Real Estate Technology
Flyhomes | September 12, 2023
Flyhomes, creator of the world’s best home buying and selling experience, has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase certain assets from Innovative Holdings, LLC, doing business as Home Sale Assured, a leader in the field of ‘buy before you sell.’ Founded in early 2022 by Eric Meadow, Home Sale Assured’s flagship product is the Guaranteed Backup Contract, which empowers existing homeowners to buy their next home before closing on the sale of their current one. As part of the deal, Flyhomes will be acquiring the Home Sale Assured brand, and Meadow will be joining Flyhomes in a senior executive capacity where he’ll report to EVP of Mortgage & Closing, Dan Richards.
“Eric is a seasoned mortgage professional who has built something really special with the Guaranteed Backup Contract,” said Tushar Garg, co-founder and CEO at Flyhomes. “Its ability to remove friction from the buying and selling process, while adding assurance, flexibility, and customer-centricity, aligns perfectly with our core tenants here at Flyhomes. This deal strengthens our offerings and gives us more tools to serve more customers looking for a better way to buy and sell a home.”
Following the close of the deal, lender and realtor partners will be able to continue offering their customers access to the Guaranteed Backup Contract through the Home Sale Assured brand at Flyhomes. Understanding the importance of the customer-agent relationship, Guaranteed Backup Contract was designed to enhance the role of real estate agents and lenders. This ensures everyone moves in unison toward the common goals of seamlessly transitioning the customer into their new home and selling their prior home for maximum value.
“We’re thrilled to be adding Eric and the Home Sale Assured brand to the Flyhomes family of products,” said Dan Richards, EVP of Mortgage & Closing at Flyhomes. “Eric brings 25 years of mortgage industry experience, from his time as President of Celebrity Home Loans (at the time a national multi-billion dollar retail lender) to his recent success as an entrepreneur at Home Sale Assured. His deep operational knowledge and network of relationships will play a key role in extending our portfolio of products nationwide.”
“It’s an honor to be joining Flyhomes at such a critical point in residential real estate,” said Eric Meadow, CEO and founder of Home Sale Assured. “There remain far too many obstacles to home ownership these days, be it first-time home buyers, or in the case of Home Sale Assured, current homeowners trying to move. Consumers, agents and lenders are all looking for practical solutions to overcome these institutional challenges and Flyhomes has been at the forefront of this category. I’m ecstatic to now be able to leverage their advanced infrastructure and resources to bring the Guaranteed Backup Contract to more customers.”
Benefits of the Guaranteed Backup Contract:
With a valid purchase offer, a lender is able to apply standard agency guidelines to remove the departing debt obligation from the consumer’s debt to income ratio. Thus allowing the lender to approve the loan on the new home before the consumer closes on the sale of their prior home.
The consumer is able to close on and move into their new home and take up to 90 days to close on the sale of their prior home.
The consumer can work with a real estate agent to list their prior home for sale during this 90-day option period. If the consumer receives a better offer, they can cancel the Guaranteed Backup Contract and sell their home to the higher offer.
About Flyhomes
Flyhomes is building the world’s best homebuying and selling experience. Launched in 2016, Flyhomes has reinvented the homebuying and selling process at every step, making the process smoother and simpler for consumers with offerings like the Flyhomes Cash Offer and Buy Before You Sell. They back these services with a unique guarantee that gives both buyers and sellers certainty and peace of mind that is unheard of in real estate. To date, they’ve helped clients close on more than $6 billion worth of homes at prices ranging from $150,000 to $7 million.
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Real Estate Technology, Real Estate Investment
PRnewswire | July 12, 2023
Covius, a leading provider of technology-enabled solutions to the financial services industry, announced today that its Settlement Services division has introduced a new home equity decisioning solution that significantly accelerates the origination process and gives lenders early insight into property and/or borrower issues that could expedite or delay decisions.
The Covius Home Equity Solution will allow bank and credit union clients to offer a streamlined origination experience to their home equity customers. For example, title and tax reports that used to take 3 or more days are now delivered in hours on a majority of loans, enabling closings to occur in as fast as 5 days, as opposed to the industry average of 20-plus days.
The new solution also features Covius Loanscape, a separate point-of-sale component for lenders that provides critical property and consumer insights in fewer than 45 seconds. This report reveals title, valuation and credit information that enhances a lender's loan origination workflow, coupled with expedited decisioning and abbreviated closing timelines.
The Covius Home Equity Solution is fueled by Flueid's leading title data and decisioning platform, Flueid Decision, as an expansion of the companies' integration announced in February 2023.
Joe Chappell, Executive Vice President of Operations at Covius, said, "The demand for home equity products is extremely strong, but the competition for this business is intense. Our new solution[s] enable clients to differentiate themselves by delivering a modern, streamlined customer experience, beginning at point-of-sale and continuing throughout the underwriting and closing processes.
