in 10x programmers.
    • 2y ago
• sgt 2y ago
  It's interesting how many AI Real Estate agent startups and buzz I've seen and heard about recently. The other day I saw several of them in my LinkedIn feed as well. Good luck - I suspect this is going to be quite a competitive space, and it'll be interesting to see if real-estate-without-agents pans out.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    It's due to the August 17th Department of Justice case caused a restructuring of how buyer agents are paid, so this spawned a variety of competitors.
• eldavido 2y ago
  I tried to automate a big chunk of property management (mostly commercial) over the past few years. The main thing I realized is that it's mostly a people business, and AI (or computers generally) are never going to stand over a vendor's shoulder and keep them honest (e.g. make sure they sweep up or don't scuff the walls), or have a difficult conversation about late rent with a tenant, or show up after hours when a pipe breaks, if only to show face with a tenant. There are definitely workflow and process elements that can be automated. But if wealth management is any indication, there are a lot of people willing to pay a premium for having a person involved. Not sure why real estate would be different. The wildcard in all this is the NAR court decision. If buyers have to pay for their own representation, that might make them shop around a little more.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    I think people are constantly changing their comfort zones when they fall in love with different products. People definitely would be open to real estate w/ software. Otherwise, by this logic, why do people use Zillow? Why don't they just drive to their local Relator office to ask about local listings? How could you trust an online algorithm to show homes instead of someone describing homes to your face? We are seeing that the fraction of home buyers that sign with the first buyer the meet is declining - more opportunity for us!
    • fakedang 2y ago
      > People definitely would be open to real estate w/ software. Otherwise, by this logic, why do people use Zillow? Why don't they just drive to their local Relator office to ask about local listings? How could you trust an online algorithm to show homes instead of someone describing homes to your face? Actually why not both? People check Zillow for a ballpark, or end up finding an actual place, and then book a tour through a local agent at Zillow (who might suggest other places too). Your product seems like a replacement for Zillow, with a conversational touch. I can see a scope for its use, but not sure how it's a moat. The moat here is the database of homes and the local agents network that Zillow uses.
• rootusrootus 2y ago
  I am skeptical but optimistic. At the very least, this introduces another avenue to let competition drive down realtor pricing. I would like to see a realignment of incentives. Getting a cut of the sale price is just good for the agents' bottom line, but not good for the buyer or seller. The problem is the monopoly realtors have. Regulate it better, or break it up, and the market can definitely handle the rest.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Our goal is to own the listing service that homes are listed on. There is this network effect of needing to be on the same listing service that everyone else is on.
• alemanek 2y ago
  I am actually your target market. We are looking to buy a house early next year. But, one thing that put me off is that you don’t list what fees you charge, is it flat rate or a percentage, ..etc. In the FAQ I see this but no mention of the standard terms of the buyers agreement: > Do I need to sign a buyer agreement? > We will let you know if you need to sign a buyer agreement. You will for sure need to sign a buyer agreement when you submit an offer through us, but otherwise we can work out a timeline. I know you just launched so not assuming any bad intent but it would be good to share pricing information for the services you offer. I have had to deal with lots of “Call us for pricing” in my day job. So, for stuff like this I just move on if I don’t see at least a price range listed somewhere upfront.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Other relators do not put their fee pricing on their websites so we decided to follow suit. We have the same pricing model - negotiable. But we provide better service.
    • esafak 2y ago
      > But we provide better service. How would a prospective customer know that?
      • greenfish6 2y ago
        We let you drive your own process and interpret real estate data with AI. We target customers who are looking for these in their Realtor
        • somehnguy 2y ago
          > interpret real estate data with AI What does this actually mean though?
          • greenfish6 2y ago
            The texting service we provide works similarly to texting a regular realtor. You can text it "Is a $1200 HOA fee per month high for san francisco?" and it will do the searches and compare the local properties to tell you an answer
• ramesh31 2y ago
  There's a reason why Guinan is still the bartender on Enterprise D, even though a perfect drink can be instantly made with a replicator. People like people. And people want to be sold on things by other people. You won't ever replace that. AI can help massively with paperwork involved. But at the end of the day there will always be a human holding people's hands through the home buying process because that's what they want.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    You can't get everybody. But, I'm sure you've bought a canned alcoholic beverage from a store before? That was made by a robot, are you ok with that? Your bartender also may pour you a drink from a can as well - I've seen this
    • threeseed 2y ago
      You are conflating products with services.
