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Seattle-based brokerage and search portal Redfin is giving home browsers an opportunity to digitally alter listings through a partnership with Roomvo, a virtual rendering technology company, Redfin announced Thursday.

The company calls the service Redfin Redesign, and the in-browser function gives curious homebuyers the ability to alter room finishes and appearance to better envision how their wants and needs overlap with what the market is offering. Its use also alerts agents, indicating that an individual may be more serious about one home than another.

“Buyers often want to know what a home will look like with some changes, not just what it looks like right now,” Redfin Senior Vice President of Product Ariel Dos Santos said in a statement. “Sellers want their listings to appeal to the broadest pool of buyers, regardless of design preferences. Redfin Redesign uses Roomvo’s AI capabilities so buyers can see what they could do with a space in just a few clicks. It’s one way Redfin’s using AI to make real estate better for buyers, sellers, and agents.”

The technology is being applied for now to Redfin-specific properties on its browser application and mobile search experience. Roomvo also partnered with Bright MLS to apply its capabilities to its mid-Atlantic database. In total, 75,000 homes can be “edited” online through the technology.

Redfin Redesign is accessible in a listing page’s primary banner image, positioned alongside view commands for 3D Walkthrough, Video and Street View. Individual rooms can be chosen for updating, not unlike the way home decor or large paint companies allow users to “test” furnishings and new color schemes.

Inman briefly tested the tool for its ease of use and rendering quality and found it to be accurate and engaging. It’s also a valuable strategy for tracking consumer interest in a listing, as well as beneficial for keeping visitors on the site to subject them to additional calls to action and data capture.

Redfin said that the Roomvo integration overlaps with its mission to better the online home search experience, which it started modernizing with 3D tours well before the rest of the market.

Redfin’s efforts are backed by an increasing amount of attention being paid to property visuals, as evidence by more instances of computer vision-backed property search, Matterport tour popularity, interactive floor plans and the wide array of image editing applications. As Nathan Brannen, chief product office of Restb.ai told Intel, Inman’s research arm, “Someone may buy a home without seeing it, but no one buys a home without seeing a photo of it.”

Roomvo is a Toronto, Canada-based company that applies its visualization software to the challenges of customers in the home design, interior finishes and real estate verticals. Its litany of well-known customers includes Home Depot, Shaw Floors, Floor & Decor, Daltile, Rust-Oleum, Engineered Floors and now, Redfin.

Bright MLS chief marketing officer Amit Kulkarni said in a statement that its excited to be part of a solution bringing innovation to the brokerages the organization serves.

“[It’s] foundational to Bright as an organization,” Kulkarni said. “We are excited to be the first MLS to partner with Redfin to offer this tool that helps people reimagine home from their desktop or mobile device.”

Redfin has plans to roll out Redesign to more multiple listing service partners, with the aim of eventually helping all 50 million of its monthly visitors.

It’s also working to better educate potential buyers on market trends with another recent feature, live home price tracking. The new tool is described by Redfin as similar to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. The index will also include more metro-level data, with individual indices for the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States every month.

Redfin made news this fall when it announced it would cease requiring its employees and agents to be members of the National Association of Realtors, in part due to harassment and discrimination allegations against its top brass that emerged in the summer, as well as other grievances, including NAR’s policies on commissions.

The brokerage made the decision to resign from NAR’s national board in June, before the sexual harassment scandal came to light. Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in October that NAR gave the brokerage an “all or nothing” choice and they chose “nothing.”

Redfin officially joined NAR in 2017.

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Show us your tech! This December, our theme is Top Tech for the New Year, and we’ll be talking about the best technology now — from CRM platforms to the hottest 3D tours and everything in between. Plus, Inman tech reviewer Craig Rowe will work overtime to get you ready for the new year.

Whether integral to your web presence or merely a passive form of brand confirmation, search engine optimization should be a component of any agent’s effort to be relevant in their market, which is precisely what Real Geeks is addressing with its latest update, SEO Fast Track.

