How 3 innovative startups are powering real estate tech with property data

The application of property data can seem infinite, especially with the investment and growth of industry-specific accelerators like Colliers Proptech Accelerator powered by Techstars helping to foster the next wave of technology innovators. We have seen customers across a broad spectrum of industries, including insurance, real estate and home services who find value in applying the data in unique ways.

Let’s cut through some of the industry noise with a short list of 3 innovative companies, both big and small, who’ve built products with behind-the-scenes applications for property data. Could the same idea or service add value to you, your bottom line, or your customers?

Blend 

Service: whitelabeling online mortgage and homeowners insurance applications

Blend just announced a new $130 M fund round raised. All that capital means they’re doing something right, mainly the value they can provide to the sizable insurance and mortgage industries.

In the era of digitization, customers expect fast, simple and accurate results. From the first touchpoint to the last, each interaction with a potential customer will shape their perception of how well your service can address their unique requirements. In this case, having the right data to make a good first impression could mean winning that prospect’s business later on. In insurance and mortgage lending, not providing core services online could mean missing out to more tech-forward competitors.

Blend has been able to serve insurance and mortgage sectors well by complementing their core services with tech expertise to provide a positive experience for homeowners, buyers and sellers who are gathering their own competitive intelligence before connecting with a sales person.

Mortgage, ownership, geographic and structural property data could all be used for this application. Using this data to both validate customer-provided details and improve the odds of assessment accuracy reduces risk for lenders and insurance providers.

Not only does using a property data API for this application get you the most up-to-date data but with one property search at a time, you are paying by API call. You don’t need to buy an entire data set of 50,000 properties, for example, if you only have 5,000 application submissions a month.

Aalto 

Aalto home is a private on-market listing platform for home buyers and sellers.

With industry attention focused on selling fast with iBuyers, the private listing approach speaks to sellers and instead who aren’t going to mind a longer transaction process. Often also referred to as a “pocket listing” this service is still somewhat less known in the industry. In a quick Google search for “pocket listing,” three out of the 10 first organic results address the question “what is a pocket listing?”

Aalto is a good example of how to service a niche segment of the buyer and seller real estate market independent of the MLS. And though still agent-driven, pocket listing leaves the hassle out of public showings and can even be more lucrative for a seller.

Some key advantages of a public MLS listing is that you can get maximum exposure as a seller, bringing in the highest bidder, and you can display MLS property data to searchers. If privacy is a seller’s top priority, however, agents and their clients might forego the financial incentive and can still augment site listings online with a public property data API instead of MLS data. A site like Aalto is also poised to cross geographic borders without worrying about the constraints of MLS listing guidelines.

SquadVoice.co

SquadVoice positions itself as your real estate team’s “secret weapon” by using AI and data analytics, to automate CRM lead scoring.

Anyone who’s been in sales and marketing knows how easy it is to get caught up in focusing on the top of the funnel, generating NEW leads and not enough time focusing on leads we’ve already added to the CRM. Often when a lead hasn’t shown enough interest or we know next to nothing about them, the next steps are more difficult to define – and these leads can add up. That’s where SquadVoice comes in.

These leads, both home buyers and sellers, can have property data points automatically assigned to them and run through an algorithm that helps flag some as stronger prospects than others –– creating a clear and effective path for your next outreach effort.

Based on data science, this innovation is definitely a candidate for finding value in any and all 150+ property data fields that public records can provide. The more indicators that can be analyzed the better the science. Does this seller have the largest home in your most luxury market? Structural and address data can pull these indicators at a glance. You likely don’t want to let this one slip through the cracks.

Can’t get enough? Check out other use cases and industry insights on our blog. Thanks for reading.