    • replwoacause 2y ago
      Sure. But the beer cost me $7. The home might cost a little more.
• simplyluke 2y ago
  I don't see anyone asking the question that to me is the elephant in the room: How are you preventing hallucinations and plainly false information being sent to buyers engaging in what's likely to be one of the largest financial decisions of their life? Beyond just leading to a bad UX, what's your legal exposure there? You mention providing comps, there's a LOT of local knowledge that goes into that. How are you automating that? Other solutions I've seen like Zillow are pretty laughable. In some neighborhoods a 2 car garage is worth six-figures despite not contributing to square footage, because pulling permits for a new one is basically impossible, just as one local example.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Our goal is not to rewrite every property description, but rather just link you the properties that we think you would like. If a property is mis-listed on Zillow, then that would be the same issue if a Realtor would send you that property as a recommendation
    • threeseed 2y ago
      > How are you preventing hallucinations and plainly false information being sent to buyers You must have missed this part of the question. Seems pretty important.
      • simplyluke 2y ago
        Looking through the demo I think almost all of the experience is being powered by the zillow API, and a minor amount of summarization may be getting handled by an OpenAI API. I think the AI claims are largely but not entirely hype related. It's still not very clear to me what advantages this is giving me as a buyer vs a traditional agent or even being unrepresented and just using zillow's product offerings. Maybe I'm missing the point though.
• savidge 2y ago
  How are you guys accessing an accurate feed of real estate listings in a given location? I was under the impression that you still needed to have a brokerage license to get access to the MLS feed for a given region, which is what Zillow does.
• liammaher 2y ago
  Looks cool, we're in the same industry, so let us know if we can help! If anyone is looking for cash-flowing investment properties, you can check us out at Coffee Clozers: http://coffeeclozers.com/ http://coffeeclozers.com/
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Yep! I'm already on the Coffee Clozers newsletter
• a_d 2y ago
  It is important for some company to make home buying better. Even outside of the pain of unaffordability, it is an utterly broken process. Advent of LLMs do give hope that this process can be imporoved signifiantly. Fun fact: I met Raymond and Raffi a long time ago and discouraged from going into this area. But now, I am glad they did. Their conviction is inspiring. If Turbo tax can make it possible for a person to file taxes, I am pretty sure a home can be bought online. Best of luck to modern realty! .. and we should hang again sometime :)
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Thanks for the support a_d :)
    • a_d 2y ago
      congrats on the launch! .. I am loving this entire thread.
  • threeseed 2y ago
    > If Turbo tax can make it possible for a person to file taxes Which is a 40 year old piece of software. And during these decades we've had with NLP and basic rule engines the ability to answer questions about the buying process. So not sure what innovations LLMs are bringing to the table here.
• Gerardo1 2y ago
  This is, yet again, Y-Combinator backing an AI startup that is a terrible idea, with people who don't recognize what a terrible idea it is (the responses by the poster in this thread smack of inexperience and someone who hasn't thought through the risk their building for themselves and their customers). I thought the Y-Combinator backed company whose entire pitch was that they could use AI to forge survey results had to be rock bottom.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    You have 8 comments on this thread and have not mentioned anything about having any real estate experience yourself, just contradicting everything I say with 0 evidence.
    • Gerardo1 2y ago
      I don't have any, and indeed I've not criticized or questioned anything about real estate. I've questioned how you'd support some of the claims you made that were overly-broad and seemed disconnected from the technology you're describing. I've questioned your lack of transparency on pricing, and your justification for it. I've asked a few questions about the general risk/liability of being a real estate agent and how you're managing those risks. I think you've entered into this with a very narrow view of the technology you're using, the risk you're taking on (and creating), and the ethical considerations you need to be making. If I'm wrong, it would probably benefit you to clearly lay out some of the considerations you've made around the above.
