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Real Brokerage CEO Tamir Poleg believes an in-the-works, consumer-facing app his brokerage is developing will dramatically alter the process of buying and selling a home and elevate the company’s reputation to more of a tech company than a traditional real estate brokerage.
“Once we launch that consumer-facing app people will no longer compare us to other brokerages, they will probably place us head to head with companies like Zillow,” Poleg said during remarks at the Needham Technology and Media Conference in New York City on Wednesday. “From my perspective, right now in the real estate space because technology hasn’t matured enough there is an opportunity to create the most valuable real estate tech company in the world — and this is what we’re aiming [for.]”
Poleg says the app, which he did not name but said he expects to launch in one to two years, will turn the homebuying experience into a seamless process by taking the three main building blocks of the transaction: Brokerage services, mortgage and title and integrating them into one product.
“What [consumers] actually want is a home, but what our industry delivers to them right now is a set of requirements and tasks that may result in owning a home in two or three months from now,” Poleg said. “This entire process can be dramatically improved.”
According to Poleg, consumers who come to the Real Brokerage will download the app, which will then ask a series of questions about the type of homes they would like and their financial situations. Within minutes, Poleg claims the app will tell consumers what kind of mortgages the company can offer them and show them a selection of homes they can see and schedule tours through the app. If they tour a home that they like, they can submit an offer through a Real Brokerage agent.
“From that moment on, you will not hear about us,” Poleg said. “You have a 100 percent guarantee that we will close on this home — you actually dictate the closing date — and from now on you can just focus on the fun part of buying a home versus spending two months going back and forth with different stakeholders and then eventually the lender will be able to tell you if you can close or not.”
“We think this is the future of real estate,” he added.
The Real Brokerage announced earlier in May the launch of “Leo” its GPT-powered AI assistant for agents that can do things, such as draft contracts and answer questions about current and past transactions.
Poleg said he sees artificial intelligence as having the ability to make agents’ jobs easier but not replace agents altogether.
“It will help our agents become much better, much more efficient and have AI replace many of the tasks that agents are doing,” he said. “But we don’t want to replace the agents, we actually want to harness the power of AI to help our agents grow their businesses.”
In March, Real raised agent fees to offset $20 million in losses. It cranked up the fee for incoming agents to $249 (up from $149) and is raising its annual brokerage fee from $500 to $750, among other changes to its model of sharing revenue with agents. The details were first reported by The Real Deal.
The brokerage, which operates in the United States and Canada and surpassed 7,000 agents during 2022, is publicly traded under the ticker “REAX.”
