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The residential real estate market is still a very local business, but why can’t the local Realtor or broker be armed with both national and hyper-local data to help them become the local expert that they need to be to grow in a very tough market? Plunk (https://www.getplunk.com/) is making that a reality.

Plunk is offering an AI-powered analytics platform for residential real estate. The company is bringing advanced analytics and unique data to residential real estate for more confident investing in the largest asset class in the world. Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence, computer vision and deep learning, Plunk delivers real-time insights into home valuation, risk assessment and remodeling analysis through its SaaS platform.

“The more we looked at the residential real estate market, the more we got convinced it was broken,” said David Bluhm, Plunk co-founder and president. “First, we got involved when NAR (the National Association of Realtors) asked me to put listings online. Before that listings were published as a huge, big book. During that timeframe I became aware of what a big opportunity there was to improve this business. We are going to be at this for a while before we fix everything. There’s a lot to fix.”

Bluhm envisions a future where there is total visibility into any home in real time. He likens it to a stock trade. If you trade stock, you know exactly what you’re trading and what it’s worth in real time. Plunk aims to make real estate very similar, and Bluhm believes that the technology can be used right now to make homes more affordable by reinventing how homes are sold.

“There is a massive affordability problem now,” he says. “A person must take two buses and a train to get to work because they simply can’t afford to live close to work. We wanted to create a platform that will make fractional investment attractive so you can afford a home on a teacher’s salary, for example. To this end, we started looking into how we could do that. If you ask me what gold is traded at, for example, do we have anything like that in the residential real estate? We have nothing like that. I should be able to collect data and tell you how this asset class is doing on a national and local basis.

“So, the first thing we did is build a data link to incorporate all the data necessary to provide any investor, lender, broker, Realtor, borrower, whoever wants it, total access and visibility. We got NAR, the different Multiple Listing Services, etc. to invest in us. We want people to have this insight at their fingertips. Realtors and brokers need to be financial advisors today,” Bluhm pointed out.

How does it work? The technology will enable you to go in and see the value of any house, but beyond that the user will be able to get an updated value on the house if they upload pictures of the house, for example. The technology will also be able to project the value of the house if conditions change. For example, the technology will be able to show the new value of that same house if a new Whole Foods moves to town, or a new train station is built, or if an extension is done on that house and the homeowner adds another bedroom or upgrades the kitchen.

The technology is powerful explains Bluhm and he sees Plunk as “the place people go to in order to find out anything they might need to know as it pertains to the real estate market.”