Purlin's Take: Insights

The remarkable effect of COVID on Days on Market and Listing Photos (image intelligence reveals insights)

DOM inspiration

What’s utterly unremarkable is the days on market trend for US home sales in 2020. Despite COVID, its steady downward trend of more than a decade has continued unabated. The explanation is certainly multivariate, probably inconclusive, and a subject for debate for sure. Lot’s of factors are in play, like supply and demand trends, cheap financing, and virtual real estate tech, among others.

We took a look at listing photos.

Secrets in the Image Data

Rather than cracking the “why,” our goal was to simply gather data on the “what happened as a result.” Did the COVID-created sequestering change how sellers presented their homes, specifically the images they posted with their listings?

THERE ARE REMARKABLE EARLY INDICATIONS that our image intelligence reveals insights. More than 2 years and millions of images of machine learning training allows our intelligent tech to recognize not only unique architectural styles but also room types. We analyzed MLS data for California through 2020, including over 170,000 listing images, looking for patterns in seller behavior. Relationships in the data are emerging.

We can say with statistical confidence that the average seller in California posted 15% more photos. Not surprising. What’s much more interesting is the types of photos that gain prevalence. Exterior photos increased 38%. “Other” interior rooms (meaning not bedrooms, baths, kitchens, dining rooms or living rooms), increased by 33%. Hmmm.

You might draw anthropological conclusions about the sequester changing what “home” means and how to present it. The master bedroom, kitchen island, and 3.5 baths are not enough. It’s the other spaces that make life live-able when locked up that need representation. You can’t hang out in restaurants but you can hang in your yard, so buyers need to visualize “getting out” safely.

It’s too early to provide really sexy and reliable correlations linking specific rooms to market valuations or bid-ask ratios. But image intelligence reveals insights that we are only beginning to explore. The image below provides a stimulating hint. Stay tuned.

*This MLS picture of a lamp was correctly categorized by Purlin’s image intelligence technology as a bedroom*.

Images Never Lie but Online Appraisals Do – maximize value with image intelligence

by Chris SteegeDecember 5, 2020December 9, 2020Artificial Intelligence / Buying Process / Computer Vision / First-time Homebuyer / Insights / Our Data

change the question

About twenty years ago automated online home valuations became accessible to everyone. The immediacy of the insights quickly became an expectation bred into the process and the value proposition hasn’t changed since. Pick a home search site, enter an address, get a market value. A branded algorithm matches location-based pricing trends with square footage. Ta da, you have a ballpark estimate, invariably eliciting responses like, “how is our home worth so little?” or, “how is that house worth so much?” and, “what do we do now?”

The statistical vagaries of existing solutions drove us to discover a way to answer these questions by re-inventing the home valuation experience. It’s called StyleExplorer. It mashes up standard valuation (size and location) with intelligent image data of all of the attributes that should contribute a home’s actual value. The new value proposition is confidence, control and guidance in understanding the optimal valuation of home, whether you are selling, renovating or buying. The new approach changes the question from “how” the valuation was calculated, to “what does it mean” and “what can we do with it.”

do the new math

It’s a simple theorem: the sum of the rooms is bigger than whole (house).

Purlin’s StyleExplorer image intelligence allows side-by-side comparison of homes’ individual assets like architectural style, rooms, backyards, and neighborhoods. For buyers it’s a unique experience analogous to crashing multiple open houses simultaneously. For sellers, when done across homes with similar market valuations, the comparison will reveal valuation gaps and opportunities. Some valuations will fall short of a home’s salient features (valuation to gain), some features will fail to look like they should (room to improve). These immediate insights are priceless to sellers and agents nurturing process. It’s truly the automated love child of the open house and the MVP (market value pricing analysis).