      • greenfish6 2y ago
        About 4 months ago when I launched Modern Realty, it was at discount. However, what comes with a product branded at a discount product is people aggressively questioning our quality and services all the time. Also, we would get lots of potential clients who would try and push our prices even lower. We don't have any of these problems at full price, and people have a significantly higher presumption of our services out the gate. We have similar real estate insurance to real estate agents. Agents make mistakes describing property all the time - we make mistakes, but fewer than the an agent.
• tagami 2y ago
  What limitations are in place due to licensed broker and agent laws?
  • Double_a_92 2y ago
    This is basically a regular real estate agency, but they use AI to book appointments and extract some key value from PDFs. Nothing really to see here... Just another company using the current buzzword for advertising.
• thesimpleman 2y ago
  I tried building software in the real-estate space and its very difficult to break in and change consumer behavior. You can see what I was working on here (https://findur.io https://findur.io). The app is active but the business is shut down. I just leave it up to have as a portfolio project at this point. I've learned many hard lessons from doing this journey. Lessons learned that might help you guys out: - Consumers want everything Zillow has. Until you actually build Zillow AND THEN start to innovate on top of that, people won't come. - Zillow is developing the "everything app" for home buyers. Read their quarterly reports you'll get insight to what they are doing - Consumers in this market won't pay for a service give Zillow and others are free. Market is tough - Brokers are paying other fees and don't want to buy additional software. - Realtors are not doing well in this market so this must be a huge value add or they won't come. They also require a mobile version because they are on the road a lot. - Validate that your company is not just a "feature" but truly something different. A lot of times, Zillow can just build out the feature itself. It already has a first pass at using LLMs for search
  • saym 2y ago
    I appreciate this community when I see replies like this. Friendly, humble advice is hard to come by in this world.
• aabajian 2y ago
  I personally know Raffi, he was my roommate in college. If ever there was a CEO you wanted to back (or someone to help you buy a home), he is it. Some highlights: -Not from a wealthy background, he got where he is due to hard work. -Paid his share of the rent by trading stocks. -He bought a used SUV off of Craigslist and negotiated the price down by almost 90%, afterwards the seller smiled and said something akin to "the balls on this guy!" -Double majored in electrical engineering and economics in college. -Worked at the US Patent Office reviewing video card patents, well before cryptocurrency, bitcoin mining, or AI. -He built his own desk using woodworking skills. -Studied contract law and has closed some multi-million dollar deals for other startups. He quit this high-paying, stable job to start Modern Realty. -Has his own number of AirBnb properties. Raffi has the very unusual combination of street smarts, book smarts and salesmanship.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    :)
• wanderingbit 2y ago
  I welcome this wholeheartedly. I recently sold my first home and was frankly disgusted by how large the fee is for what my realtor did. I eventually went For Sale By Owner and will never go back to using a realtor. Zillow/redfin already replace the search and comparables part of the process. What realtors currently provide is the “white glove service” which helps first time buyer/sellers feel good about one of the biggest transactions of their life. Other than that I’d say realtors are mostly rent seekers, and their time has come. What I predict will make or break the AI realtor experience is how well the AI can emulate (maybe and even improve?) the feeling of security and assurance that one gets from using a realtor. I’d love some responses with stories on where realtors provided some actual unique service. Because all I’ve seen are realtors as a dying parasite of a bloated system.
  • aabajian 2y ago
    I've purchased two condos and one house in the Seattle area. My first condo I bought remotely and my agent toured a couple of places for me. Agent was very valuable in this case as I was in medical school trying to buy a place for residency. Second condo I found myself and my agent merely facilitated the transaction. She hired a home inspector who missed a couple things. Not saying I would've caught them with my own inspector, but when your agent is chummy with an inspector, you can't really call them out on their mistakes. When it came to looking for houses, I saw a few with my agent, but the one I ended up buying I found myself on Redfin. I went to an open house myself and just told my agent I wanted to make an offer. Of note, my agent got paid the least for the first condo (because it was the cheapest), but she was most valuable in that transaction. The other two transactions just required the agent to fill out the paperwork, yet they got paid much more. There has to be some relationship between the amount of work done and the cost of the buyer's agent, not just a percentage of the sale price.
