Real Estate Technology, Real Estate Investment
PRnewswire | June 29, 2023
Reggora, an appraisal management software company that is modernizing residential real estate valuation for mortgage lenders, announced today the launch of its appraisal review solution, Reggora Appraisal Review. This innovative software is set to transform the appraisal analysis process for mortgage lenders by significantly reducing repurchase risk and ensuring every appraisal meets the correct quality standards.
Reggora Appraisal Review leverages cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to automate and streamline the appraisal review workflow. With its advanced natural language processing capabilities, the software swiftly analyzes appraisal reports, identifies key data points, inconsistencies, and potential red flags.
For example, the solution uses advanced AI technology to detect bias in reports far more accurately than lexicon-based tools — so underwriters remain confident in the objectivity of their appraisals, without wasting time reviewing false positives. For instance, consider a report that mentions a property located in the city of "Race Point Beach." While the term "Race" would trigger a keyword-based bias detection tool, Reggora's AI-powered algorithm can discern the context and understand that it is simply the name of the city. By analyzing the report's language, tone, and content comprehensively, AI ensures that lenders can swiftly identify genuine instances of bias, avoiding unnecessary scrutiny and enabling them to focus their review efforts on reports that truly require attention.
With this groundbreaking solution, manual appraisal review becomes far more efficient. Reggora Appraisal Review significantly reduces human error, enhances efficiency, and ensures accuracy. By thoughtfully automating the review process, mortgage professionals can expedite their review cycles, reducing turnaround times and accelerating the loan origination process.
One of the critical features of Reggora Appraisal Review is its ability to reduce repurchase risk. By customizing rule sets and quality control checks, mortgage lenders can align their appraisal review processes with industry regulations, investor guidelines, and internal policies. This comprehensive compliance and risk mitigation capability empowers mortgage professionals to mitigate costly repurchase demands, protecting their financial stability and reputation.
Seamless integration with existing loan origination systems further enhances operational productivity. The user-friendly interface allows users to effortlessly navigate through appraisal reports, highlight critical information, and annotate directly on the documents. Comprehensive audit trails ensure transparency and facilitate collaboration between stakeholders.
"Reggora Appraisal Review represents a significant step forward in the mortgage industry," said Brian Zitin, CEO of Reggora. "We are committed to empowering mortgage professionals with cutting-edge technology that drives efficiency, reduces risk, and ultimately allows them to originate loans much faster."
This all-new review solution accompanies Reggora's existing suite of integrations with leading third-party review tools.
Reggora Appraisal Review caters to the unique needs of diverse stakeholders, providing customizable features that can be tailored to individual business requirements. Whether a small regional lender or a large national lender, this software offers a flexible and scalable solution.
About Reggora
Reggora is driving appraisal innovation with a modern, two-sided platform for mortgage lenders and appraisal vendors. Through advanced and configurable workflows, Reggora streamlines the entire appraisal process for everyone involved, while improving the overall borrower experience. Lenders and appraisers benefit from payment processing, automatic appraisal ordering, rule-based reviews, appraisal delivery, status updates, and more, creating unprecedented operational efficiency.
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Real Estate Technology
Globenewswire | August 14, 2023
Tango, a leading provider of cloud-based real estate and facilities management software, today announced it has acquired WatchWire, an industry leader in data and analytics that helps companies reduce emissions and energy expenses while simplifying sustainability and carbon reporting. The transaction further extends Tango’s position as a global leader in the real estate and facilities management space, enabling companies to meet their energy management and sustainability goals. WatchWire’s leadership team will join Tango to continue developing and progressing these key capabilities. Financial terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.
“Faced with a rapidly changing macro and regulatory environment, active sustainability and energy management has become essential to long-term organizational success,” said Pranav Tyagi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tango. “Tango has a longstanding reputation for solving the complex, location-based compliance and reporting needs of our customers, as well as helping companies effectively manage and control occupancy costs. With the addition of WatchWire, we will provide customers information that arms them to understand their environmental impact and deliver on energy and sustainability management initiatives.”
Founded in 2000 and based in New York City, WatchWire provides the deepest and most comprehensive integrated energy management and sustainability platform in the industry, enabling companies to automate the collection and validation of sustainability and energy related data. Its solutions then operationalize the data for reporting, compliance and identifying additional opportunities to meet environmental, energy and climate targets. The combined business will serve over 500 customers in more than 140 countries from its primary offices in Dallas and New York.
A strong relationship between owners and the users of real estate is critical to ensuring accurate, active tracking and reporting on energy and sustainability. Tango brings considerable experience to the establishment and management of that relationship through its work in transaction management, lease management and facilities maintenance, and will help bridge the communication gap between owners and operators to address their joint energy and sustainability management requirements and deliver on decarbonization objectives.