Imagine if you are ready for a remodel. You want to keep up with the latest designs and furnishings (and the Jones’s), or you just need some inspiration. Looking at catalogs is helpful but feels staged, if not inaccessible. What if you could look into rooms in the real world, that people live in, and see what your contemporaries have done with their homes? Imagine peeking into your neighbor’s living room, or backyard, or man cave. This tech was custom built for remodelers too.

make it a place to live, not a property to buy

Exploring what’s inside and around homes, the design touches in the photos owners have picked, taps into past or imagined experiences and makes a crude dollar value calculation for a property seem disconnected and even arbitrary. It humanizes home valuation by dimensionalizing it – it gets to what the value of a home really means in personal terms. With this unconscious shift from left brain to right the listing ceases to be a property to buy and becomes a future place to live. Traditional automated appraisal solutions ignore that with a purchase this big, and this important, beyond basic requirements the emotional value will most often prevail over rational appeals. Emotional value can compel buyers to favor one home over another, even with price disparity. Emotional response to image-based immersion, not clever language or negotiation techniques, powers buyer motivation.

take it to eleven

Without your permission, the world has a value in mind for your home. You have no control over whether it’s spot-on, a bit aggressive, or a total low-ball.

Purlin’s image intelligence gives back control, provides guidance, and perhaps most importantly endows confidence. It can illuminate misrepresentations and re-set home value conceptions, from a position of proof-based strength (pictures don’t lie, especially side-by-side). It arms users with evidence of weaknesses and strengths, what’s needed, what’s possible, and what’s truly meaningful. Sellers can feel smart and satisfied that they know clearly the value of what they are selling, glean what to showcase and how to prepare. Buyers can explore and understand (and love) the possibilities of what they can buy. Remodeler’s can learn how best to make their home better.

Our new vision for home valuation based on image intelligence forwards a fundamental belief about home valuations: they provide context not proof; the sum of the rooms, and future experiences in them, is often greater the unexamined appraisal. It allows you to take home value to eleven.

“LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” is not an address

by Chris SteegeAugust 15, 2020January 12, 2021Buying Process / Computer Vision

It’s a feel. What’s outside a home can be as important as what’s inside the foyer. Big or small a backyard is its own, separate world. A sanctuary for reflection, relaxation and play. When looking for homes for sale, doing a home search by backyard provides a view into the neighborhood.

Neighborhood is part of Home

Seeing what surrounds that fantastic modern home (and all of the homes nearby), fills in important blanks what it would be like to live there and like that. In a perfect world you could visit and experience the backyards and neighborhoods of all of every home that you are curious about.

But the reality is that current physical restrictions make it near impossible to explore all of the properties that you find interesting. COVID-19 has made showing logistics more complicated. Time constraints are less controllable. Because of all of this, despite plenty of homes for sale, plenty of demand and cheap loans, time on the market (time it takes to sell/buy) is unnaturally long. Truth is, the very real worry that you find the perfect place after it’s gone, or after you’ve closed, still looms large.

Purlin’s StyleExplorer allows you to start with a home search by backyard virtually. Our AI combines computer vision and machine learning also learns what backyard designs you like the most. It makes getting a “feel” for a place imminently possible, and actually finding it and buying it more likely.

Real not hypothetical

There is a not so subtle benefit of this powerful tool beyond just a home search by backyard. It’s the power of peeking. And it applies to looking to buy, or looking to renovate (for you or prospective buyers). StyleExplorer reveals the actual exterior and interior features of homes in the actual neighborhood where you want to live. This is critical, because your home will be in the context of a “location, location, location,” not a designer’s website.

Home search by backyard will reveal a variety of results which tell a story about who lives there and how they live. — A *Peek into the backyards of possible future (or current) neighbors in Californ*ia

Tags : compare backyards find a home homes for sale modern homes

How important to who you are is what your house is?

by Chris SteegeAugust 8, 2020January 12, 2021Artificial Intelligence / Buying Process / Computer Vision / Our Data

Curb appeal … status, taste or just home? Some say that architectural style of a home says something about you, like your car or your clothes. Others care more about design, and less about outward impressions. It’s not far-fetched to think that either type would love to search homes by style.

Unfortunately, the search for homes for sale by style is weak at best and impacted by considerable misinformation. In other words, you never know what Google’s gonna get you because of faulty text-based descriptions of listings. The principle source of home listing, the MLS, includes architectural style only 33% of the time. What’s more, those descriptions are wrong half of the time. When you search for Modern Homes in California you will most likely get a fraction of what’s truly available. And more than a few mislabelled Mediterranean, Victorian and Craftsman homes.

