SERHANT launches AI avatar; Ruuster unveils unified platform
The brokerage said it will publish original content using Serhant's voice and likeness. Plus, Texas Realtors revamps website; Property Shield, SmartMLS partner.
Editor's note: Technology is a driving force in real estate. From startups to established players, tech companies are constantly innovating, growing and forging partnerships. Here we highlight some of the latest news about the companies that help power the industry.
SERHANT CEO's AI avatar to release new content daily
SERHANT Founder and CEO Ryan Serhant has partnered with HeyGen to launch @HeySerhant, a social channel that will use an AI avatar modeled on Serhant's likeness and voice to publish original content daily for the next 12 months.
Serhant will help develop and approve the topics and messaging, while HeyGen's technology will generate videos featuring his avatar without requiring him to record each post. The channel will cover real estate, leadership and market perspectives, and Serhant's avatar will answer questions commonly raised by agents and business owners, according to a news release.
Serhant "has more ideas, stories, and advice to share than he has hours in the day to film content," HeyGen CMO Andrew Mok said. "With his HeyGen avatar, his audience can now hear from him every day without Ryan having to be on camera every day."
The partnership "lets me scale my presence and put the strength of our brand behind more agents, more listings and more client conversations," Serhant added. "The best technology expands what people can do. For us, the opportunity is to turn the audience we've built into an asset every agent can use to build their own business."
Ruuster 2.0 debuts with a goal of preserving agent-client relationships
Ruuster, a platform created for top-producing real estate teams, today unveiled Ruuster 2.0. While the platform's earlier iteration focused on cultivating homebuyer leads, this newer version expands its reach to include homeowners and future sellers.
The rollout is designed to extend the platform's use from a buyer's initial transaction to the full homeownership cycle, according to a news release. Ruuster 2.0 features My Home — a centralized place for homeowners to view their home's value, mortgage information, comparable home sales and more — and a Seller Tools collection that will allow homeowners to keep track of local market conditions.
Agent users gain a dashboard that flags leads in potential need of assistance, provides daily mortgage rate updates and monitors client activity in real time. The updated platform is available now to current Ruuster users with additional tools expected to roll out before the end of the year.
"Ruuster 2.0 gives teams one unified platform for search and nurture, from their website to CRM embeds, browser and mobile apps," CEO Brett Siegal said. "It keeps buyers engaged, keeps teams valuable to homeowners after closing and identifies future sellers before those relationships go cold."
Property Shield picks up Connecticut partner
Property Shield is partnering with SmartMLS to provide its listing fraud detection and removal tools to the MLS's more than 20,000 members across Connecticut. The service is slated to launch in mid-October.
The integration will monitor active SmartMLS listings and scan the open web for advertisements reusing property addresses, photos and other listing details. The technology can flag discrepancies, such as if a home listed for sale on the MLS also appears elsewhere as a rental showing different pricing or property information.
When potentially fraudulent listings are detected, agents will receive alerts and can review the flagged advertisement. If an agent confirms fraud, Property Shield will initiate the takedown process. The service will be integrated into the SmartMLS platform and provided to users at no additional cost, according to a news release.
SmartMLS said the fraud protection tool is the first in a planned series of rollouts, with additional detection and prevention capabilities expected to become available before the end of the year.
"Listing fraud is only one of the ways real estate professionals and consumers are being targeted," SmartMLS CEO Kathy Elson said. "Our goal is to continue adding tools that help our users identify potential fraud earlier and provide additional protection throughout the real estate transaction."
Texas Realtors launches 'faster and much easier' website
Texas Realtors recently transitioned its member and consumer websites to TaliCMS, a platform built by software company Dazlab. The association's move from WordPress to TaliCMS was completed last month, according to Dazlab Founder Darren Clark.
Texas Realtors' over 146,000 members are able to sign in to the new site using their current National Association of Realtors login information, Clark said. All members and their 35,900+ offices are already synced, a case study published on the TaliCMS website indicates.
The new sites "handled the scale of a state association without missing a beat," Texas Realtors VP of Communications and Marketing Angela Brutsche said in a statement. "Dazlab worked closely with our team through the build and launch, and the result is a site that's faster and much easier for our staff to keep current."
Editor's note: AI was used in the initial drafting of this content, which was then thoroughly reviewed, fact-checked and revised by a Real Estate News editor.