Innovation is in our DNA at Inman — that’s why we’re excited about August’s Technology and Innovation Month. We’ll kick it off by celebrating the companies and individuals pushing the industry forward with an expanded slate of Inman Innovator Awards at Inman Connect Las Vegas. Then, we’ll continue to celebrate the brightest minds in real estate all month long.
Eden Homes (Eden), a mobile home search application and buyer agency experience powered by artificial intelligence, has formally launched its beta version in the App Store, Inman has learned through an exclusive press release.
The consumer and agent-facing app provides aspiring home buyers the ability to enter specific, detailed descriptions of home wants, save results, select and be updated to ideal matches, and tour homes on request for simple, affordable fees. Agents can test now and direct clients to it via the App Store.
Eden users can also search in collaboration with their selected agent or choose to access the company’s in-house negotiation, escrow management and showing services for a simple flat rate.
Eden is not a discount brokerage but instead uses its AI to reduce the workload and add value for any agent working with buyers. According to the company, the app’s search capabilities are advanced enough — and its AI so quick-learning — to significantly alleviate the tour burden and hand-holding that has, for too long, challenged buyer agents. The buyer can be granted control of the search without the agent being left out the relationship.
In turn, agents are able to compete for business with affordability, a unique advantage in a market that may soon find buyers having to pay directly for representation in cases where sellers decline to offer a commission that will cover listing broker costs and a buyer agent’s desired fee.
“The industry is at conferences trying to hone their objection handling skills instead of fundamentally trying to lower the cost for consumers with emerging technology,” said Eden CEO and co-founder Stormey Barton, in the release. “Eden’s flat rate services allow the average customer to buy a home at less than 1/5th the cost of a traditional agent.”
Barton may be referring to the wave of coaches, brokers and industry leaders speaking out about the importance of “communicating value” in an effort to earn a paycheck directly from buyer clients, a byproduct of the industry-dominating NAR settlement.
Buyers who engage Eden directly can apply savings to buy down their interest rate, which the company will handle on their behalf.
“This streamlined process results in an average total cost of around $2,000, a significant savings compared to the traditional model’s $15,000 average fee,” the release stated.
The company states its algorithms for nailing a buyer’s home preferences rely in part on in-app user activity signals and reactions to scoring. Eden also automatically reads listing imagery and looks for matches based on favorited home features, such as “lots of land” or “family rooms with vaulted ceilings.” Loved or liked homes are scored and saved accordingly in categorized lists.
Home search solutions using AI are emerging quickly as the technology continues to evolve. At first delivered primarily through chatbots, the growth of LLMs has made it possible for consumers to have more human-like, contextual interactions with a search interface and, in the case of Eden, use it to conduct ongoing market research instead of merely initiating a search.
Lundy uses it to assist the visually impaired by pairing it with verbal input, and LocalizeOS applies it to lead cultivation and business analytics, among other emerging industry examples.
Eden’s leadership comes with diverse industry acumen. Barton co-founded land investment fund Peregine Land alongside Eden partner Noah Pape, a graduate of Stanford’s Mathematical and Computational Sciences program. Luke Mizell, who led business development and launched the tech accelerator program at Keller Williams, and Ben Richards, who was an engineer at Affirm, round out the executive suite.
