A brand-new home selling app called Casa Blanca is promising to deliver for finding a home what Tinder has delivered for finding a date. Just as the AI behind Tinder gradually learns more about your preferences, so the AI built into Casa Blanca gets better at finding you potential homes the more you use it.
Understanding how to buy a house means taking time to learn a whole new process, but even finding a home that you like still requires hours of time spent browsing homes on sites that have only basic filtering options such as the number of bedrooms.
This is where Casa Blanca radically departs from your average home search engine. Its founder and CEO, Hannah Bomze, has 12 years' experience in the real estate industry, including with Douglas Elliman, and says that ' frankly, this disruption is overdue.' It's not just that Bomze's app will help you find the right home with your preferred specifications – it also takes into account 'lifestyle preferences'. Whether you're a gym addict, love jogging at a local park, or need to be close to a school or a shopping mall, the app learns to factor these in when presenting you with a personalized selections of homes to consider.
Like the most successful dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, the app has learning algorithms built in – this means that the more you swipe, the better the app gets at giving you search results that are relevant.
If you're getting a bit worried about not speaking to a human, the next step, once you've chosen a home you might want to view, involves pairing you up with a real estate agent who will then take you through all the practicalities, from viewings to signing your purchase agreement. The app currently serves NYC and Colorado and has already made over $100 million in sales through its 38 real estate agents. It is expanding and you're likely to be able to use it for your area in the near future. Bomze said: 'As we continue to grow in new markets, the app experience will be curated to each city — for example, in Colorado you can edit your preferences based on access to ski areas — to make sure we’re offering a personalized experience for each user.'
What we've found most impressive though is just how good-looking and simple the layout is – it really seems like a more pleasurable way to find a home than the traditional trawling through listings.