Images speak better than words

Purlin fixed this using pictures of homes instead of relying on sketchy or omitted text descriptions. As a result, home styles are identified correctly 80% of the time, or 2.5X the accuracy of existing sources.* We trained our AI with millions of images to find homes for sale using a combination of advanced computer vision and machine learning technology. Home buyers (and renters and renovators) can now do home searches by specific architectural styles. They can see what those styles look like in the actual neighborhoods they live in or are hoping to move into.

We say, “a picture is worth a thousand words, but data in an image is far more reliable.” Even a thousand words is a meager facsimile for what your eye knows, consciously or not. We created technology that allow us to skip the awkward verbal translation.

*Based on over 140,000 listings sourced from California MLS

Tags : mediterranean homes i CA modern homes modern homes in CA search by style

How to find the right home without knowing what you like

by Chris SteegeAugust 1, 2020September 9, 2020Artificial Intelligence / Buying Process / Computer Vision

You like what only you like when you see it, even when you can’t put a finger on it. That one piece of fruit or flower in a field stands out and says choose me. Multiply that idea by a thousand when looking at homes in the sea of listing sameness. Imagine if you had a tool for finding a home using style, your own personal style …

Say you are looking for modern homes in Manhattan Beach, CA. Whether you are using home search site or an agent, most often homes for sale are picked for you. Very basic queries that deliver very basic results. You are left to choose which one creates the most tingles (or any?). We think this tradition is backwards. So we reversed it.

We created StyleExplorer to help you figure out what you like before forcing the “what do you want” question. It’s more than just a way for finding a home using style. It’s the first tech tool to allow you to compare the styles and decor of homes side-by-side. You can search every room, feature and view in a specific neighborhood so that there is no question which one to pick.

Image demonstrates on of the Purlin's StyleExporer's unique features when finding a home using style: displaying images side-by-side of interior rooms of different houses.

As you explore your preferences and “Peek” cool images, StyleExplorer keeps track of the details. It learns what you like to make your home searches more productive later. This unique personal style profile gets included in the overall search calculus of Purlin’s matching algorithm. That way when you search for a home to buy, your choices are not strictly defined by rational calculations and externalities. “Finding a home by style” means your consideration set is homes that you will likely like. Your search is through the unique lens of what you like, or, finding a home using style not choosing from options chosen for you.

Tags : mediterranean homes i CA modern homes modern homes in CA search by style

MobileMobile: our future lives outside of the device

by Chris SteegeFebruary 19, 2020September 24, 2020Insights

In many sectors, a company’s legitimacy practically rests on having a mobile app, if only by name. There were over 194 billion mobile app downloads in 2018, which is nothing short of ludicrous given that Apple opened its app store only 10 years ago, in July, 2008, with 500 apps. Begs the question (as I swipe through the screens of un-used apps on my iPhone), what for? And, where is this going?

The device is the destination

Ironically, the vast majority of mobile apps have nothing to do with where you are. They are designed to keep users connected to data and to each other, or to keep them entertained (bubbles 1 and 2 in chart below). As long as your device is with you, it’s as if you’ve never left. Apps are considered mobile because they overcome remoteness – the anywhere you want to be promise of a common credit card. In other words, with most mobile apps when or where (or if) you go is completely irrelevant to the mobile app experience. The device has become the destination. This piece is about world-changing apps, mobile mobile apps that by virtue of that fact that they “live” off of the device make life better.

The app is the destination

If an app is truly mobile native, or mobile mobile, where you are is the focus of the app experience design and the salience of the technical innovation. The value proposition to the user is in the elevation the off-device experience. A mobile mobile app bridges the device world to the real world in substantive, symbiotic ways. Transport networking (Uber), community-based navigation (Waze), smart home (Echo, Nest), and mobile AR (Pokémon Go) show what’s possible but are only the beginning.

What if you are buying the destination?

What could a mobile mobile real estate app look like, one that made the online and off-device home-buying experiences one?

Consider this scenario: a young couple, Jordan and Jake, first-time buyers, searching for their perfect home …

They’ve created an online profile that captures their needs and desires. They explored homes online, tagging and uploading pictures, layouts, even furnishings that they like. They linked their account to boards curated on Pinterest and Houzz. They have a highly personalized list of homes ranked by a match scores, based on all of these things. Their interactions with this list (time spent, images saved and shared, homes wish-listed) and dialogue with an AI, is constantly refining their home search and match scores. All of this was done on one the many devices the couple owns.