• lxe 2y ago
  This piques my interest, as I have worked in this space for some years, AND I've had terrible experiences purchasing homes in Bay Area and elsewhere. Product questions: - How is your solution better/different/cheaper for buyers who would otherwise choose a discount buyer realtor services from Zillow or Redfin? - Who will be doing the tours? - Are you offering a tour-only non-exclusive representation agreements? Business questions: - Seller agents in the Bay Area will definitely "blacklist" buyers who use this, as they've done for Redfin and Open Listings. How are you solving this? - Why are incumbent giants not building this? Are you worried or solving for some unknown pressure that stalls tech-realty startups in general? - Residential real estate transactions more often than not require some high-touch shenanigans due to things like liens, solar loans, inspections, contingencies, negotiations, etc... how are you solving for this?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    - Zillow doesn't actually transact homes themselves, once you click that you're interested in a house, a realtor will call you who is non-zillow affiliated, they could be with any brokerage. Redfin only offers you discount services if you buy + sell through them, but most people buying in the bay area aren't simultaneously selling a home through Redfin. - We are currently using a 3rd party showing service which has people come and literally open doors. - Yes we are offering representation agreements to help people tour in light of the NAR suit. - We will solve the blacklist problem when we get to that size. Not going to start running before catching the ball. - Incumbents like Zillow have agents as their primary customer, they wouldn't put out their main customer. Redfin's model is to have the human agent at the heart of their product, it would have to be completely remade if the customer was using the interface. - Liens are analyzed using our disclosure summary tool. Solar loans are often liens, so same applies. Inspections are a disclosure. Contingencies fall into 5 buckets which are fairly standard of inspection/mortgage/insurance/title/appraisal. Negotiations are usually done over text message or email.
  • rgbrgb 2y ago
    > Seller agents in the Bay Area will definitely "blacklist" buyers who use this, as they've done for Redfin and Open Listings. How are you solving this? OL founder here. A few points to consider: - We represented buyers on plenty of transactions in the Bay Area and had very competitive acceptance rates. Of course there is an art to being included in the counter process but unsurprisingly, sellers mostly optimize for expected value (money * certainty) and the highest legit offer wins. Vague notions of not wanting to transact with a "disruptor" go away pretty quickly when you realize it's a bona-fide offer + compelling buyer letter + pro agent who has done way more successful transactions than most. If you have a standardized process for preparing and presenting offers in a market and optimize it over thousands of reps, you can actually submit pretty compelling offers. - An actual point of friction/discrimination to consider (that applies to all markets) is when the user is at an open house and the listing agent asks who their agent is. When they said OL, the agent would often try to dunk on us and steal the client. Important to prep the buyer with what to say in this moment so that this doesn't happen (e.g. tell them to just give the name of the agent who would be delivering their offers + give them compelling stats about that agent's performance). Rare that they'd bad-mouth a named person to their client. - Throughout the time we operated, the Bay Area was a relatively small and unique market. We had a healthy business there from the early-adopter techie crowd, but ultimately focused more in Los Angeles because the market diversity yielded more useful product insights. Do not design for the Bay if you're trying to build a national (or even CA-wide) real estate product!
• conductr 2y ago
  Reading through the comments and I think this is the worst reception I’ve seen on HN, I seriously hope you guys consider some of this feedback. Good luck out there
  • replwoacause 2y ago
    My take is that greenfish comes of as sort of cocky and defensive, which is off putting. Not meant as a personal attack because I have no clue who these guys are, but the responses just don’t make me want to try out the service even though conceptually I like the idea of flipping this dusty ass industry on its ear.
    • greenfish6 2y ago
      Yea definitely playing a bit of persona since comments drive up the rating on HN. 3500 uniques inbound from this post, couple home tours scheduled from inbound users, I'd say I'm happy about it. I would say 75% of people I meet face to face when I say I'm making an ai realtor, it's a negative reaction. Although it does much better in the bay
• pratikshelar871 2y ago
  The youtube video is very abstract and vague TBH. The text messaging is a good feature but the response shown in the video seems like a rushed response with bad formatting. The attention span of users is really low so UX is going to be a game changer in AI. I lost interest when I saw the markup formatted text message responses.
