Two real estate technology-focused companies have teamed up to create an automated valuation model, or AVM, that combines assessor property records and multiple listing service data, so that real estate professionals can offer home valuations to consumers through their Web sites, the companies announced today.
Florida-based Visient Inc. and Denver-based IntelliReal entered an agreement to create the service and make it available to real estate brokers and agents to display on their Web sites.
By combining property records and MLS data, the companies aim to create home valuations that include neighborhood “trended” values, price-per-square-foot values and graphical comparative market analysis (CMA) reporting. The valuations would be available to consumers through broker and agent Web sites.
New market entrants such as Zillow and HomeSmartReports are offering home-valuation services direct to consumers, and the new valuation tool from Visient and IntelliReal aims to help brokers and agents compete with these services.
Visient’s new product, “Your Home Valuation,” initially will be available in the Florida Gulf Coast, Denver and Pittsburgh, Pa., and will expand to more markets nationwide in coming months, the company said.
“Brokers are increasingly concerned with firms who are ‘fishing upstream’ to capture first-touch with the consumer,” said Visient CEO Ira Luntz. “Using IntelliReal’s technology, we believe we have a much better mousetrap. By simply providing a consumer with a very accurate and current house valuation, for free, I might add, we are confident that Your Home Valuation will drive Web traffic directly back to brokers and agents.”
According to Kevin Lawry, chief technology officer at Visient, implementation of the new valuation tool is relatively easy, and can be installed on most Web sites by inserting a single line of code.
“Consumers are becoming more sophisticated and demanding new levels of intelligence on their home — which is most often their largest single investment. Consumers expect their broker to provide values, trends, and neighborhood details that are accurate and immediate,” said Ric Miles, CEO of IntelliReal.
