Flyhomes, creator of the world’s best real estate experience, announced it has acquired assets from real estate AI startup, ZeroDown, and launched the world’s first purpose-built AI home search portal. Developed over the last two years, ‘Flyhomes AI,’ is a proprietary technology which brings the first true conversational real estate search and research to the market, dramatically expanding the amount of information home shoppers can access online. The technology integration was overseen by ZeroDown co-founders, Laks Srini and Abhijeet Dwivedi, who joined Flyhomes as chief technology officer (CTO) and chief growth officer (CGO), respectively. Srini and Dwivedi previously served as Co-founder/CTO and as COO at SaaS HR platform, Zenefits.
“Historically, buyers have had unlimited access to agents without ever needing to compensate them for their time. The National Association of Realtors’ settlement of the commission lawsuits mandates that buyers now sign a contract to compensate their agents directly before touring homes,” said Tushar Garg, co-founder and CEO of Flyhomes. “The new rule, which goes into effect August 17th, is the most significant change to real estate in over 100 years and will fundamentally change the buyer-agent dynamic. This barrier of signing a contract upfront will cause many buyers to delay the timeline in which they engage a buyers agent, limiting their access to critical information. This will create a massive friction in the market, and luckily AI is reaching technical maturity at just the right time to be the solution to this problem. This confluence of events has us confident that the winner of the ‘portal wars’ is going to be the one with the best technology and deepest insights for consumers.”
Currently active in 28 states and Washington, D.C. with more on the way, the new Flyhomes portal covers 75% of the U.S. population. The technological centerpiece is an AI powered search and research engine trained on nearly 1,000 data points from dozens of different sources, vastly more than competitors Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, and Homes.com. This unrivaled dataset allows consumers to ask many of the questions they would ask a local real estate agent. They can get nuanced responses to open-ended questions like, “Is this home a good deal compared to others in the neighborhood,” or specific responses to pointed questions like, “How is T-Mobile’s coverage in this home?” (View Highlight)
“The past two years have shown us that consumers are ready to embrace AI. They’re talking to ChatGPT like a person and entrusting their lives to driverless cars. Real estate has remained largely untouched by AI, and what has been launched to date has largely been vaporware or failed to live up to the hype. The commission lawsuits are going to rapidly accelerate the need for information that can’t be ascertained from generic filters, photos or drone videos,” said Laks Srini, CTO of Flyhomes. “Existing home search portals were built nearly 20 years ago and were designed to provide just enough information to generate a customer lead. We’ve taken a different approach, building a portal unlike anything else on the market, one that lets consumers have a conversation as though they’re talking to a local real estate agent. A prospective buyer can use Flyhomes AI to go as deep in the shopping journey they’d like, all on their own time and without any sales pressure.”
“There’s a common misperception that AI is here to replace people and jobs. That’s not how we see it at Flyhomes, and not how we see it playing out in real estate,” said Abhijeet Dwivedi, chief growth officer of Flyhomes. “Buyer’s agents are still going to play an important role in the transaction, but you can’t ignore that the buyer-agent relationship is going to change after August 17th. No one knows exactly how buyers and agents will work together in this new world, but we do know consumers will need access to information and that agents will be under pressure to demonstrate value like never before. That’s why we designed Flyhomes AI for a dual application, serving the needs of consumers and also giving agents a powerful tool to unlock data and resources they can use to better serve their clients.” (View Highlight)
