Every agent claims to have a rich, profit-generating database, but rarely is that the case. Peel back the most recent layer of wins, and most systems of record are unmaintained, rotting onions of half-completed records and missed deals. RealScout builds products to help its customers’ CRMs bear fruit, and this week the company announced what it’s calling its largest endeavor since launch. And as one might presume, it involves artificial intelligence.
To its credit, RealScout has diligently stuck to its industry promise since its inception. No hard pivots or course corrections; only tools to help win more business. It likes to say it keeps itself on an avenue free from the traffic of trends and the stop-and-go of marketing gimmicks.
Given the live-in-front-of-online-audience weight being applied to the new product’s curtain raiser, it’s reasonable to wonder if RealScout was finally going to announce it’s changing lanes. That was not the case.
The update, AI Search for Pros, was unveiled to “thousands” of customers in a slick, 35-minute live presentation that had all the feel of an Apple product launch without the world domination vibes.
“We have never hosted a webinar this large,” co-founder and CEO Andrew Flachner said as the event started. “You’re getting the very first look, right here, right now, before anyone else, and we believe what you see today represents a meaningful step forward for how our industry searches for real estate.”
Inman’s preview prior to launch
Inman was invited to a rehearsal two days before the show, in which Flachner and Vice President of Engineering Anthony Sosso took turns offering context and company history in a studio environment against a living backdrop of product highlights and supportive arguments for its AI versus what consumers use on portal inputs. There was some clear promotion along the way and professional commercial insert before Flachner described the current state of the AI search world.
The team was tightening terms, honing the talk track, and testing audio to ensure that, come game day on Dec. 4, they weren’t going to fumble. And other than momentary buffering and slight audio hiccups, the event was a success.
There’s something to be said for companies brave enough to put their “largest update since launch” in front of a live customer audience. Recorded webinars are so much easier.
RealScout’s new home search isn’t public-facing; it’s meant for agents working behind the scenes to help their buyers. Part of the intent is to ensure agents can work as quickly as eager, AI-supported consumers.
RealScout thinks consumer-first AI search isn’t as comprehensive or helpful as it can be, largely because results still rely on how MLSs are populated and traditionally searched. Plus, agents still need to manually verify what their customers find on whatever AI search platform being used. As RealScout describes it, its AI solution sits in the middle.
The company made its C-suite available to Inman after the live event, allowing them to explain the context of the product out from under the pressure of having to sneeze on camera or trip over unseen technicalities.
“The entry point into the interface is as simple as it would be for a consumer on Zillow,” Flachner said. “Where it diverges from the simplicity of that is then the agent, as a professional who understands their MLS and understands the MLS criteria, can then go in and they can [quality assess] it. But they can also refine it, expand it and tailor it for their consumer in a way that just doesn’t exist.”
The solution shows its work, to put it simply. It reveals the filters, limits, boundaries, and ground-down minutiae that consumer AI search can’t fully leverage. A consumer talking to Homes.com’s AI isn’t fully informed, as a lot of natural language search is taught to offer results, not full transparency.
RealScout used its live announcement to peel back its own efforts over the last year to ensure users understood how AI search actually functions and is using that information to educate its audience on how to be better at it.
It describes its product’s functionality in three steps, the first being a description of the search in natural language, then an inspection of the criteria using additional data and public remarks for refinement and lastly, executing the search, which can be saved, sent and shared.
RealScout announces AI Search for Pros
When it comes to what consumers or agents use in public-facing AI search, Flachner said, “There’s no way to make adjustments or to refine it. And there’s certainly no way for, like, an agent to use that to, you know, empower their collaboration with their client,” Flachner said.
Sosso told Inman that it’s important for some data to only be accessible to agents, and a good portion of that data is critical for agents to help their clients better know what’s on the market. Agents and the MLS expect and should be afforded that data exclusivity.
“We don’t want clients searching through private remarks,” Sosso said. “They’re private because they’re only accessible to agents. And that’s why we have that data, because we only show that data to agents.”
Seth Price was on the call, too. He’s RealScout’s Chief Marketing Officer and thinks agents’ insights combined with what they’re now offering keeps agents ahead of the consumer-facing contingent of AI search options.
The backend of an MLS is rarely a front-end design museum piece. Visually belabored and commonly tough to navigate, it takes a lot of time — years in many cases — for agents to be able to extract what’s needed to support a search.
“Really good agents got really good at playing with all those dials, all those fields, all those sliders, looking at public remarks and putting in the various terms they’re guessing will show up for pool, or for HOAs,” Price said.
“Our AI allows the agent to get all of that granular detail that isn’t shown on the consumer platforms very easily and then gives them the option to tweak it if they decide to save it, share it,” he said. “Because ideally, they want to show up as the hero, right? And we’re the reason we focus on giving a tool to an agent is that a consumer is not going to do this kind of work.”
Doing AI right at the right time
The team said it would have been too easy to roll out an AI solution of some kind a year or two ago as the technology’s levees started to give. They even admitted to being somewhat skeptical about the early consumer-facing iterations of it.
“We think of ourselves as a B to B to B to C business, right?” Flachner said. “I mean, we sell to agents and then agents use this tool with their clients. I wouldn’t say it’s off the table for us to build some type of consumer interface that has AI integrated into it. But it’s not going to be a pro-grade, pro-level robust, you know, feature set like we revealed today.”
Still, Price said it’s hard for portals to be both fully accurate and consumer-centric. They need to keep people on their sites.
“Because if they had a consumer go to their site and then they saw all the criteria and it took them five minutes to tweak it, and they don’t know the neighborhoods, they don’t know all the terminology and real estate, they would bounce to a different portal, and so you can’t do both at the same time,” he said. “Consumers want an easy button and agents want a differentiator.”
The company’s leadership team admitted in its presentation that AI takes time to get fully right, and they, too, are learning along with it. Another problem with portal search is that consumers assume it’s always spot-on.
“We’re humble enough to admit that this is still a learning process, and we’re going to, you know, get some things wrong and we’re going to refine the product over time,” Flachner said. “We’ve stayed focused on our lane, really, over the last 13 years of building this business … we have our blinders on.”
