Meet the dark horse of the housing market ‘portal wars’ that Sam Altman is invested in

Want more stories from Lance Lambert’s  ResiClub  in your inbox?  Subscribe  to the free, daily ResiClub  newsletter .



If you watched the Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl back in February, you might have caught one of Homes.com ’s ads, one of which featured Lil Wayne and Jeff Goldblum . These ads are part of CoStar-owned Homes.com’s marketing campaign, which is reportedly the biggest ever in the housing market, as it strives to catch up to Zillow and Realtor.com.



While Homes.com has all the spotlight in the so-called “portal wars,” it appears this month the competition got its dark horse: Flyhomes .



Earlier this month, the home listing site Flyhomes announced that it had acquired the real estate AI startup ZeroDown, which reportedly raised $30 million in capital from Sam Altman and the venture capital fund Goodwater Capital in 2019 . Flyhomes has launched an AI-powered home search portal as a result of this acquisition.



Seattle-based Flyhomes tells ResiClub that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, now has a financial stake in Flyhomes. (OpenAI did not respond to a request to confirm this statement.)



“Existing home search portals were built nearly 20 years ago and were designed to provide just enough information to generate a customer lead. We’ve taken a different approach, building a portal unlike anything else on the market, one that lets consumers have a conversation as though they’re talking to a local real estate agent,” said Laks Srini, CTO of Flyhomes, in a company press release announcing the AI portal. “A prospective buyer can use Flyhomes AI to go as deep in the shopping journey they’d like, all on their own time and without any sales pressure.”



According to Flyhomes, the AI-powered home search portal is trained on nearly 1,000 data points, and allows home shoppers to ask open-ended questions like, “Is this home a good deal compared to others in the neighborhood?” or, “How is T-Mobile’s coverage in this home?”







Flyhomes, which was founded in 2016, argues that its revamped, AI-powered listing portal is needed more than ever.



“Historically, buyers have had unlimited access to agents without ever needing to compensate them for their time,” said Tushar Garg, cofounder and CEO of Flyhomes, in the company announcement. Garg says that is changing as part of the National Association of Realtors’ settlement on commission lawsuits. As of August 17, homebuyers must sign a contract to compensate their agents directly before touring homes. Garg calls it “the most significant change to real estate in over 100 years,” which will fundamentally change the buyer-agent dynamic in the housing market. “This barrier of signing a contract upfront will cause many buyers to delay the timeline in which they engage a buyers agent, limiting their access to critical information,” added Garg. “This will create a massive friction in the market, and luckily AI is reaching technical maturity at just the right time to be the solution to this problem. This confluence of events has us confident that the winner of the ‘portal wars’ is going to be the one with the best technology and deepest insights for consumers.”



For now, it remains unclear just how much of a boost acquiring ZeroDown, attaching Sam Altman’s name to the company, and using AI technology will give Flyhomes in the real estate portal wars. We’ll have to wait and see.