The new feature was conceptualized to help real estate agents, teams and brokerages publish heavily SEO-optimized websites fit to handle IDX data feeds wrapped around content targeting agents’ specific markets. The company announced SEO Fast Track in a press release exclusive to Inman. It has been in beta testing for a number of months, the company said.

“We interviewed all our customers who have created massive SEO-driven lead funnels to figure out what they did,” said Kevin McCarthy, CEO of Real Geeks, in the press release. “Universally, they created hundreds or thousands of content-rich area pages to attract long-tail traffic. We knew we could streamline this process with our extensive MLS integrations and the latest Large Language Model (LLM) technology.”

In essence, the websites are built for long-tail content queries, meaning consumers can enter very specific search terms that include bedroom count, street and community name and even desired features. It’s not a new tactic or technology, but it’s also not readily deployed industry-wide. The vast majority of IDX websites under brokerage brands use check-box filtering, a top-down elimination process that largely eschews consumer “wants” and, to no small extent, is responsible for fruitless home tours.

“Websites created using SEO Fast Track are built within minutes and launched as soon as MLS approval is received,“ the release stated.

Zillow only recently introduced long-tail search while some entrepreneurs, such as Texas agent Bobby Doss, have been deploying it for years for their own search products. Real Geeks’ use of it stands out because of the company’s broad reach and consistently well-regarded reputation, as well as for its ability to rapidly build websites able to respond to such search queries.

By LLM, McCarthy is referring to artificial intelligence, namely the type of model used by OpenAI, the makers of the highly popular AI software ChatGPT. These tools are able to absorb, or learn skills, from vast amounts of data in very little time, meaning Real Geeks can feed it all the MLS and market data it can handle in order to create websites deeply rich in the information consumers want to know about a home, its contents and its immediate surroundings. This is the type of content agents historically paid copywriters to create, and many still do.

Customers should know that most GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) learn from data found on the internet and thus demand thorough editing for accuracy and, above all else, fair housing compliance, a concern that isn’t new. Large language models can be taught FHA regulations rather easily, however.

Real Geeks is among the real estate industry’s most popular CRM solutions, joining Follow Up Boss, Cloze, Lofty (previously Chime) LionDesk, Market Leader and Inside Real Estate’s multiple offerings at the top of most-often recommended real estate-specific systems.

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The verdict is in — the old way of doing business is over. Join us at Inman Connect New York Jan. 23-25, when together we’ll conquer today’s market challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities. Defy the market and bet big on your future.

Flexible apartment living platform Landing has expanded its offering to individual landlords with a new service that handles all aspects of listing and guest management, according to a Dec. 7 press release sent to Inman.

Branded “AutoPilot,” the new product gives Landing customers the option to use the company’s extensive network of members as a customer base, as well as for furnishing units, marketing vacancies, assisting tenants and, according to the company, “everything in between.” In essence, Landing is now offering property management.

“Over the past four years, Landing has become the choice membership for people seeking maximum freedom and flexibility over where and how they live,” said Bill Smith, founder and CEO of Landing, in a statement. “Autopilot offers our valued partners a holistic guest management experience that delivers the ultimate convenience and increased occupancy they can count on.”

The company allows its members to pay for ongoing access to a wide array of geographically disparate living options, primarily apartments, for short periods of time. The company arranges all stay logistics, member payments and operating concerns.

Landing’s intent is to appeal to the mobile professional and digital nomad. In July 2023 it announced Flex, a program specifically for corporate accounts that allows users to book open-ended stays and requires no multi-month equipment. In short, it eliminates the need for a fixed reservation, meaning when a company project takes longer than expected, the resident can feel confident in the stability of their housing status.

AutoPilot uses its resources to help member landlords fill sudden or long-term vacancies. “Partners also unlock access to Landing’s corporate housing demand and Standby bookings – all of which are fully vetted to ensure trustworthy reservations,“ the release stated.

