Digital real estate closing platform Qualia has released a new application programming interface (API) aimed at helping real estate companies and proptechs scale their digital title operations.
The Qualia API provides a flexible set of “pull and push” API capabilities allowing companies to securely access their data from Qualia’s Core and Connect title, escrow and closing solutions and create custom reporting and integrations with other in-house systems.
Users can automatically place and track title orders and access order, accounting and contact data to build custom notifications and performance dashboards. For businesses without internal title operations, the API provides direct access to a national network of technology-enabled independent title agents.
Mary Pappas
“We think about Qualia as an extension of the Redfin ecosystem and that’s not possible without the Qualia API,” said Redfin’s Mary Pappas in a statement. “With the Qualia API, we don’t have to spend tens of millions of dollars in R&D to build out ways to streamline our title and escrow experience.”
Last month, Qualia announced the release of a new mortgage lender edition of Qualia Connect, aimed at providing lenders with “complete control” over collaborations with title, settlement or escrow partners. With integration directly into the mortgage lender’s loan origination system (LOS), Connect can provide “more efficient, predictable and transparent closing experiences for lenders and their borrowers,” eliminating the need to rekey information, chase down the title and dig through emails, the company said.
Nate Baker
“Collaboration between everyone in the closing process remains very manual, inefficient, and unpredictable today,” said Qualia CEO and co-founder Nate Baker in a statement. “We are building products that go beyond just digitizing old processes. Products like Connect work alongside the LOS to reengineer how teams work together in a way that fundamentally transforms how homes are bought and sold.”
Launched in 2015, Qualia claims its digital closing platform is used by over half a million title, escrow, real estate and mortgage professionals. A $65 million Series D raise that valued the company at more than $1 billion in 2020 helped Qualia accelerate its growth by acquiring Adeptive Software, the Colorado-based provider of title and escrow workflow automation platform ResWare.
Qualia kicked off 2021 by announcing a partnership with Realtor.com to give agents who participate in the listing portal’s ReadyConnect Concierge network access to Qualia’s digital title and notarization services. Last summer, the company rolled out a new suite of automated technology to help users automate and secure their work.
While Qualia’s been moving quickly, it has plenty of competition from other companies that offer to help lenders streamline their processes.
Maxwell, a technology startup that’s focused on helping small-to-midsize mortgage lenders streamline their processes, raised $52.5 million in additional Series B funding last year and launched a new solution in December, designed to help lenders employ machine learning to accelerate the document review process.
Mortgage tech provider Blend Labs Inc. says its $422 million acquisition of national title insurance and settlement services provider Title365 is enabling the company to deliver vertically-integrated mortgage and home equity solutions.
Digital title insurance, escrow and closing provider Doma is adapting “instant underwriting” technology it pioneered for mortgage refinancings and applying it to purchase loans taken out by homebuyers as part of the company’s goal to “completely reimagine the residential real estate closing process” using its machine learning platform, Doma Intelligence.
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