Latest / NOISE vs SIGNAL by Inman / Lofty CEO Joe Chen on the Future of AI in Real Estate

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Lofty CEO Joe Chen on the Future of AI in Real Estate · NOISE vs SIGNAL by Inman

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  At Inman Connect San Diego, I had the opportunity
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  to sit down with Joe Chen, the CEO of Lofty.
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  And what does AI tokens have to do with real
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  estate? We talk about that, plus the new tool
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  we have built with them called Ask Inman. You're
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  going to want to hear this and hear what Joe
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  predicts for the future of AI and technology
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  in the real estate industry. Hey, everyone. This
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  episode is brought to you by Lofty, the agentic
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  AI operating system for real estate. Lofty's
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  AI doesn't wait to be prompted. It works proactively
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  on behalf of your agents to uncover new listing
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  opportunities, engage leads, schedule meetings,
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  and drive more transactions. Lofty turns every
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  agent into a top producer. Visit lofty .com to
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  see how agentic AI can put your business growth
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  on autopilot. Everybody in the business of home
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  has a pitch. Almost nobody gets asked a hard
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  question. This show fixes that. Welcome to Noise
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  vs. Signal. I'm your host, Inman CEO Tom Bond.
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  Each week we sit down with the top producing
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  agents, industry CEOs, prop tech founders, and
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  the people shaping the future of the business
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  of home. Then we break down the week's biggest
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  headlines and decide what's noise and what's
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  signal. Let's get into it. We used to be joined
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  by Joe Chen, the CEO of Lofty, a critical partner
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  of Inman as we build Inman 2 .0. Joe, thank you
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  so much for joining me today. Oh, pleasure to
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  be here. Well, we are really excited about what
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  we're building, the Bloomberg of residential
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  real estate. You like that, do you? I do. I like
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  that. And I love you guys as partners. And we
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  have some really cool tools that we're building
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  together. Why Lofty? Why Inman? And why now?
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  Yeah, right now it's easier, right? So two years
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  ago when I showed up on Inman on a side panel
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  on AI, there were two of us on the panel, two
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  dozen people showed up. Frankly, I think I knew
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  nothing about what I was talking about, right?
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  But fast forward two years, the landscape has
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  completely changed. The engineering software
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  coding has been completely changed. to the point
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  that the two frontier companies, frontier lab
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  companies, generated $200 billion remedy run
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  rate in a matter of two years, was combined market
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  value bigger than Russell 2000. Russell 2000,
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  the 2000 smaller companies, probably listed companies
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  combined. So that just give you a scale. Two
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  companies now overtaking 2000 smaller public
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  companies in a matter of two years. The engineering
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  has been completely changed. And my company has
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  adapted to AI massively. Slowly, two years ago,
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  in the past two years, it's like, it's a lightning
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  change. And our revenue is growing and our product
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  launch speed just multiplied. We're launching
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  two new products here, just in a matter of half
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  a year. So the AI capabilities has progressed
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  so fast. It's now going way beyond engineering.
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  And as you can see, the product we're building
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  for the real estate is getting major attractions.
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  We're a lofty, AOS, and gigantic sales agent.
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  Last month, we did a review of financials. Our
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  token consumption was off the roof by our customers
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  to the point we might have lost money on the
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  tokens last month. But that's a good thing. We're
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  happy to lose money for one month because that
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  shows that the gigantic... token consumption
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  is increasing. This industry is adapting AI and
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  we feel it. That's why. Yeah. And why Inman as
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  a partner now? Well, you guys are the number
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  one media company. You have 40, 50 years of,
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  you know, you guys covered this industry like
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  Wall Street Journal. Yeah. And so if you want
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  to build something for the industry, you better
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  work with the best. Thank you. Yeah. So let's
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  talk about one of the features, Ask Inman. And
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  that was something that we kind of worked on
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  together. What are you most excited about that
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  feature? Well, it was mostly your idea. I coined
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  the name of the Bloomberg for real estate. Yeah.
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  Because I think many years ago, I was thinking
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  about investing in a company that was trying
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  to do a different version of Bloomberg. And so
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  I did some study and I realized Bloomberg was
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  really technology infused with... real -time
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  market data, and content creation. So it's incredibly
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  useful. Every grocery professional spends thousands
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  of dollars per month subscribing to that service.
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  Even me, for one year, I subscribed to that product.
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  So I think that once that product is built correctly,
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  it can become extremely useful. You know, one
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  of the things that's going to be able to do is
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  to allow people to come in and ask questions
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  using 40 years of editorial, outside data feeds
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  with Benzinga, data from you guys. I mean, all
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  this different type of stuff coming together.
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  What types of questions do you think people are
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  going to ask the most? Well, on Bloomberg, people
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  ask for the bond prices, of course, bond price
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  quote, right? They even transact on bond trades.
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  And I imagine that you probably have more firsthand
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  knowledge. I would imagine a investor for real
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  estate, looking at a history of companies and
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  brokerages, investment bankers and the financiers
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  or public investors of brokerage companies, looking
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  at the history of these brokerages and their
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  merger acquisition history and major characters.
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  of the industry, the captains of industry. Like
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  on Worst Journal, you have all these people with
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  a special portrait. You guys actually should
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  do the same thing. Right? So it's actually designed
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  to be something that people use every single
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  day, right? It captures what are the five things
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  they need to know that day. They can ask anything
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  about their local market. So it's going to be
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  pretty interesting. What about the social media
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  feature? Are you excited about that? I think
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  that product, because it's a necessary tool that
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  almost every agent need to have today. Yeah.