Agents working with aspiring buyers can use Landing as a resource to “place” them while waiting out the market or for the right opportunity, as short-term leases with traditional landlords are rare. This means when the right home hits the market, the buyer can move faster.

The company’s timing couldn’t have been more prescient, as the post-pandemic remote work lifestyle remains largely intact. Citing an Upwork study, Forbes reported that by 2025, 32.6 million people will work remotely, despite a number of companies pushing for staff to come back to the office, a trend that has, to a small extent, motivated homesellers.

However, according to a Redfin report, the leading motivator for people to move at 33.8 percent was a desire for more space, followed by the desire to be closer to family at 22.6 percent, and the desire for a lower cost of living at 21.6 percent.

For those not ready for a mortgage, there’s always a Landing account. Since launching in 2019, the company has expanded to more than 375 cities and has more than 20,000 apartments in its network, with a 90 percent average occupancy rate and an average stay length of 77 days.

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The verdict is in — the old way of doing business is over. Join us at Inman Connect New York Jan. 23-25, when together we’ll conquer today’s market challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities. Defy the market and bet big on your future

The Real Brokerage picked up four teams in a single market to begin December — and end the year — on a rather significant high note, Inman learned in a Dec. 5 press release. Joining the fast-moving, tech-forward brokerage are Group O’Dell Real Estate Team, The Andy Blake Group, Applebaum KC Homes and Long Real Estate, all of the greater Kansas City metropolitan area.

This is yet another sign that Real’s growth continues on an impressive upward trajectory, despite the real estate market’s current habit of doing the opposite. Real said that, collectively, the four teams have sold 9,000 homes for a combined value of $2.5 billion.

“By coordinating their collective move, [the teams] have transformed Real into a market leader in Kansas City overnight and are making a clear statement that Real offers the best platform for them and other agents to succeed,” said Sharran Srivatsaa, president of Real, in the press release. “We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome each of them and their teams to the Real family and have them represent the Real brand.”

The seven-member Group O’Dell Real Estate Team is family-driven, consisting of husband and wife Dan and Maria and their son, Mike O’Dell. The 30-year team has traded $1.5 billion in real estate since 1995 and in 2022, landing at No.5 on Kansas City Business Journal’s annual ranking of real estate agents for selling more than 260 homes worth $117 million.

The Andy Blake Group was nine spots behind the O’Dells on the same list for its 250 home sales totaling $85 million. The grass-roots marketer built his nine-agent team on “word-of-mouth” marketing to the tune of $500 million sold since 2013.

Blake said in a statement that Real’s cloud brokerage model “is where the industry is going” and appeals specifically to top producers.

“In addition to joining forces with three Kansas City teams who have built a reputation for doing business the right way, being a part of Real provides an opportunity to be around thousands of like-minded people who take pride in their business,” Blake said.

Applebaum KC Homes is also family-run. Spouses Jeremy and Liron Applebaum started their team in 2012, Jeremy having been licensed since 1996 and the son of a builder. Kansas City Business Journal ranked them at No. 34 on $50 million in sales.

At one time a part of the O’Dells’ team, Tony Long created Long Real Estate in 2013 and has 18 years of experience in the industry. With four agents, the team sold 130 homes in 2022, worth $48 million, and 1,100 since 2006, placing them in the top 1 percent of their region.

In addition to its foray into Kansas City, the brokerage recently made inroads in California when the John Pope-led team at Legends Real Estate in Northern California joined Real in October. Based in Folsom, and active throughout the Golden State capital of Sacramento, John Pope has been selling homes for 45 years and will bring a unique level of tenure to the fast-growing, tech-forward residential brand.

At Inman Connect Las Vegas in August 2023, Real CEO and founder Tamir Poleg declared his company “is on fire.” Nothing has cooled since. In October it began operating in its 50th state, Nebraska, and announced a slew of marketing and business initiatives from the stage of its annual company gathering, RISE.

