Before the rise of real estate technology, it was hard to know a home’s value until a state-licensed appraiser visited the property and made an estimate, weighing pros like a chic patio against cons like a mildewy basement.
Today, artificial intelligence and neural networking can do the work of appraisers. Zillow’s free Zestimate tool is one popular option on the market.
“It’s always been this attempt at a starting point in home valuation for everyone who’s bought and sold and owns a home,” said Nicholas Stephens, director of product management at Zillow.
What Is Real Estate Technology?
Real estate technology comes in many forms, and it can be classified as any website, app or software used to find, sell or manage real estate. Real estate tech overlaps with proptech (property tech), which is typically used by real estate professionals, underwriters, developers, property managers, title companies and banks.
Zillow is a prime example of real estate tech. Since it debuted in 2006, the Zestimate’s internal algorithm has drawn on traditional real estate metrics (bedroom and bathroom count, square footage) as well as contextual data, like local tax records. When people list their homes for sale on Zillow, they upload pictures; the Zestimate can “see” these photos using cutting-edge computer vision techniques and factor elements like natural light and curb appeal into its estimates.
The Zestimate’s median error hovers just above 3 percent. In other words, half of its estimates are within 3 percent of a home’s actual selling price. That’s a massive improvement since Zillow’s early days when the Zestimate had a median error of 14 percent.
Zillow isn’t the only company that foresees a shift in real estate appraisal. The more powerful AI technology becomes, the more automated valuation models (or AVMs) sprout up.
Real Estate Technology Trends
Tech has fundamentally changed how the real estate sector operates. For one, it has sped up transactions. Discovering real estate listings and setting up showings used to take days. Today, not so much. On-demand information and services are standard in this hyper-connected era, and the real estate industry has responded to consumer demand for immediacy.
Redfin debuted Instant Updates more than a decade ago, and the feature has only gotten faster in the intervening years.
“People can sign up for notifications for the types of homes that they’re looking for,” said Jen Chao, vice president of engineering at Redfin. “We can notify our customers faster than anybody else, so they can be the first to find out about homes that are hitting the market or price changes.”
Real estate technology has also accelerated the booking process for viewing homes. Redfin’s “Book It Now” feature is just one example. The feature allows users to schedule a home tour in just a few clicks.
In fact, a recent trend — instant buying, or iBuying — extends this on-demand ethos to selling a home, a sometimes interminable-seeming process. But selling to iBuyers takes only a few days. The companies make prompt, algorithm-driven offers, pay in cash and sell homes themselves — often sprucing them up in the process.
Today, iBuying represents only a sliver of all real estate transactions, but that’s poised to change. In 2018, Zillow Offers bought fewer than 700 homes, according to the New York Times, but it expects to scale that up to 5,000 homes per month by 2024.
For her part, Redfin’s Chao sees proptech heading toward what she calls the “complete solution.” Redfin hopes to eventually become a one-stop shop, so it can provide a seamless home-buying experience. But this doesn’t mean real estate professionals and agents will be pushed out.
“Real estate is a highly personal service,” Chao said. “[We use] technology to streamline and get rid of the [tasks] that software can do really well, to free up time for agents to focus on the things that require the human touch.”
35 Real Estate Technology Companies to Know
Real estate technology companies are constantly growing and changing with the housing market. When it comes to staying up to date on major players in the industry, there are plenty to sift through. Here are 35 real estate technology companies to keep an eye on.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Crexi is a software company that focuses on commercial real estate. It operates an online platform that facilitates property transactions, allowing users to list properties, identify listings that meet their needs and evaluate potential deals based on data and property records. Crexi provides tools to buyers, brokers and tenants and has helped close billions of dollars in property transactions since the company’s 2015 founding.
Location: Denver, Colorado
Homebot’s real estate platform helps loan officers and real estate agents connect with, engage and retain clients. It provides homeowners with detailed, accurate information and insights about their properties and the equity they hold. The company says its tech empowers them to make better real estate decisions.
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Stavvy is a digital mortgage platform that replaces paper documents with digital versions in the real estate space. It allows lenders, notaries, buyers and other entities to collaborate securely on documents, increasing efficiency and cutting down on paper waste. Its eClosing product facilitates the fast closings that are becoming more typical in today’s fast-paced real estate market, while its foreclosure and loss mitigation products allow legal teams to speed up tedious processes.
Location: Fully remote
Cove develops technology for tracking and communicating about work orders, inspections and other elements of managing building operations, as well as creating optimal tenant experiences through features like amenity reservations and visitor registration. Cove’s offerings can be used for buildings in the office, residential, medical, retail and industrial sectors.
Location: Denver, Colorado
Evolve oversees vacation rentals throughout North America. The company provides services to ensure the rental process runs smoothly both for guests and property owners. Evolve’s rental management services include marketing, rate setting, listing optimization and fielding guest inquiries. The company also partners with vacation rental businesses to offer data, expertise and connections to facilitate buying and selling properties.