• poulsbohemian 2y ago
  I couldn't get a tour request to work on Safari (desktop or mobile) or on Chrome. Curious how offers work - you route the web form to a lawyer who then writes the offer and routes it back to the buyer? How are you handling "interrupts"? IE: all the things that need to potentially be part of an offer that only a savvy broker would know how to address with the buyer? How are you handling things like even the seller's disclosure, inspections, etc? > then reviewed by an attorney at no additional cost. So how do you make money?
• poulsbohemian 2y ago
  Real estate agent and (mostly) former software developer here... every time real estate comes up on HN I lose about 50 status points, but here goes nothing... Just thinking about a few transactions that come to mind... 1) We've got a feud over two trees and had to call in an arborist and a structural engineer. 2) I've got an orchard with a ROFR and a big city lawyer on the other side of the deal, on a property with a disused fuel tank and questions about former pesticide use. 3) A house where the deal only got done because the other agent and I each threw in 1% of our commission to bring the two sides together. 4) A ranch property where there are water rights that need to be cured and where the tenant is telling lies to prospective buyers and need to be evicted. 5) A neighbor who keeps suing people to stop a bridge from being replaced because he wants to force them to sell their properties and doesn't want anyone accessing their properties. 6) A lodge building zoned residential but that has been used for commercial purposes for decades that has a seasonal spring (yes water) that pops up in the basement. 7) A cute craftsman home with an oil tank buried in the backyard. 8) The seller tore out the carpet when they exited 4 days post-closing and left a giant pile of garbage in the driveway. I'm just throwing out some example transactions here to demonstrate two points: A) When people make comments about "normal" real estate transactions or why Realtors aren't needed, to me it signals they know jack shit about real estate. If I get one deal a year that is "easy" I consider it very lucky. I do not see how we automate away all of the crazy things that humans do to their properties. B) At 3% my services are cheap. In the two states where I do business, I'm held to the same standard of practice as a lawyer, plus I'm a marketer, a home stager, a photo / video / drone expert, a land use and water rights expert, an economist, and half a dozen other things in order to provide a professional level of service to my clients. Only to be constantly told I'm just a useless cog who will soon be replaced. Well, good luck to y'all, have fun suing each other.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • Terretta 2y ago
    > At 3% my services are cheap Do you give % back if none of the above came up? Or is the 3% insurance, where people without issues are covering the costs of other people's issues where 3% would be too little?
• forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Oh that's adorable. Wake me when your agent has solid connections with skilled professionals in every construction trade known to man, a stable of home inspectors on speed dial, and can handle every aspect of scheduling involved in all of that.
• yellow_lead 2y ago
  Where do offers and tour requests go once they're sent?
• Jean-Papoulos 2y ago
  Is it a US thing to require an agent ? I haven't heard of needing an agent to buy a house in any EU country. It's much easier to sell with one yes, but what do you need one for when buying ?
• nkrisc 2y ago
  Honestly, I’d rather just pay an agent to handle it all. In order to trust the AI I’d have to learn everything myself anyway. I don’t have time for that.
• rswail 2y ago
  In Australia, buying agents are rare. The standard is that the seller engages an agent to sell the property, the fees (and other expenses) are charged by the agent to the seller. One of the problems that is affecting our real estate market is the domination of two websites, the Murdoch owned realestate.com.au and the Nine owned domain.com.au https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/19/the-bear-at-the-door-estate-agents-say-they-fear-speaking-out-about-realestatecomau-price-gouging https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/19/the-b... They both offer different advertising rates for agents than for individuals and lean on agents to purchase "packages" with a discount but an guaranteed number of properties. So now there's a new oligopoly that started as a service to buyers, then a service to business, now is extracting as much of the value of the market to itself. A classic case of "enshittification".
• rswail 2y ago
  With the continuing advancement of AI in terms of dealing with both buyers and sellers, the tools should focus on both the buyers and the sellers. The need for an "agent" as such becomes an unnecessary cost, if you can get an "associate" from the equivalent of airtasker, with insurance covering their liability to do the "showings" for you, while AI can deal with most of the email or other notifications. Would allow individuals to run their own auctions to achieve the best price, deal with the settlement and title transfer. Make it a fixed cost service, not based on the house valuation, so that there is no incentive to manipulate suggested prices, but base it on algorithmic evaluation. Love the idea of AI battlebots in such exchanges in the future, but the legals better be tied down.
