Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#221

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:33 AM UTC

eagleinparadise wrote: post #29

Best of luck. I’m a commercial real estate professional who has spent time as a broker, lender, and private equity investor. Residential definitely is a lot More of a ridiculous market. But ultimately as an agent, you get hired to work with mostly irrational actors (sellers and buyers). As someone who is very interested in AI and taught myself how to code (I don’t know any other real estate people who know anything a…

I’ve bought 4 and sold 3 houses over the years, and TBH the whole brokerage model seems like a two sided market scam but I’m not sure who is winning or being scammed. I’ve used brokers and not, so I’ve seen both sides.

I have family that are brokers are frankly they aren’t very smart but they know how to hustle, so they do decently well. They offer a service and do that but the costs for what they do are really weird in the margins.

It seems like the most perfect example of a bullshit job but somehow it benefits both sides enough that it persists because home ownership is such a (reasonably but problematically) aggressively promoted thing.

Very confusing tbh.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#222

Post by replwoacause » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:33 AM UTC

greenfish6 wrote: post #161

gycom wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My buyer's agent did those things for me yesterday, and would do them again today if I asked. That's what a buyer's agent is for.

I, like many of the other people in this thread, had a buyer agent that did nothing. If you need someone who can do these things, looks like you've found that person!

So the value prop is that you’ve built a service that does the same job as a lazy buyer’s agent? If I’m paying someone to help me buy a house, they better be Johnny on the spot handling my requests, which include measuring a room or advising if something was installed properly or not. If they can’t do basic things like that they are useless to me.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#223

Post by replwoacause » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:40 AM UTC

conductr wrote: post #203

Reading through the comments and I think this is the worst reception I’ve seen on HN, I seriously hope you guys consider some of this feedback. Good luck out there

My take is that greenfish comes of as sort of cocky and defensive, which is off putting. Not meant as a personal attack because I have no clue who these guys are, but the responses just don’t make me want to try out the service even though conceptually I like the idea of flipping this dusty ass industry on its ear.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#224

Post by replwoacause » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:42 AM UTC

greenfish6 wrote: post #166

ramesh31 wrote: post #118

There's a reason why Guinan is still the bartender on Enterprise D, even though a perfect drink can be instantly made with a replicator. People like people. And people want to be sold on things by other people. You won't ever replace that. AI can help massively with paperwork involved. But at the end of the day there will always be a human holding people's hands through the home buying process because that's what the…

You can't get everybody. But, I'm sure you've bought a canned alcoholic beverage from a store before? That was made by a robot, are you ok with that? Your bartender also may pour you a drink from a can as well - I've seen this

Sure. But the beer cost me $7. The home might cost a little more.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#225

Post by 0xB31B1B » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:56 AM UTC

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #214

homefree wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a corrupt market imo, like car dealerships - they work to legislate their continued existence. Any market structured where you have some people doing many transactions and some doing few ends up skewed to benefit the person doing many while screwing the person doing few. It's true with realtors, IPOs with investment banks, car dealerships, funeral homes etc. and it's a hard problem to fix.

How else would a car manufacturer put staff and inventory in every town across the country? They would either build dealerships themselves or franchise it out. Their cost structures don't cover this brick and mortar presence currently so costs would rise across the board. Car dealerships are mostly middlemen between customer, manufacturer, and state government for registration and tax collection. I just can't see how…

Tesla does all of this and they do it without dealerships. The problem with dealerships is they’re independent franchised businesses that extract but do not create value, not that they are buildings full of cars.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#226

Post by shostack » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 1:58 AM UTC

greenfish6 wrote: post #106

alemanek wrote: post #99

I am actually your target market. We are looking to buy a house early next year. But, one thing that put me off is that you don’t list what fees you charge, is it flat rate or a percentage, ..etc. In the FAQ I see this but no mention of the standard terms of the buyers agreement: > Do I need to sign a buyer agreement? > We will let you know if you need to sign a buyer agreement. You will for sure need to sign a buyer…

Other relators do not put their fee pricing on their websites so we decided to follow suit. We have the same pricing model - negotiable. But we provide better service.

I don't know a single home buyer who likes that though. You have an opportunity to differentiate by moving away from the obnoxious dynamic that exists today.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#227

Post by fallingsquirrel » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:09 AM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #192

eagleinparadise wrote: post #29

Best of luck. I’m a commercial real estate professional who has spent time as a broker, lender, and private equity investor. Residential definitely is a lot More of a ridiculous market. But ultimately as an agent, you get hired to work with mostly irrational actors (sellers and buyers). As someone who is very interested in AI and taught myself how to code (I don’t know any other real estate people who know anything a…

>I don’t know any other real estate people who know anything about code CRE professional here (about a decade in the industry) who was a coder first. I think there's plenty that can be disrupted in real estate, and specially commercial real estate, where there are a lot of old problems that are ripe for solutions. It's like you said though - those who experience the problems and actually know how to write software to…

> A program/app/SAAS cannot hold a real estate license, and therefore cannot do things like quote rates, terms, or manage transactions. As of right now, it's illegal in most states.

