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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 6 July 2024 M T E C H of funding to loan originators and stan- dardization to loan buyers," said Michael Tannenbaum, CEO of Figure. "Figure Connect displaces legacy lending infrastructure and processes, without the burden of multiple interme- diary parties at the end user's expense, and lays the foundation for a permanently liquid marketplace," added Mike Cagney, Executive Chairman of Figure. Figure Connect's initial partners include The Loan Store, Movement Mortgage, Bayview Asset Management, and Saluda Grade. The Figure Connect marketplace is now available to all other participants in Figure's lending ecosystem. "We are thrilled to be one of the first partners to have access to this pioneering marketplace, which we expect will ensure liquidity, optimize pricing, and provide unrivaled transparency, significantly benefiting our business. Figure continues to offer us more and more reasons to work with them," said Phil Shoemaker, CEO of The Loan Store. FLYHOMES LAUNCHES WORLD'S FIRST AI-POWERED HOME SEARCH PORTAL F lyhomes has announced that 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 that brings the first true con- versational 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 CTO and Chief Growth Officer, 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 17, 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 buyer's agent, limiting their access to critical infor- mation. This will create massive friction in the market, and luckily AI is reaching tech- nical 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. This dataset allows consumers to ask many of the questions they would ask a local real estate agent. They can get nu- anced 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?" "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 "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." —Tushar Garg, Co-Founder and CEO, Flyhomes