• rswail 2y ago
  I'm in Australia, so not a customer (yet), but I like the idea. I made a comment before about the potential for AI on the seller side of the transaction too. One question/quibble: How is the data collected from buyers kept isolated and secure? Is it used to "personalize" algorithms related to offer suggestions, or will all users be guaranteed equal offer proposals? I guess to summarize, how transparent will you be about your offer suggestions and AI driven analysis?
• infecto 2y ago
  I am not sold on what the service is. There are sellers out there that already do instant tour unlocks. There are also companies like Redfin that tried to attack this problem but I think are still struggling to fully crack it. You only mention that rates are negotiable, there is no way I am using this kind of service unless you offer drastically lower rates. That was the attractive part of redfin, they automate and standardize as much of the workflow as possible and can work with lower rates for that process. I don't care about an OpenAI chatbot that can send me some listing information via text message.
  • aabajian 2y ago
    There are no websites that let you make offers on houses by yourself. If you want to make an offer on a car, a boat, even land, there are ways to do it without an agent. Real estate (save land) seems the lone exception where you have to involve an agent. If you try to make an offer without an agent, the seller's agent becomes your agent and takes the fee. While they don't list their prices, I bet there's some people who'd pay the standard 3% to be able to control the process themselves.
• Terretta 2y ago
  This doesn't seem aware of the non-MLS or local-only MLS markets quite common in high value areas.
• dlevine 2y ago
  Looks like a good start! I'm sure you are already working on this, but it would be nice to be able to filter my search by various criteria (e.g. Beds/Baths/Price/Square Footage). Since you guys are an AI company, this could even be freeform (e.g. what are you looking for?) And also potentially to be able to save multiple searches.
• themanmaran 2y ago
  Who is your target market? I've certainly always wanted a product that lets me cut the realtor out of the loop. When I bought my house, it seemed if anything the realtor just got in the way. I had picked out the house on Zillow, and really just needed to see it once and put in an offer. Then of course the realtor wants you to look at houses they represent (as a comp), and also introduce you to their inspector/mortgage/lawyer friends. It seems like the incentives just aren't aligned at all. I imagine a lot of people in the tech scene feel the same. i.e. would love a "buy now" button that skips all the people steps. But I wonder how much that sentiment is shared by the broader real estate market.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    The target market is the personality of buyer who wants to do self service. Someone who finds houses on Zillow and just gets a realtor at the end. Realtors are paid on commission which means that they want to transact high and immediately. Poor alignment with intent for buyers. We have an offer drafting service on our website where all you need to provide is your email, phone, property, and price and we can go from there.
    • DowagerDave 2y ago
      >> Realtors are paid on commission which means that they want to transact high and immediately This is either naive or disingenuous. Do the math; realtors want to close fast but don't really care about the price the way the buyers and sellers do. The commission difference on a significant gap is not worth losing the deal.
      • thinkmorebetter 2y ago
        Also, a huge percentage of deal volume comes from referrals. Successful realtors don't become so without thinking long-term.
        • greenfish6 2y ago
          Realtors still spend the majority of their time working on marketing themselves as opposed to servicing clients. "Referrals" is disingenuous because realtors spend so much time reminding clients of themselves - would this referral have occurred without that?
• rpearl 2y ago
  Agents are there for the edge cases. We had a contract dispute that required negotiations and even a brief discussion with a lawyer. At one point, our agent was calling title companies in the area to find the _other_ escrow account. How are you planning on handling cases that abruptly require complexity? At first glance, it looks like using a service like what you are describing would have been an unmitigated disaster and would have cost us a ton of money, and we wouldn't have known that at the start of the process either.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Raffi, my cofounder, is an attorney himself along with having a Realtor license. Most Realtors are not attorneys. You said you needed to talk to an attorney but what if your realtor.... was an attorney? So we have more ability to handle edge cases, not less!