The company rolled out three new solutions for its agents and teams, an Agent Listing Toolkit, a marketing asset management system and creative design experience, through a partnership with Luxury Presence, the L.A.-based marketing technology company. On top of those agent tools, Real started a series of agent and staff benefits for health insurance and long-term wealth accumulation.

“Real’s vision is a world in which homebuying and selling is a simple and enjoyable experience for everyone,” said Srivatsaa in October. “Our new positioning represents this vision as well as our culture of community, and it comes at a time when Real has distinguished itself as the fastest-growing publicly traded brokerage firm for two years running and the only one to continue to grow profitability and truly innovate during a challenging and contracting real estate market.”

Poleg, along with Chief Technology Officer Pritesh Damani and Srivatsaa, were collectively awarded Inman’s 2023 Innovator Award at Inman Connect Las Vegas in August, “for their roles in guiding the company through choppy economic waters this year.”

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Show us your tech! This December, our theme is Top Tech for the New Year, and we’ll be talking about the best technology now — from CRM platforms to the hottest 3D tours and everything in between. Plus, Inman tech reviewer Craig Rowe will work overtime to get you ready for the new year.

Keller Williams has released a number of updates to Command, its flagship enterprise software solution. Primary among them is a ChatGPT-integrated artificial intelligence-based ad campaign builder, according to a Dec. 6 press release sent to Inman.

In total, the updates address company goals around improving new lead quality, generating listings ads faster, transaction transparency, vendor partnership availability and even new agent onboarding.

Command’s mobile companion app also underwent a refresh, with new front-end touch-ups to the user experience and a faster approach to lead routing for teams. Heather Pollard is head of digital and design for KW. She said that the improvements are, as always, designed to upgrade the pace and value of agents’ work.

“We’re revolutionizing the approach to ad creation with this groundbreaking feature, setting a new standard for engaging, results-driven content,” said Pollard. “Welcome to the future of CRM, where automation meets personalization, and the agents’ brand messaging is fully maximized.”

Open AI’s generative models will be put to work for agents in the paid advertising space to create headlines, ad copy and calls to action. Command will focus the skill on single-listing, single-image ads, single-listing multi-image ads, multi-listing carousel ads and single-listing multi-channel ads, KW said.

Keller Williams has long emphasized the use of software to assist its agents and teams in bettering the way they serve the consumer, going back to the 2019 rollout of Command. Much of the energy for such projects emanates from KW Labs, an in-house software engineering department, at one time a rare find in a brokerage.

Command has new ways to filter contacts for more precise lead communication, publish more granular market data and share clear, digestible transaction reports to ease client anxiety about what lies ahead. There are new tools for vendor management within deals and functionality for them to stay in a tighter loop as listings inch toward closing. The company is also using Command in a human resources capacity, enabling staff to share a wide array of company resources and culture education with agents as they get ramped up.

The mobile version of Command was introduced in late 2021, and reviewed by Inman in 2022, which at the time applauded the app for its usability (critical for adoption) and prioritization of user needs, meaning it didn’t burden the app with non-business functionality. There isn’t any unnecessary “gamification” or feature bloat.

The company states that its app has more than 170,000 quarterly active users as of Sept. 30, 2023.

The mobile version’s updates reflect what was reviewed in early 2022: streamlined controls and quick access to what matters. The company has introduced bulk contact selection to hasten the process of sharing content with more people at one time, a swipe command for alerts and function affirmations to ensure as little friction as possible when interacting with the software.

There is also news for teams within KW who may have wanted more control over how new business gets assigned. Team leaders can now manage lead routing, whether individual assignments or bulk distribution, to a designated agent or the lead pool, according to the release.

Artificial intelligence continues to penetrate proptech, turning up in everything from home search, much-smarter chat apps, internal workflows, listing copy generation and investment analysis. Tech-forward brokerages, proptechs and inquisitive entrepreneurs alike are capitalizing on the technology, some building proprietary AI and others leaning on advancements from Open AI, Google and Microsoft.

Keller Williams said it will look to work with systems beyond ChatGPT, namely Google’s Bard engine and Anthropic’s Claude2.

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