“We are excited to be joining the preeminent real estate and facilities management solution in the industry,” said Andy Anderson, CEO of WatchWire. “Combining the vast amount of validated energy data available in the WatchWire platform with Tango’s real estate and facilities management capabilities will enable companies to support the accurate tracking and reporting that customers require, and operationalize insights about how to lower costs and improve sustainability. WatchWire customers will also benefit from the end-to-end real estate and facilities solution that Tango offers.”
“Since our initial investment in Tango, we have been focused on adding a sustainability and energy reporting capability, as these offerings will help Tango extend its leadership position in the real estate management software market,” said Jon Nuger, a Managing Director at Berkshire Partners, which made a growth investment in Tango in 2021. “We are excited to partner with Pranav and the management team as they harness Tango’s and WatchWire’s combined capabilities to empower organizations to improve energy efficiency, enhance sustainability and reduce cost.”
Harris Williams acted as exclusive financial advisor to Tango and Berkshire Partners on the acquisition of WatchWire. GrowthPoint Technology Partners, a San Francisco-based technology investment bank, acted as exclusive financial advisor to WatchWire.
About Tango
With hundreds of customers across more than 140 countries, Tango is the leader in Store Lifecycle Management and Integrated Workplace Management System software, delivering a single solution spanning real estate, design & construction, lease administration & accounting, facilities, desk booking, visitor and space management.
About WatchWire
WatchWire is a sustainability and energy management software-as-a-service provider. Across the globe, WatchWire helps commercial and corporate real estate portfolios, Fortune 500 industrial/manufacturing and big-box retail companies and government, healthcare, and educational facilities reduce emissions and expenses while simplifying sustainability and carbon reporting.
About Berkshire Partners
Berkshire Partners is a 100% employee-owned, multi-sector specialist investor in private and public equity. The firm’s private equity team invests in well-positioned, growing companies across technology & communications, consumer, healthcare, and services & industrials. Since inception, Berkshire Partners has made more than 150 private equity investments and has a strong history of collaborating with management teams to grow the companies in which it invests. The firm's public equity group, Stockbridge, founded in 2007, manages a concentrated portfolio seeking attractive long-term investments. The firm’s Stockbridge and Private Equity teams frequently collaborate and leverage their collective industry expertise across sectors.
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Real Estate Technology, Mortgage and Lending
PRnewswire | July 26, 2023
FirstClose™, Inc., a leading fintech provider of data and workflow solutions for mortgage and home equity lenders nationwide, announced today that its home equity settlement services ordering module within FirstClose Equity is now integrated with Calyx Software's Point® loan origination system.
Through the integration, Point users can seamlessly originate HELOCs and home equity loans within their LOS and complete the application through the closing process faster than the industry average of 45 to 60 days. FirstClose's one-of-a-kind home equity solution reduces operational touchpoints to elevate the overall customer experience for borrowers. It also enables lenders to automate data collection, verification, and settlement services ordering.
FirstClose's order management module is currently used by more than 200 lenders nationwide to automate back-office manual processes. FirstClose's one-click ordering technology with the ability to modify settlement providers will enable Calyx Point lenders to reduce risk, grow their overall business, and position themselves better for continued growth and success in this surging home equity market.
"As a customer-first company, we are always looking to offer our lenders access to like-minded companies that provide simple solutions to real-world challenges our customers face," said Juan Villegas, Director of National Sales at Calyx Software. "We're proud to be integrated with FirstClose and to be able to help our clients streamline their home equity lending operations."
"Mortgage rates are rising; homeowners are staying in their homes longer and they are in a much better financial position than ever before. All these pieces point to HELOCs and HELs as the right products for the times," said Tedd Smith, Chief Executive Officer at FirstClose. "Having our order management module within Point will give Calyx users a simple and efficient way to capitalize on this growing market opportunity and stand out amongst the crowd by offering a significantly enhanced customer experience."
About Calyx
Calyx® is an established provider of compliant mortgage software solutions used by banks, credit unions, mortgage lenders, and brokerages nationwide. The company's easy-to-use technology, including its online borrower interview, loan origination systems and secure electronic signature software, is designed to streamline, integrate and optimize all phases of the loan process for customers of various sizes, workflows, channels and complexities. Combined with its extensive network of integrated partners, Calyx products deliver a true digital mortgage solution that maximizes profitability and enhances the customer experience.
About FirstClose
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, FirstClose, Inc. provides fintech solutions to HELOC and mortgage lenders nationwide. The company's mission is to increase profitability and reduce cost for mortgage lenders. FirstClose makes this possible through offering systems and relationships that enable lenders to assist the lender's borrowers more effectively, reduce closing costs, and ultimately shorten closing times.
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