I wonder if the app could use the same "legal workaround" that political SMS spammers use. The app queues the messages, but an intern mashes the spacebar 100 times to spam 100 different people, therefore a human sent the message, therefore the spam is legal.

Now hire someone with a real estate license to mash the spacebar for your realtor app. Does it suddenly become legal?

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#228

Post by poulsbohemian » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:10 AM UTC

evantbyrne wrote: post #193

whiplash451 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a serious opportunity to arbitrage under the 6% fee, you bet that someone would have done it already — and well before the AI era.

Prior to the changes which only went into place in August, agents were colluding to keep fees artificially high. Buyers' agents would actually hide listings that promised less than what they wanted and all of that information was hidden from buyers until the buy/sell agreement. It is way too early to say exactly what the impact will be, but as an anecdote my agent accepted 2% on the home I just closed on. My predicti…

>agents were colluding to keep fees artificially high

Sitzer-Burnett involved a very narrow definition of collusion... essentially one Kansas City MLS had a mandatory input field for a seller-paid buyer commission. Realizing the risk of copycat lawsuits, the NAR got involved and decided to settle. Both Sitzer and Burnett should have gone after their own agents rather than turning this into a national issue.

>My prediction is fees will decrease significantly

And my prediction as an agent is somewhere between "business as usual" and "buyers are going to pay more out of pocket and will find it harder to buy homes." Further - many buyers will opt to not use an agent and I'm already making popcorn waiting to see what a clusterfuck that will be as buyers and sellers sue each other into oblivion.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#229

Post by poulsbohemian » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:16 AM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #178

joshstrange wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing, the NAR settlement didn’t really change anything, the fee was always negotiable and there always were agents who would offer under 6%. They were typically scummy agents who didn’t last long (they popped up when real estate was hot then disappeared after they burned enough clients and/or the market cooled off). As in all things you will get what you pay for. I’m not interested in fighting with anyon…

* All agents are not created equal * A good agent is absolutely worth it People aren't really arguing against these things. I don't get it, if the settlement didn't really change anything, why is everyone making such a fuss about it? My other question is, is there a linear correlation between effort to sell a home and its price? Is a 3 million dollar home 3x the effort to sell over a 1 million dollar home? Because I…

I was asked to put together a listing presentation on multiple properties that when combined together represented approximately $18MM in luxury real estate. At that level, it's connections but also the cost of marketing. I estimated I needed a minimum of $100K marketing budget - and ironically the sellers representatives laughed at me and then struggled to sell the properties for years because they couldn't market them effectively.

$3MM anymore may not be a particularly luxury property anymore in many markets. That said - it can cost $$$$ / month for staging and $$$$ for drone work, video and photo work, all the social media and other marketing. Even that $300K house someone else in the thread mentioned, I am in it easily $1000 in my marketing costs before the sign even goes up.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#230

Post by poulsbohemian » Wed, Sep 25, 2024, 2:19 AM UTC

noirbot wrote: post #186

mym1990 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* All agents are not created equal * A good agent is absolutely worth it People aren't really arguing against these things. I don't get it, if the settlement didn't really change anything, why is everyone making such a fuss about it? My other question is, is there a linear correlation between effort to sell a home and its price? Is a 3 million dollar home 3x the effort to sell over a 1 million dollar home? Because I…

That may be a bad example - I'd imagine once you're into the multi-millions, connections actually do matter in a way they don't if you're trying to sell a $400k house. I doubt it's much harder to sell a 600k house than a 300k house, but it could be quite a bit harder to sell a 4m house than a 2m house just because there's so many less buyers in the pool and they're likely to be a lot more particular than just wanting…

>I doubt it's much harder to sell a 600k house than a 300k house

It's not about the price per se, it's about the house. If median income in an area is such that the $600k house is "luxury" then it is going to be a lot harder sell. Or for example, I've got a property right now at $559K that is extremely unique and needs probably $150K+ worth of work - so there it sits. Meanwhile, sometimes those $300K houses are super hard to sell if they need a new roof, new HVAC, etc but no one in the area has the $15K it is going to take to actually do the updates because they have just barely enough cash to make the down payment.

I feel like I need to comment here that just because $600K is the cost of a shoebox in a place like Silicon Valley doesn't mean that it isn't a lot of money in many other markets. There are many places in this country where $10K or so in needed repairs to a home might truly be a breaking point for some people.