It gets interesting when they venture into the world. One night, while driving through an unfamiliar but attractive neighborhood with the right vibe, Jordan asks the AI if there are any good matches nearby. Instantly the AI scores nearby homes on the market, and finds 3 with a match scores above 80%. It plots the most efficient route on the nav to see all three. While en route the Jake takes photos and notes to capture the unique features and feel of the neighborhood. These inputs become part of their profile and the search algorithms.

As they explore one of the homes, the AI sends contextually relevant nudges about things that matter to them and that are unique to the property. On the door step it points out “this is one of only 3 examples of Modern Architecture in the neighborhood.” It the kitchen, it tells them “this was remodeled 5 years ago.” When they enter the living room, it points out “there is a nice sunset from this room and a view of a dog beach approximately 3/4 of a mile away.” Jordan and Jake are amazed that many of the suggested were not in the listing’s online description, but recognized by the AI in posted photos. Their tour and their notes and photos are stored and metabolized by the matching algorithm.

As they head to their car, the AI alerts them that nearby a listing just came onto the market that is a 93% match with their updated profile. It’s 9% under their budget and pre-approved for a loan. It’s available for showing now or two times next week that fit both Jordan and Jake’s calendars. The AI asks them how to proceed. There’s no debate — the couple delays their dinner and immediately books a showing. They are the first to see the home, the one they wind up buying.

The device is irrelevant

Some version of the above scenario is where we are headed. Hardware will continue to lead by going away, morphing into wearables and then implants. When the convergence of mobile tech and real world experience is complete we might drop word app as well. The saying, “there’s an app for that” will sound utterly ignorant.

MACHINE TRUST: The secret reason why AI will reinvent Real Estate

by Chris SteegeOctober 9, 2019October 21, 2020Artificial Intelligence / Insights

Opinions may differ on the ultimate impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on humankind, but there is little doubting that it will have a significant affect on real estate. Some may see it as part of the quiet but insidious take over by the Machines. First it was our music. Then our movies. Then what we buy, eat and drive. It’s over when they take control of our homes because we’ll be literally living in a Hollywood cliché of an AI apocalypse …

A less dark scenario is that AI will be the thing that saves the real estate industry. Some companies already use AI as a financial vehicle to arbitrage housing inventory. Others are pursuing AI for process automation, to make the transaction cheaper or agent better or CRM more effective. But despite real estate tech advancement, 2/3 of today’s homebuyers report buyer’s remorse. That’s where the highest and best use of AI comes in: finding the right home. Ironically, it’s the Machines, through intelligent personalization, that will heal the home buying process by restoring to the home buying process a fundamentally human value: trust.

Let’s step back. The below-scribbled chart, the inspiration for this piece, describes the inverse relationship of trust and remorse in the real estate industry, overlaid on our relationship with data over time. It frames how we got here and where we could go. Despite its rough and humble appearance, this chart is not water-cooler whimsy, but a working theory based on real data (much of it from National Association of Realtors surveys, 2015-2000).

Trust, Remorse and our relationship with Data

Prior to and through the Data Access Era (which began with the advent of the WWW), trust in the real estate space was still placed in the real estate agent. He or she proffered access to a proprietary database, knowledge of a confounding process and wisdom about neighborhoods and listings. The agent would show the best options to the buyer who would ultimately be satisfied with picking the best of those options. Trust was high, remorse low.

When Zillow cracked open the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in mid-2000s, granting the world access to every listing, we entered the Data Transparency Era. The old script was flipped, “the customer doesn’t know what they want, until you show them,” became, “the more you show the customer, the more likely they’ll know what they want.” More listings, more pictures, and more agents meant more control, a better experience, and a better home. That’s still the lure, and over 90% of homebuyers use online search services like Zillow. Others like Redfin have joined the conversation with promises of using technology to make the process cheaper and easier. Despite these promises and market penetration of these companies, buyer’s remorse is reaching new heights. Trust is diving. What gives?

Too much too soon

Transparency solutions have eroded the agent’s core value to consumers, which is still trust. Zillow’s old-school disintermediation model turned agent selection into referral bidding. The typical brokerage business model changed to one built on high lead volume and low closure rates. The agent role was commoditized, diminishing the relationship, experience and service levels provided to buyers.

