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Flika is an AI-based mobile app for consumer home search.
Platforms: iOS; Android
Ideal for: Consumers and agents
Top selling points:
• Simple, swipe-based search experience
• Quick learning of preferences
• In-app chat conversation
• Two-way agent/two-party collaboration
• Auto-generated tour and buyer agency agreement
Top concern(s):
Competition and market awareness.
What you should know
Flika is another consumer-first startup that’s powering into the artificial intelligence-based home search category. Its users swipe right on homes they like, and left on those they don’t. As a home is saved, the app learns what the user prefers, and from there the process becomes more granular. Properties are scored and there’s a chat interface for engaging with the app in a wide array of deal scenarios. Flika is voice-capable, as well.
Agents can be listed on Flika according to market performance using MLS statistics, so it’s not based on a marketing budget. Buyers can find or input an associated agent and are also provided a DocuSign-derived buyer agency agreement to have at the ready, a sharp value-add stemming from recent industry requirements.
The app stands out for its consumer-heavy feel and experience — like it could be as easily helping a person find a new pair of sneakers. The footer menu offers tools for initiating search, finding an agent, reviewing a home wishlist and the AI interface, which includes some samples on how to converse.
The profile icon is straightforward with name and password access, etc., but it’s also where Flika positioned its mortgage partnership pitch, which asks for a separate login. This would annoy me a great deal if I was a live user of the app. I hate having to re-register once already part of a community, so I hope the Flika team finds a way to share login credentials with the mortgage partner. It’s also too upfront and salesy; it’s not integrated with the app and feels a lot like an interruption to the search experience.
The profile section is also where users can create groups for collaborative home searches and conversations around possible listings. Nice.
Mortgage pitch aside, the search experience is what matters, and that’s what I think consumers will adhere to. For those listing agents worried about being second fiddle, fear not. Flika makes it very clear who listed the home. It includes their brokerage, the MLS# and the agent’s number, all below the map view and some basic home data.
Tapping the heart app on the right corner of an image indicates to the AI what you like within each home, and the X icon does the opposite. This is what really drills down into what’s driving a consumer’s choice. They may love the kitchen and deck, but the great room, primary bedroom and small garage are turn-offs.
It’s this app-based, AI-supported granular information that can make home search something agents no longer need to spend six months overseeing. It releases them from the tedium of trying to extrapolate from reticent buyers why one house is great and the other offensive only to see the preferences swap two tours later. Let technology handle it, your value rests in transaction guidance.
The app will be announcing more features soon to address in-app offer submission and document automation. Now, what concerns me a little here is that such features could lead Flika to becoming more of a full-service transaction experience, thus diluting the search experience, relegating it to merely a nice component of a much broader real estate business application.
The beauty of this growing software category, into which I’ll lump Eden, ListAssist and to some extent Mosaik (an app that has a transaction component, too) is that their collective experience starts with the buyer in mind, especially critical in a market that’s only talking about buyers.
Flika, like its brethren, can be more nimble and inspired, less entrenched in finding ways to get agents paid and instead offering something for the person who wants to search for what they want in a home, instead of according to what an MLS’s stodgy parameters tells them is available. It’s a difference in mentality; it’s the difference between agent-first and consumer-first.
And it’s the reason the industry is facing what it’s facing.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
