Yesterday, Qualia hosted its Future of Real Estate Series Fall Session: Spotlight on Automation. During the hour-long mainstage event, Qualia leaders discussed how automation will transform real estate to deliver next-generation home purchase experiences.
Making sense of an industry buzzword— what is the real value of automation?
Qualia CEO, Nate Baker, kicked off the event with a brief introduction on automation and its dual role to 1) streamline internal business operations and 2) connect the real estate ecosystem through a shared platform.
“Historically, you couldn’t automate a transaction because all of the constituents were using various systems that couldn’t talk to each other and couldn’t make decisions based on one another easily… This is really where the transaction slowed down,” Baker said. With a shared platform like Qualia, constituents can move forward much quicker through a common operating system.
A shared system also enables consistency and uniformity in the homebuying experience. Baker detailed Qualia’s Partner API, which enables real estate technology companies to offer a uniform interface for real estate agents, lenders, and consumers to interact with title agents during the closing process.
Baker explained that through a shared system, the real estate industry can move toward a world where mundane, repeatable steps can be automated away. With this type of automation, people can focus on creative problem-solving and other human tasks.
How a shared platform enables end-to-end automation
Qualia’s Director of Product, Charlotte Brown, discussed how automated operations, coupled with a connected real estate ecosystem, culminate in end-to-end automation.
“If we can get technology to automate our rudimentary tasks it will a) eliminate natural human error and b) allow your skilled workforce to work on more valuable and engaging matters,” Brown said.
Automation is possible in a connected ecosystem when partners leverage a shared platform that’s paired with automated tasks. She highlighted refinances as a perfect use case for a fully-automated process.
The future: fully-automated refinances with Qualia
Brown delivered a brief demonstration of how Qualia’s dynamic workflow tools for title agents can be programmed with different event triggers to automatically request and retrieve data from every constituent in a refinance transaction on Qualia’s platform. In the future, as more automated events are added to Qualia, a fully-automated refinance will be possible.
Brown stressed that automating processes like a refinance isn’t just about making tasks faster; it’s also a powerful tool to strengthen your brand. “Automating the refi process is about making your vision of real estate repeatable and at the caliber of your expertise and service—every transaction, every single time,” Brown said.
Qualia’s latest product updates
During the event, Qualia product leaders discussed new products, features, and integrations built for title & escrow agents, mortgage lenders, and underwriters.
For mortgage lenders: Qualia’s Physical Document Service
Earlier this year, Qualia announced the initial version of Qualia Post, a product offering that helps mortgage lenders and title & escrow companies streamline the post-closing process by automating the collection of trailing documents.
Joel Gottsegen, co-founder & CTO of Qualia, offered the latest update to Qualia Post: the Physical Documents Service. “The industry as a whole is shifting to digital documents; however, managing paper documents is still a necessity during the post-closing process. Especially where e-recording is not available,” he explained. “This new service fully-outsources the management of physical trailing documents and removes the final roadblock to a fully-automated post-closing process.”
To learn more about the Physical Document Service, click here.
For title insurance underwriters: new features on the horizon with Qualia Assure
Qualia’s Director of Business Development, Max Lamb, discussed new Assure features that will further enable automated processes between title insurance underwriters and title agents.
“Up until now, nearly all remittance payments were sent via paper check,” Lamb noted. “The underwriter and the title agent both had to complete manual work to ensure their separate software systems had the same information.” Through Assure’s new features, agents will be able to automate how they send remittance data. They will also be able to enable electronic payments of the remittances.
For title & escrow businesses: the latest Qualia Platform updates
During the mainstage and breakout sessions, product experts detailed the latest Qualia platform updates for title & escrow users including:
- New Reporting features: Expanded functionality of Qualia’s preloaded reports as well as advanced filtering and configuration features.
- Multi-account disbursement: Title & escrow agents can now collect funds in a clearing account and transfer them to specific, relevant accounts once funds are cleared. This provides an extra layer of security for complicated transactions with many types of funds.
- Construction draws: Users can now manage the disbursement of loans funds, or “draws”, which can speed up construction project completion.
- Rate effective date updates: Users can now specify the dates they want to use for rate calculation purposes. This offers greater transparency and accuracy for rate calculations.
- Bulk Orders: Title & escrow companies can increase their efficiency and take on new kinds of business with bulk orders, which enables multiple orders to be placed at once. This can be leveraged with investors, parcels, new construction, and more.
Drawing parallels: automation in transportation and real estate
To wrap up the mainstage event, Nate Baker joined former US Secretary of Transportation and current Chief Policy Officer at Lyft, Anthony Foxx, for a fireside chat on the future of automation.
Foxx explained that autonomous vehicles and connected payment systems are already enabling the cost-efficient transit of the future in the transportation sector. Similarly, the real estate industry is undergoing its own digital transformation which will enable greater cost efficiencies in real estate transactions. In both cases, automation provides greater financial opportunities for Americans, which opens up new possibilities for homeownership.
To read more about the Foxx-Baker fireside chat, stay tuned for a recap of the conversation. Click below to subscribe to Qualia Insight for updates straight to your inbox.