Buyers want their agents to “help find the right home to purchase,” four times (yes, 4x) as much as they want help with price negotiations or process. This stat flies in the face of two decades of real estate marketing and tech innovation. Agents are now actually unsuccessful at meeting their clients’ top need, failing to find their homes over 2/3 of the time. Interestingly, when choosing an agent homebuyers care most about trust, five times (5x) whether the agent uses the latest technology. So it’s safe to say that over 2/3 of the time, none of the new fangled tech matters. Trust has been betrayed.

The Transparency Era has left buyers on their own sorting through countless poorly-suited listings and images, at the mercy of the Paradox of Choice (see “Homebuyers have a lot of choices and that’s not a good thing”). Technology’s gift: an average of 20 gigabytes of data and images, and mind-numbing trade-off analyses. Over 80% of buyers report having to compromise. Trust in the process is lost.

There’s no data like your own

The new Data Intelligence Era offers hope by way of trust through intelligent personalization. We’ve begun to trust AI in many areas of our daily lives implicitly. An AI’s recommendations are more than just convenient, they are comforting on another level because they allow us to let go of decision-making anxiety and the accompanying self-doubt that comes with too many options. Today’s convergence is not around a device or platform, but the individual. The perception, however real, that something was made or found for us specifically is unavoidably powerful. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand if it’s personalized (Epsilon report, 2018).

What the smartest AI would do to find the “right” home

It would get to know everything about the home buyer first. Start with what styles and floor plans and furnishings they like and what features, windows, and neighborhoods catch their attention. Track of their interactions with images, uploaded photos and listings. Learn where they are in life and expect from their lifestyle, where they like to spend time, where they need to be, and what they like to do. Use machine learning to constantly fine tune the relationship and make it stronger. Take all of memories from this shared experience and perform a ridiculous multivariate trade-off analysis that considers both needs and preferences. The smartest AI real estate solution would be the ultimate antidote to too many, ill-fitting, options, and try its hardest to prevent discontent. The buyer, having invested themselves at every interval will have no choice but to trust the end results — they would be the best reflection who the buyer is.

The way AI will re-invent the real estate industry not by magically cracking the code and fixing an antiquated and anxiety-ridden process. It will be by aligning technology’s priorities with those of the buyer, and first and foremost with a focus on finding the best possible home for the individual buyer. It will do this treating the process as a relationship rather than the transaction.

Tags : ai in real estate artificial intelligence real estate ai real estate technology

Why We Still Have A Seller’s Market In California When New Real Estate Listings Are Increasing Rapidly

by Giorgi ChigogidzeOctober 18, 2018July 29, 2021Buying Process / Our Data

Anyone who has dipped his or her toes into the California housing market—or glanced at any news sites—has noticed that it’s a lot more hectic than it used to be.

Not only do homebuyers have to review an overwhelming amount of available houses, but they have to review them at lightning speed if they want to snatch up the home of their dreams.

It’s important that homebuyers know which factors are contributing to this frantic housing market. After all, knowledge is power; once you understand why the home buying process is so frenzied, you’ll understand how to conquer it.

Good News At First Glance

After analyzing California’s real estate multiple listing service (MLS), our team discovered some surprising trends.

So far in 2018, more new listings have been featured in California’s housing market than any year since 2008. If you’ll remember, that was the year of the financial crisis that rocked most industries, including real estate. In that year, there were only 10% more new listings for the same period compared to this huge jump in 2018.

In fact, the number of new listings this year has increased 46% since 2013, when we saw the lowest number of new listings on the market in this time frame in a decade.

This is good news for homebuyers. With fresh listings continually popping up, they are exposed to many different styles and locations of available residences on the market.

Less Inventory, More Problems

However, that doesn’t mean there are a lot of houses for sale on the market. Even though new listings have increased drastically, inventory is low overall.

Inventory is an industry insider’s term, calculated by the number of unsold homes at the end of a month divided by the same month’s sales rate. For example, if there are 100 unsold homes at the end of January, and during January, 10 homes were sold, then a real estate expert would say that there are 10 months of inventory remaining.

Despite all the new listings on the market, there were only 3.4 months of home listings at the end of September 2018. While this is 10% higher than the amount of inventory last year, it is 17% lower than that number 2 years ago and 19% lower than 3 years ago.