Location: New York, New York
Keyway is a real estate tech company that operates a commercial real estate marketplace. It specializes in “sale-leaseback,” which means that Keyway purchases properties from small businesses and then serves as a commercial landlord, leasing those same properties back to the former owners, now tenants. These transactions let small business owners access capital to expand without losing their location.
Location: Fully Remote
Buildout operates a platform for commercial real estate brokers. They can build individual landing pages automatically populated with their existing listings to capture client contact information and initiate deals. The platform includes a CRM with property data, call and task lists and analytics on deal cycles. It also offers branded marketing materials like brochures and flyers, centrally housed in the platform’s Docs section so they can be easily edited and reissued.
Location: Fully Remote
Endpoint is a real estate fintech company that handles property closing processes and transactions. The Endpoint Platform brings together the buyer, seller and both parties’ agents so that everyone can view and sign digital title documents and securely transfer escrow funds in one transparent location. Endpoint also offers the Jot signing platform for fast and easy notarization of documents.
Location: New York, New York
Findigs is a digital platform for rental real estate. It uses underwriting technology to serve renters by allowing them to file one set of application documents that are automatically vetted and submitted, then automating the response process. It also serves property owners and managers by providing a verified pool of applicants and eliminating the legwork of chasing documents.
Location: Austin, Texas
Rex operates a network of real estate and real estate-adjacent tech companies under one umbrella. Using an incubate/launch/operate strategy to bring scalable companies to market in the tech and real estate spaces, Rex operates a branded collection of companies that includes OwnProp, a digital market for tokenized real estate; InsurePro for business insurance; PrimePro, a productivity software platform for contractors; and JobCall, an AI assistant for property management.
Location: New York, New York
Mint House is a real estate tech company that has carved out a new model for luxury travel accommodations that sits between hotel and vacation house. With smart-tech powered rental properties in a growing list of major cities, Mint House offers a tech-supported stay that is more home-like than a hotel but more consistent and transparent than short-term rental platforms.
Location: San Francisco, California
Opendoor is an iBuyer that simplifies the home buying and selling process, making it “as easy as buying and selling cars,” according to The New York Times. The company buys houses in cash, typically closing in 10 to 60 days. Then it resells them via the Opendoor app, backing sales with a 90-day guarantee: if the buyer doesn’t like it, the company will buy it back. Currently, Opendoor buys and sells homes in more than 35 cities across the United States.
Location: Austin, Texas
OJO uses AI technology and real estate expertise to improve the home owning process. The company designed a platform for homebuyers, homeowners, real estate professionals and home sellers. Through it, people can track a home’s equity, start searching for homes and connect to local agents.
Mosaic Building Group offers a general contracting tech platform that facilitates scalable home development on a national level. Licensed as a residential general contractor and bearing the tagline “construction as code,” Mosaic works with developers from a project’s start to its finish, beginning with pre-development services like site selection and value engineering, then moving into onboarding and bidding support, construction management and payment, all through the Mosaic Build platform.
TestFit provides automation tech for the building and real estate development industries. Serving architects, developers and contractors, TestFit automates the tedious but necessary aspects of building development, like counting individual units on a blueprint. It also validates building-site math to eliminate human error, and it allows clients to iterate deals with different site variables and building specs.
Location: San Francisco, California
Aalto is an online marketplace that allows sellers to connect with interested buyers. The process works by having users create a home profile, where they can receive insights on profile views and tour requests. Aalto employs licensed advisors, which prevents buyers from paying commission fees, and it only requires buyers to put 1 percent down.
Location: Denver, Colorado
To address the threat of costly vacancies, Nomad is working to protect property owners and their income. The company serves as a marketplace where owners and renters can experience frictionless long-term rental experiences. Nomad helps owners list their homes for sale or rent, and aids in purchasing the right investment property. Renters can receive home assistance, flexible payment, enroll in the credit booster program, 24/7 maintenance coordination, flexible leases and more.
Location: Fully Remote
Rhino is removing some of the financial burdens that come with renting a home by eliminating cash security deposits. Instead of paying a lump sum at the beginning of a lease, the company turns the security deposit into monthly payments. Renters can view their personalized quotes before enrollment too. Ultimately, Rhino’s platform is designed to make housing more affordable.
Location: New York, New York
TheGuarantors makes financial products with the goal of making renting more affordable and accessible. Specifically, the company hopes to make it easier for renters to qualify for a home with Lease Guarantee and Security Deposit Replacements. Renters apply for the services and upon approval, they can purchase the products. The company typically charges 35 to 85 of one month’s rent for a guarantor and a fee for the deposit replacement.
Location: New York, New York
Up&Up aims to transform how renters build financial wealth. The company works with renters by removing security deposits and allowing them to contribute to the Up&Up wallet. From there, renters receive a share of rental profits, allocate a portion of the home’s increased value and make continuous contributions to build their wallet funds. Once a lease contract ends, the wallet can be used to purchase the home, cash out or transfer to another rental property.