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  Because we all know high quality content bring
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  business. Yeah. I know that for sure because
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  if you look at my LinkedIn in the last two months,
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  I have produced about 10, I think, high quality
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  content for a semiconductor company I'm the president
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  of. Okay. My job is to position the company in
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  the industry. So I wrote 10 articles, 5 ,000
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  words on average in length. Every picture was
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  AI generated with my supervision. Each article
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  I spent average of five to 10 hours. So even
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  with AI, it still take a long time. Yeah, you're
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  right. Without AI, it might take maybe 20 to
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  50 hours per article. The reason I mentioned
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  that example is that high quality content produce
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  results. As a result of writing those articles,
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  we have a lot of inbound increase from customers,
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  from investors. So I think for a real estate
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  agent, in today's environment, some agents are
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  early adapters to AI and social media. They're
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  able to generate more content, higher quality
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  content out there. They are getting a bigger
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  share of the flow of business. But for every
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  other agent, they need to arm up. They need to
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  use the latest tools, leverage on the technology,
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  AI that Lofty provides, and also on the content
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  that Yin Meng has. Kind of a commentary. You
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  run your own TV show. Yeah. Right. I mean, and
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  you talk about what's relevant to your local
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  market, what's going on in national stage, but
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  what's going on in your industry and to be an
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  expert of your territory. Right. Right. So I
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  think that's extremely useful. And this tool
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  is going to make it so easy because they can
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  go on to any article, any data point, any bit
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  of information. Yeah. Get an AI script that makes
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  it hyperlocal to their market. Yeah. Record it.
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  gets their logo put on it, and ships it right
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  to their socials all through a tool that we're
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  building together. It's very, very cool. It sounds
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  like you're more familiar with the feature than
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  I am. Do you use that product at all? Yeah, yeah,
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  yeah. We've been playing with it, so it's actually
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  really good. Okay. Yeah. So tell me, this is
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  an opportunity, talk about Lofty, and there's
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  a lot of software companies out there. What makes
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  you guys unique and different? So we're a relatively
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  young company in this industry. Compared with
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  many of our peers in this software, platform
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  for brokerages business. We are eight years old.
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  Initially started out as China. But fast forward
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  eight years now, I think we're technology leader
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  for the industry. And a part of that I think
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  has something to do with our consumer internet
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  experience. I myself got into the internet business
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  as early as 1998. I did two dot coms. I wrote
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  the PC internet wave. I wrote the mobile internet
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  wave. for the last eight years of riding on the
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  SaaS cloud computing wave. But in the recent
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  three years after ChatGPT, I did two things.
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  One, I drove the transformation of Lofty and
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  many of my other SaaS companies into agentic
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  software companies to serve industries. Because
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  we're betting on one thing and one thing only
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  at every one of my tech companies, is that we
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  believe AI token costs will be coming down. every
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  year, just like bandwidth. Because I went through
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  that period of bandwidth building, because I
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  even briefly tried to start an optical networking
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  company in year 2000. The bandwidth cost since
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  2000 probably came down 100 times. So if you
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  apply the same logic and the same economic rules,
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  the token cost has come down probably 10 times
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  in the next five years. And the next 20 years
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  is going to come down to maybe 100 times. So
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  everybody. Every machine can afford tokens. Yeah.
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  A lot of tokens will be generated on the edge,
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  on the devices itself. You don't have to go back
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  to data center to fetch the token. The token,
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  the intelligence will be embedded on devices
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  on the edge. So it's going to proliferate. So
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  we're betting on AI going to be cheaper and AI
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  will proliferate. So I think the features, economic
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  value will be captured by companies and industries.
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  being able to consume token massively and effectively.
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  So I think that's objective measurement. I think
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  for Lofty, for Hudson AI, all the brands that
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  we launched for this industry, our job is to
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  help the industry consuming more tokens because
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  that is the cheapest form of productivity and
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  it's really the only thing that's brand new.
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  in the past three years because all the other
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  challenges, opportunities the industry be dealing
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  with, regulation, the lawsuits, the listings,
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  the competition among brokerages and agents,
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  all these things been around for decades. Nothing
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  new there, but only thing new is AI and it's
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  massive. We know there are trillion dollar invested
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  on AI infrastructure. We also know... In the
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  top 10 market cap, global market cap companies,
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  top 10, nine of them are AI companies. Only one
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  of them is not, is a Saudi Arabia oil company.
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  It's ranked number nine. It's going to push down
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  to number 10 pretty soon. It's all going to be
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  all AI companies. So this industry definitely
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  need to adapt AI. If we don't adapt AI, I think
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  other industries will find a way to take our
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  business. Last question. What do you think, 12
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  months from now, what's your prediction for technology
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  and real estate? What will be different 12 months
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  from now? I predict the token consumption for
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  this industry will go up 100 times. 100 times?
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  Yes. And or the token cost for us, the token
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  cost we pay, it's going to be 10 times more than
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  today. But the industry consumption will be 100
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  times more than today. Wow. And what does that
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  translate to in terms of productivity? I think
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  that, well, I think some other brokers predicted
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  that 5 % of the agents would do like 80 % of
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  the business, right? Sometime down the road.
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  I think that with AI, that's going to accelerate.
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  Because some of the more effective agents will
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  be able to produce more with the help of tokens.
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  It's the same thing you see in engineering. The
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  best engineers that we have are producing 5 to
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  10 times more. They benefit more than junior
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  engineers. So the more experienced people benefit
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  more from using tokens. From an engineering side,
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  I think the same thing is happening in real estate.
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  Exciting days ahead. Joe Chen, CEO of Lofty,
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  thank you so much for joining us today. You're
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  welcome. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for listening
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  to Noise vs. Signal. Follow us on Instagram at
• 13:14
  Inmanews for more conversations and industry
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  insights. And be sure to subscribe wherever you
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  get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.
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  I'll see you next time.