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Real estate software platform developer Tribus and Restb.ai, a company that sells software that tags real estate imagery, announced a partnership last week that will incorporate the latter’s products into websites and property search functionality for Tribus customers.
Restb.ai’s software reads property images to identify specific finishes, appliances and other characteristics, which in turn increases overall consumer search accuracy, especially when seeking unique wants and needs, such as “kitchen island” or “vaulted ceilings.”
Tribus builds and sells a wide range of software products to real estate brokerages, including websites, customer relationship management (CRMs), email marketing, transaction management, intranet, lead routing and other digital solutions. Restb.ai’s software will be offered as part of Tribus’ web development services.
Restb.ai-powered property websites can return and sort consumer home searches comparing master bedrooms or bonus rooms, market-wide, regardless of those features being highlighted in text on an MLS description or portal description.
The “computer vision” software makes home searches significantly more transparent for the aspiring buyer.
Generally called “alternative attributes,” descriptions embedded in images can be powerful boosts to SEO efforts, according to Moz.com, as they favor consumer demand for search relevancy.
Tribus customers with websites running Restb.ai’s alt-tagging tools will also be able to serve visually impaired homebuyers with voice-activated search and audible image descriptions, another notable benefit of alt-descriptions.
Katie Ragusa
“When searching for a home online, nothing is more important than the images,” said Katie Ragusa, VP of Product at Tribus. “So, making a search based upon images is something we’ve always wanted to do. With
Restb.ai that’s now possible.”
The practice of using alt-attributes remains esoteric to those not entrenched in online marketing.
More practically speaking, tagging photos individually is often neglected by agents and marketing admins because it requires image-by-image review and data input over thousands of images. It would also require the creation of a uniform naming convention.
Restb.ai partnered with MRED earlier this year to help identify photos that might violate regulations before they publish.
In the press release, Restb.ai CEO and Co-Founder Angel Angel Esteban, said that his company’s software is ideal for a company that builds in-depth property search experiences.
“Never before has a consumer truly been in the driver’s seat of their property search and able to find homes only with an abundance of natural light or a beautiful kitchen island with a dark granite countertop,” he said.
Tribus was founded in 2009 and works with several industry names such as RE/MAX Results and NRT. Restb.ai was founded in Barcelona, Spain, in 2016 and also has an office in Dallas, Texas.
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