Real Estate Technology, Mortgage and Lending
PRnewswire | August 01, 2023
Clever Real Estate, the fast-growing real estate technology company, has launched Clever Pro, a new all-in-one solution that empowers mortgage lenders to drive higher profits and provide more value to borrowers.
Clever Pro will initially consist of five fully-integrated products that deliver the data, insights, and relationships lenders need to maximize performance and drive sustainable growth:
Pro Convert helps lenders boost conversion rates with less work and no added cost. Clever matches borrowers with top 1% Realtors from its industry-leading network of 19,000 agents. Clever's Lender-Certified Agents work with the loan officer to deliver a superior customer experience, increasing close rates and revenue per lead.
Pro Connect gives lenders more control over their entire pipeline. Clever captures real-time status updates and feedback from all parties so loan officers are more efficient and responsive. This information is prioritized in Clever's Loan Officer Portal and the lender's CRM, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Pro Search lets borrowers browse homes, get listing alerts, and schedule viewings entirely within the lender's branded ecosystem. This gives loan officers better visibility while keeping them, and their key value props, top of mind for clients across their home shopping journey.
Pro Insights surfaces real-time loan officer performance data to help teams identify what's working and what needs to improve. Fully-configurable dashboards let lenders monitor KPIs in real-time for better campaign forecasting, as well as targeted sales coaching and lead routing.
Pro Amplify turns every win into high-impact marketing collateral that helps lenders generate more business. Every closing and piece of positive feedback is repackaged into personalized (and compliant) content loan officers can share on social media to boost their brand.
"Our team has built something truly groundbreaking," said Tony Chahal, SVP of Clever Pro. "Clever Pro solves so many longstanding problems for lenders that hinder profitability and growth. We're giving them trusted partners in every market nationwide, plus technology to manage the entire buyer journey, all within a single unified ecosystem. And we're just getting started — more features are already on the way!"
Clever Pro arrives hot on the heels of Clever's latest funding round, in which it raised an additional $2 million from strategic investors, including Cultivation Capital, EssentVentures LLC, and real estate tech strategist Mike DelPrete. Clever was recently named the number-one real estate company on Trustpilot and one of the fastest-growing companies in the Midwest by Inc.com.
About Clever Real Estate
Clever's educational real estate content reaches over 10 million readers annually, and its nationwide agent matching service has a 5.0-star Trustpilot rating across 2,300+ customer reviews. Since launching in 2017, Clever has reached $8.5 billion in real estate sold, matched 100,000+ customers with realtors, and saved consumers over $150 million on commission fees. Clever hit profitability (and new record sales) in May 2023.
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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 Advice
PRnewswire | August 16, 2023
Zenerate ,an innovative AI startup in the Proptech space, has entered into a strategic partnership with SoLa Impact ,the leading private real estate developer of affordable housing in California. Zenerate has developed a powerful platform that employs generative design, artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics to optimize the feasibility analysis process for real estate projects, reducing turnaround time and maximizing development returns.
In a groundbreaking move to revolutionize the affordable housing sector, SoLa Impact has partnered with Zenerate, to streamline and automate the feasibility analysis process for their affordable and modular housing developments. The collaboration brings cutting-edge AI technology to the modular construction industry and dramatically accelerates the speed of planning, configuration, design, and the permit approval process for a wide range of SoLa's affording housing projects.
SoLa Impact has been at the forefront of addressing the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles over the last decade, consistently demonstrating its commitment to creating sustainable, community-focused housing solutions. SoLa currently has over 35 projects with almost 3,000 units at various stages of construction, the majority of which are dedicated to affordable housing. With the increasing demand in the affordable segment, the need for swift and accurate feasibility, configuration, and design analysis has become paramount in the real estate development landscape.
Martin Muoto, the Founder and CEO of SoLa Impact, expressed enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, "We are thrilled to collaborate with Zenerate in our mission to dramatically scale the development and delivery of high-quality affordable housing in California. By leveraging Zenerate's cutting-edge technology combined with our proprietary standardization processes, we can bring significantly more units to market more cost-effectively and more quickly, with the vast majority of our projects to house people that are currently homeless and living in tents. Equally important, these are units that are an order-of-magnitude more energy efficient than the aging housing stock they are replacing. All units are fully electric, use water-efficient fixtures, and have ENERGY STAR-certified appliances, dramatically reducing GHG emissions while providing cost savings to California's low-income Black and brown communities."
The integration of Zenerate's software into SoLa Impact's modular operations will facilitate data-driven decision-making, allowing for a more efficient and comprehensive evaluation of potential development sites, construction costs, and market demand. By automating the feasibility and design analysis, SoLa Impact's team will be able to evaluate more sites, repurpose vacant and sub-optimized locations, and build for maximum density and affordability.
The Co-Founder and CEO of Zenerate, Benji Shin, echoed Muoto's sentiments, emphasizing Zenerate's commitment to providing housing more quickly and affordably by leveraging Artificial Intelligence, particularly expert systems for code compliance and machine learning for rapid massing, configuration, and design. "We are thrilled to partner with SoLa Impact, whose deep commitment to creating sustainable, scalable, and affordable housing aligns perfectly with our mission. By automating key parts of the feasibility, configuration, and eventually, the permitting process, we aim to enable developers to run thousands of financial and design scenarios instantly, ultimately contributing to the advancement of affordable housing initiatives."
The innovative approach undertaken by SoLa Impact and Zenerate is expected to have a significant impact on the speed and scale of affordable housing development in California, starting in Los Angeles – the largest affordable housing market in the United States with the most acute homeless problem – and then expanding to other local municipalities, and eventually, other states.
About SoLa Impact
SoLa Impact is a family of real estate funds with a double bottom line strategy focused on preserving, rehabbing, and building high-quality affordable housing in low- and moderate-income communities. SoLa's proven track record leverages data-driven social impact strategies to deliver superior financial returns. SoLa Impact's fourth fund, the Black Impact Fund, has invested $1 billion in affordable housing in Southern California. SoLa Impact was ranked as the 7th fastest-growing minority-led private company by Inc. 500 and was awarded the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) Emerging Manager ESG Award for SoLa's demonstrated ability to deliver on its commitment to positive changes in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters.
AboutZenerate
Zenerate, a member company of Born2Gl obal Centre, is a venture-backed innovative AI startup in the real estate development space, providing consulting services and web-based products for feasibility studies; Z-maps is a real estate development map that weekly updates all the latest projects in Southern California, and Zenerate App is a design automation tool that generates development scenarios with floor plans in real time for feasibility studies.
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