    • mattw2121 2y ago
      Raffi doesn't scale. Are you going to hire more Raffis?
      • Raffi_Isanians 2y ago
        There is only one Raffi. -Raffi Edit: AI is currently being coded up to mimic my behavior/tone/advice/etc.
        • Gerardo1 2y ago
          > Edit: AI is currently being coded up to mimic my behavior/tone/advice/etc. You, as a licensed attorney, are training an LLM to give your clients legal advice?
        • hansonkd 2y ago
          > AI is currently being coded up Said every failed half baked AI startup the past year. Show the results when done. Saying that you are working on AI is barely a step beyond saying you have a concept of a plan.
• DGAP 2y ago
  What's the pricing? Do you take the entire 3% commission? If so, ouch, and do you anticipate this will be affected by the recent anti trust cases? Is your use of AI just chatgpt API calls? How quickly could you scale given there's still humans in the loop? What are the blockers to getting humans out of the loop? Have you used your MVP to close any real sales?
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Our pricing is negotiable. What we're seeing so far is that >95% of homes are still offering full 2.4% buyer agent concessions in the bay area. Our main service is our texting service which you would text as if it was a normal realtor and it can get you market comparisons, schedule tours by texting agents, asking about if there's offers on homes, etc. Blockers for getting humans out of the loop is primarily just user trust. It's quite simple to pull APIs that get specific data and text people and fill forms, but real estate agents have a very high CAC problem, due to this trust issue and competition. MVP has completed 1 escrow via text bot, we got paid 27k, another home went into escrow yesterday, 35 clients touring homes with us. We registered with our real estate brokerage in July.
    • Gerardo1 2y ago
      > Blockers for getting humans out of the loop Do you think that people want humans out of the loop when it comes to buying and selling real estate?
    • throwup238 2y ago
      > MVP has completed 1 escrow via text bot, we got paid 27k, another home went into escrow yesterday, 35 clients touring homes with us. We registered with our real estate brokerage in July. That's amazing traction! Congratulations! How much manual intervention did these first couple of sales take? Are you using your own local/hosted model and fine tuning or otherwise incrementally improving it?
      • greenfish6 2y ago
        Disclosures analysis and text-to-tour scheduling were first to be automated, and those were available for our first close. We now have market analysis, offer drafting, full AI texting, etc.
• alumic 2y ago
  OP, I would replace or rework the icons on your landing page. The stroke width varies as does its color which undermines the rest of the design. Apart from that, nice job!
  • Double_a_92 2y ago
    Also in my mind those 5 star reviews with peoples photos are strongly associated with fake/scam websites. Would consider removing them. (Or maybe they do actually work with regular people??)
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    noted, thanks
• the_gorilla 2y ago
  I'll try anything to get rid of realtors. They're the worst form of rent seekers, and it requires no real skill or training other than a certificate that I could purchase with a highschool diploma, taking one class, and passing a multiple choice exam.
  • greenfish6 2y ago
    Yes! rm the middleman
  • bigstrat2003 2y ago
    My realtor was invaluable when I bought a house. He had a lot of valuable guidance on what to look for and what to avoid, as well as advice on how to make our offer stand out in a seller's market. I'm not saying that there aren't realtors who are just parasites, but some do earn their pay. Mine was one such.
    • greenfish6 2y ago
      Prior to the Aug 17 settlement, Keller Williams said ~65% of home buyers in the US used the first buyer agent that they met. The quality bar is very low to become a realtor (3 months of online coursework). Realtor reviews are cooked and completely fake online. So it is not a big jump to say that the average realtor experience is poor as they are usually driven by a single advertisement or a single Zillow link for most people. We try to mimic the behavior of the best performing top 1% of realtors and give that experience to all.
      • modoc 2y ago
        Sure but the first real estate agent I met is the one that was most highly recommended by my friends and colleagues, and has stellar online reviews. It wasn't some random person...
    • Raffi_Isanians 2y ago
      Some are valuable, some do a good job at making themselves seem valuable to you. Our goal is to take what the valuable agents do and make it even better. There are so many places where an agent can add value (search, credits, getting you the best interest rate, doing all the research for you, etc.).