"In seconds, Covius Loanscape allows lenders to determine if the loan qualifies for an expedited clear-to-close. Sharing this information at the point of sale empowers lenders to set borrower expectations more accurately, better prioritize orders and improve overall pipeline performance. Likewise, lenders will know that a lead on a property will not meet criteria before ordering full credit, valuation or other third-party products, and having underwriters spend days on an application that will be declined. This is especially valuable with home equity origination, where many costs are absorbed by the lender."
About Covius
Covius is a trusted provider of services, insight and technology to leading financial companies. Covius' technology-enabled solutions deliver operational efficiencies, mitigate risk and empower compliant decisions and borrower interactions. Covius businesses are recognized leaders in loss mitigation, document and data solutions, title and settlement services, compliance and critical borrower communications, lien release tracking and preparation, HOA tracking, quality assurance, REO asset management and auction services, credit reporting and verification, capital markets due diligence and oversight, insurance policy analysis as well as rapid-development, customizable cloud-based business process solutions. The company was named a 2023 HousingWire Tech100 winner. For more information about the company and its services, visit www.covius.com.
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Real Estate Investment
PRnewswire | August 08, 2023
Modwell, the design technology company transforming how the $4 trillion dollar global realty market buys, sells and lists properties, and Christie's International Real Estate, today announced a first-of-its kind partnership that will provide top agents of the world's leading high-value real estate brand with access to its game-changing suite of real estate listings solutions.
The partnership between the two companies will give 50 of Christie's International Real Estate's Masters Circle agents – the highest grossing agents across the brand's U.S. network – the ability to leverage Modwell's proprietary and patented tech-based design platform in order to showcase home listings in an unprecedented, modernized fashion, drive sales and help future buyers envision the full potential of any home, apartment or property lot. The Modwell infrastructure is even flexible enough to accommodate developer-ready parcels.
Specifically, these Christie's International Real Estate Masters Circle agents, representing 39 luxury markets across at least 15 states, will be able to access Modwell's suite of solutions including:
Enhanced Listings. Which takes an existing property and applies 3D scanning and modeling technology in order to reimagine and fully realize the untapped design potential of any property's interior and exterior. From there, agents will be able to share design exhibits via their own user profile directly to their network of clients in order to sell more, faster.
Next Gen 3D Showrooms. Modwell's virtual "warehouse" that curates a highly individual aggregated listings experience for real-estate professionals and their organizations. These digital showrooms are designed so that agents can showcase featured properties and attach their personal showrooms to Modwell's larger Masterbrand Showroom.
Consumer Home Vaults. Created to supercharge referrals (which make up 82% of agent revenues in the U.S.), this interactive solution gives agents an opportunity to maintain more meaningful relationships with their clients over the lifetime of their home ownership. Clients are invited onto Modwell's platform in order to fully document their home by uploading their surveys, floor plans, 3D models and more into a purpose-built design hub.
"We're thrilled to be able to work with an esteemed brand like Christie's International Real Estate. Technology has enabled consumers to change how they live their lives – from how they communicate, to what, when and how they connect with content, to how they purchase goods and services. While home buying should be no different, and 97% of consumers use online tools when buying a home, listings have remained legacy based. Modwell is changing that paradigm through advanced technology and we're excited that Christie's International Real Estate's top agents will be able to leverage our platform in a way we think will help them sell more," said Jonathan Reisman, Co-Founder, Modwell.
"Christie's International Real Estate has a rich and storied history as a market leader and a lot of that has to do with continually giving our agents innovative ways to engage with potential clients. Our program with Modwell continues that high standard and we're excited to get their technology into the hands of our top agents in order to drive a more efficient and interactive process," said Thad Wong, co-CEO of Christie's International Real Estate.
In under a year, Modwell has disrupted an industry stuck in legacy models, creating the highest fidelity 3D technology to power a better overall real estate experience for both buyers and sellers across a varied array of industry verticals and segments.
The company was selected for the prestigious Moderne Ventures' Passport Program, a six-month industry immersion program that catalyzes the growth of its companies by offering its participants education, mentorship, and pilot opportunities with new customers via access and exposure to Moderne's Network of real estate – and real estate adjacent – industry leaders. The program is highly selective with the Moderne Ventures team evaluating over 4,500 companies a year, but selecting on average 6 to 10 companies per class. In February, the company's technology was prominently featured in the Bravo hit "Million Dollar Listings'' and, more recently, it provided the technology behind a prominent Robb Report listing and article.
About Christie's International Real Estate
Christie's International Real Estate has successfully marketed high-value real estate around the world for more than 30 years. Through its invitation-only Affiliate network spanning nearly 50 countries and territories, Christie's International Real Estate offers incomparable services to a global clientele at the luxury end of the residential property market.
About Modwell
Modwell is a design tech company whose first-of-its-kind collaborative platform and tools empower agents and buyers to modernize their real estate experience. While other industries have evolved to match our 21st century lifestyles and preferences, real estate has stayed relatively the same. Modwell was founded in 2020 by architecture and marketing veterans who not only set out to close that gap but who have a clear vision for where real estate is going as the world embraces virtual realities.
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