At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.

Software company RentSpree has inked another MLS partnership, this time with UtahRealEstate.com (URE) to assist agents in how they work with renters, according to a May 15 press release sent to Inman exclusively. URE has 20,000 agents in its membership and is recognized for its web-forward marketing and consumer-facing online presence.

RentSpree has more than 300 associations and MLSs in its partner network that primarily use its ApplyLink solution, a single browser experience that automates application collection, screening, approval and other property management operations critical to securing occupancy.

The software integrates directly with listing data and content, allowing users to publish the capability directly to the market and leverage what it collects in existing systems. It doesn’t require manual logins or redundant data entry.

Brad Bjelke, CEO of UtahRealEstate.com, said in a statement that working with RentSpree will elevate the importance of renters as a lead resource, and extend the expertise of its members to the apartment market.

“Unlike other regions of the country, the rental listing marketplace has not been a primary focus of real estate agents in Utah,” Bjelke said. “By integrating RentSpree’s easy-to-use rental tools, our members can efficiently manage rental transactions and easily integrate them into their regular workflow.”

Utah continues to benefit from relocation trends and its reputation as an ideal destination for lifestyle-driven buyers and second-home investors. Naturally, rental trends follow.

According to data by RentCafe, an average of 10 renters were competing for each vacant space in Salt Lake City in 2023. Currently, more than 800,000 Utahns are renters, according to data by the Rental Housing Association of Utah, making up about 30 percent of households in the state, according to the release.

RentSpree’s software is designed to assist property mangers, their tenants and residential sales agents across all facets of working with those who lease their homes. In addition to operational efficiencies, the software provides outward-facing marketing tools and resources to build and maintain relationships with tenants.

In February, Mid-America Regional Information Systems (MARIS) came aboard, adding 15,000 potential ApplyLink users. The MARIS partnership followed September 2023’s link-up with NorthstarMLS, a Midwest MLS that boasts 22,600 members.

In October 2023, RentSpree added tenant credit building to its suite of benefits, allowing users to report on-time payments to credit bureau TransUnion.

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At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.

Seattle-based software company Finaya has acquired Nexme, a consumer-facing, on-demand home tour and sales collaboration solution it intends to roll into  a “super app” capable of home search and transaction management, it was announced Tuesday.

The mobile solution merges home shopping with mortgage, insurance, title search and escrow management to offer a comprehensive home transaction experience, according to the announcement. It also enables buyers to get mortgage pre-qualified and offers an at-closing buyer refund incentive. It will become available nationwide in mid-2024.

Nexme’s co-founders, Arian Abdulkader and Vanessa Alvarez, will join Finaya’s leadership team, according to the announcement.

“At Finaya, we believe in leveraging AI technology to harmonize the way customers experience homeownership, ushering in capabilities such as affordable home search, dynamic agent commissions, and transparency of end-to-end transactions”, Finaya CEO Naren Nath said in a statement. “At the same time, we are empowering real estate agents, loan officers and other service professionals with unprecedented access to in-market customers, resources and expertise, revolutionizing the industry in the process.”

In addition to creating ways to digitally flatten each step of the home buying process, Finaya will market itself as an education source for aspiring buyers, a tactic to further attract consumers to its mobile-first platform. That content will offer mortgage brokers, lenders and fintech service providers an avenue through which to sell services.

The company will offer a private-label product for industry professionals and also encourage home builders to market new and pre-sale homes on its system.

“By harnessing cutting-edge AI/LLM technologies, Finaya plans to aggregate and analyze vast amounts of data to automate home and loan selection, recommend optimal pricing structures, and generate personalized content,” the company stated.

The company is aiming square at the frustrated real estate consumer, who, like many industry practitioners, are unsure of what it costs to buy a home today, or who should pay who. The vagaries are a result of a number of consumer-initiated lawsuits and their resulting, industry-affecting settlement.

“We’ve simplified the home buying process for buyers, eliminating downtime. Tour as many homes as you want, in real-time. Save thousands of dollars in agent fees,” Nexme’s current website touts.

As is typical in any industry, cracks in traditional workflows become the birthplaces of innovation, and the number of software companies looking to fill those spaces will continue to grow.

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At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.

Pre-sale renovation firm Revive has pushed its use of artificial intelligence into the realm of comparative market analysis, according to an announcement Tuesday.

The company has shipped a new product, called Neighborhood Report, part of its greater Revive Vision AI initiative, launched last year, to create condition reports of nearby homes and rate subject communities.

The AI is based in computer vision, a subset of the technology that extracts data from still images, allowing users to determine the age of appliances, the type of flooring and even the architectural style of a home from simply uploading a photo.

However, according to Dalip Jaggi, co-founder of Revive, the new AI doesn’t require the user to upload any photos, the AI scans the agent’s market information source to find comparative sales and then uses the findings to generate its opinion of the community.

“This feature of Vision AI provides powerful insights without the need for photos of the property but rather focuses on using computer vision on the recent sales comps to bring condition insights to a specific neighborhood,” Jaggi said. “It still leverages the same computer vision models to enable agents to instantly show sellers a factual, data-backed analysis showcased in an easy-to-understand summary. This creates a foundation for a discussion about home values.”

Neighborhood Report scores each home it finds using an ascending 1 to 5 scale, on which it considers overall interior condition, exterior presentation, bathrooms, kitchen design and finishes and other core living areas. Each home’s score is then measured against the subject, and a Neighborhood Condition Score is generated on a letter-grade scale, A to F, taking into account overall sales activity, too.

The software includes an “after renovation” score and a “current condition” score and allows users to understand the condition of the identified comparables, a powerful use of AI that could lead to much more accurate home valuations.

Historically, CMAs rest on the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, a home’s size, zip code and other surface-level observations. It often takes an agent’s individual subjective expertise to adjust a sales price based on interior updates or home amenities, opinions often at the root of negotiations between listing agent and seller, and between the seller and the market.

Computer vision’s ability to directly apply interior designs and feature choices against recorded sold price, days on market and number of showings, for example, gives all parties hard data on which to base pricing.

The intelligence offered also gives sellers an easy way to understand what they can do to match the highest and best of their neighborhood’s sales, making an agent’s role in price marketing much easier and less subjective.

Agents using such technology can better serve their sellers by marketing a home at the right price, leading to a faster sale, and having all the information needed to counter low-ball offers or win condition-specific negotiations.

“The Neighborhood Report feature is now available to all Revive Vision AI users, accessible via both the desktop platform and mobile application,” the company said.

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