Location: New York, New York
VTS’s commercial real estate investment platform helps with four categories: asset and investment strategies, online leasing, tenant experiences and digital marketing. Each category harnesses real-time first-party data that helps fuel investments. VTS Platform can be used by agency brokers, landlords and tenant representatives.
Location: New York, New York
The Rockport Group offers a product suite for the commercial real estate industry. Banks, funds and other organizations utilize its platforms for asset management, debt and equity solutions and lending client analysis. The company has five products within the product suite that are tailored to various lenders and business owners.
Location: New York, New York
Truehold is introducing sale-leasebacks (the process of selling a home without moving) to homeowners so there is no financial burden to keep their homes. The company uses the process to grant homeowners access to the home’s equity, property upkeep, home concierge and other resident perks like discounted meal deliveries. Overall, Truehold hopes sale-leaseback can help homeowners live healthier and wealthier lifestyles as they get older.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Redfin is an online platform that allows users to find and post listings for rentals and homes for sale. The platform allows users to filter options by offering landing pages for listings by state, city and listing type. The company’s website also features a mortgage comparison tool that allows prospective homebuyers to enter a desired location, home price and down payment to see the rates of different loan companies.
Location: Austin, Texas
AptAmigo is an Apartment Locator service building a better way to match people with their dream apartments. Operating throughout seven U.S. cities, AptAmigo’s process begins with 1-on-1 support from a local apartment expert. Prospective renters describe their perfect apartment, which the AptAmigo team then turns into a curated list of apartments located throughout their city. From there, AptAmigo provides a personal Touring Agent who helps renters tour each apartment and even follows up to help complete the application process, eliminating stress while landing more people their dream apartment.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Although Zillow’s Zestimate tool is one of its most popular features, the platform also offers users options to search for real estate for sale and for rent as well as offering its own home loan service. The platform also allows users to find local real estate agents, list rentals and sell homes directly through a Zillow agent or post a listing for free for homeowners selling their own homes.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Knock is another iBuyer, but it doesn’t just buy houses in cash — the company helps sellers use that cash to make offers on their dream homes. Sellers can move into their new house before their old house goes on the market. Knock handles all repairs and updates on their old house, too, bundling repair costs into the client’s new mortgage.
Location: New York, New York
The real estate industry has seen a rise in AVMs, but Bowery Valuation hasn’t fully automated its process. Instead, the company’s team of veteran appraisers works with its proprietary software to produce data-backed estimates informed by expert intuition. The hybrid process has attracted high-profile clients like Capital One and Greystone.
Location: San Francisco, California
Rentberry streamlines renting through its online platform, which operates in more than 50 countries and has listings in cities like Paris, Rome, Budapest and more remote locations. Through the site, renters share personal information, eSign leases and submit repair requests. In addition, Rentberry offers transparent rental negotiations that prevent vacancies and keep rents from needlessly ballooning.
Location: Chandler, Arizona
Selling a house through Offerpad starts with a simple form. What’s your address? Got any pictures of your house? Based on those details, the company algorithmically generates a quote, sight unseen. Before buying a house, though, they send a representative to verify its condition.
“We seek to provide an offer where the homeowner will net an amount very similar to what they would net in a traditional transaction,” co-founder Jerry Coleman told Forbes, “with our margin being what would be paid to other third parties” — including contractors and plumbers.
Location: New York, New York
Squarefoot matches companies like Casper and Instacart with office space — a task that’s more complex than it sounds. First, company leadership needs to sort out what they need. SquareFoot has online tools to help: the Space Calculator, for example, helps estimate the square footage required based on the number of employees a company has, how many private offices it wants, etc. Once clients have a specific space in mind, SquareFoot brokers can help track it down in New York and New Jersey.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Flyhomes clients don’t have to line up a lender before making an offer on a home. Instead, this real estate company fronts clients the money they need. Once the seller accepts, the buyer then tracks down a lender and purchases the home from Flyhomes. On the seller's side, Flyhomes offers a compelling guarantee: its team will spruce up and sell a client home in 180 days, or the company will buy the home itself.
Location: New York, New York
Is WeWork a real estate company or a tech company? It’s a mix of both, renting out offices and co-working spaces in cities across the world. In many ways, it functions as a landlord. Its leaders, however, position it as a tech company that has scaled quickly thanks to its digital platform. Technology certainly plays a role in its business; clients can network and reserve conference rooms through the WeWork app.
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Neighborhoods.com is an online search platform that allows prospective homebuyers to search for homes for sale. The platform aims to help buyers understand the neighborhood a home is located in by providing school, walkability and local business data. The website allows users to create a profile and save homes, and entire neighborhoods, that they like. The company is also the parent of 55places.com, a real estate website specializing in retirement communities and offering mortgage options for buyers over the age of 62.
Location: San Francisco, California
Trulia is an online platform that allows users to see homes for rent and for sale The company also features a neighborhoods platform that showcases resident reviews, photos and comments. Trulia also offers tools to make finding a mortgage more streamlined, such as an affordability, mortgage and refinance calculators.