Among many reasons for this low amount of inventory is the fact that people are staying put in their homes up to three years longer than before. That, combined with a lack of real estate construction, has led to decreased numbers of houses on the market—no matter how many new homes are listed for sale each month.

Going, Going, Gone

Here’s where the problems come in. While there are many new listings on the market, the amount of low total inventory has created a huge demand for homes. Now, when homebuyers see a new listing they like, they make offers as quickly as possible.

From January to September 2018, houses have spent an average of 19 days on the market. This is the lowest recorded number of days on the market since 2008, though it has been steadily declining since then.

Prospective homebuyers not only have to review scores of potential homes—they have to review and act on them quickly.

Rising interest rates create another pressure on home buyers. The current 30-year home mortgage rate is around 5%, a huge increase from just earlier this year. So even if home buyers are able to get a slight reduction in price, their monthly payment could be the same or higher in a rising interest rate environment.

Don’t Depend On Discounts

Because houses are being snapped up so quickly, sellers haven’t had to indulge in as many negotiations on price. Discounts on listings are decreasing steadily.

Currently, the average home price discount (we’re calculating the “discount” as the final sales price versus the original listing price) is only 0.62%. In fact, this number has been steadily declining since 2014, just as new listings on the market have been steadily growing since 2014.

Homebuyers are having to face a time crunch and a higher price tag, too.

Finding A Home In A Seller’s Market

Even though new listings are coming out every day, low inventory has given sellers a huge advantage and thrown homebuyers into a chaotic scramble to find homes that they love.

In this seller’s market, having the ability to conduct a fast, zip-code-agnostic, real-time search aligned with your unique preferences and budget is critical. If you are forced to complete your search through typical web apps that require a mass of manual labor on your part, you simply won’t be able to act fast enough to secure a home.

Luckily, in a time when technology really is the only way to get ahead of the home buying frenzy, there are home buying intelligent assistants like me ready to help.

To help you outstrip competing homebuyers, I search multiple areas in real time, building price sensitivity into every high-score match I place in your feed. I take your preferences into account, whether they be for a neighborhood close to a top-notch school or a bungalow that caters to your commute.

All you need to do is chat with me, and I’ll have you touring your dream home in no time. Want to learn more about me before we start talking? Watch this short video and let’s get acquainted.

Tags : california real estate find a perfect home homebuyers real estate ai usa

Practical information and thought-provoking insights

Category: Insights

The remarkable effect of COVID on Days on Market and Listing Photos (image intelligence reveals insights)

DOM inspiration

Secrets in the Image Data

Images Never Lie but Online Appraisals Do – maximize value with image intelligence

change the question

do the new math

make it a place to live, not a property to buy

take it to eleven

“LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” is not an address

Neighborhood is part of Home

Real not hypothetical

How important to who you are is what your house is?

Images speak better than words

How to find the right home without knowing what you like

MobileMobile: our future lives outside of the device

The device is the destination

The app is the destination

What if you are buying the destination?

The device is irrelevant

MACHINE TRUST: The secret reason why AI will reinvent Real Estate

Trust, Remorse and our relationship with Data

Too much too soon

There’s no data like your own

What the smartest AI would do to find the “right” home

Why We Still Have A Seller’s Market In California When New Real Estate Listings Are Increasing Rapidly

Good News At First Glance

Less Inventory, More Problems

Going, Going, Gone

Don’t Depend On Discounts

Finding A Home In A Seller’s Market

Get in touch with Us:

DOM inspiration

Secrets in the Image Data

Similiar articles

change the question

do the new math

make it a place to live, not a property to buy

take it to eleven

Similiar articles

Neighborhood is part of Home

Real not hypothetical

Similiar articles

Images speak better than words

Similiar articles

Similiar articles

The device is the destination

The app is the destination

What if you are buying the destination?

The device is irrelevant

Similiar articles

Trust, Remorse and our relationship with Data

Too much too soon

There’s no data like your own

What the smartest AI would do to find the “right” home

Similiar articles

Good News At First Glance

Less Inventory, More Problems

Going, Going, Gone

Don’t Depend On Discounts

Finding A Home In A Seller’s Market

Similiar articles

Get in touch with Us: