Home renovation analytics app Plunk has announced a formal partnership with image data company Restb.ai, according to a press release sent to Inman.
Plunk, reviewed in August, is an app that actively monitors real estate market data as part of its methodology for helping agents and homeowners determine the potential impact on home value of home renovation projects, room upgrades and overall home quality.
Seattle-based Plunk also helps users breakdown what’s involved in a construction project and provides the financial impact according to project scope.
Plunk and Restb.ai will work in unison on Plunk’s new Dynamic Valuation Model, developed to eventually analyze and value-track nearly every home in America.
Restb.ai is a unique, sophisticated image analysis tool that “reads” pictures. It can determine physical features, such as bay windows or a kitchen island, and integrate those data points into searchable web content and home comparisons.
Image metadata is considered the next frontier of online search and SEM, or search engine marketing. The technology can help consumers find and compare houses according to specific interior features, further empowering the lifestyle-driven home buyer.
“Restb.ai will analyze, score and tag over 400 million images from over 53 million homes in the US and will be used by Plunk’s new AI-driven Dynamic Valuation Model,” the release stated.
In addition to MLS feeds and public property records, homes can be photographed into Plunk’s new tool with a user’s mobile device, run through Restb.ai’s algorithm, and thus updated with materials, finish quality and overall condition.
The intent is make market valuations more accurate and provide the industry with better overall data. The partnership could also lead to stronger, more consistent and consolidate industry data.
In a recent CNN report regarding Zillow’s iBuying shutdown and the role of technology in real estate, Move.com CEO David Doctorow said that image data is changing the way people browse homes on Realtor.com.
“We use computer vision technology to derive attributes from images, like homes with dog doors or homes with open floor plans, or with large office spaces,” he said. “When you gather this data from the images, it enables a whole class of new search opportunities, all around the nation.”
In the press release, Plunk CEO Brian Lent was effusive in what his company’s tech and their new partner can do for not only Plunk’s users, but the industry as a whole.
“Restb.ai’s capabilities are the best in the industry,” Lent said. “Given the important role that a home plays towards individual wealth building — and the role housing plays in our national economy — this might be the most innovative and important integration of AI, machine learning and image analysis thus far.”
