Consolidation is shaking the foundation of real estate, and Brian Hoialmen is sounding the alarm. In this executive sit-down with Diego Sanchez, the Lofty exec shares how major platforms are pushing deeper into the consumer journey — and why brokerages and agents must act now to protect their market share.
From integrating AI into agent workflows to building a truly unified “search to settlement” platform, Brian unpacks Lofty’s leadership approach to innovation. He also lays out the strategic moves agents and teams should be making today to future-proof their business before the next wave of disruption hits.
From integrating AI into agent workflows to building a truly unified “search to settlement” platform, Brian unpacks Lofty’s leadership approach to innovation. He also lays out the strategic moves agents and teams should be making today to future-proof their business before the next wave of disruption hits.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Live from Colorado Springs, I'm Diego Sanchez, President of Housing Wire, and my guest today
00:12is Brian Hoylman, Chief Strategy Officer at Lofty. Brian, thanks for joining me today.
00:18Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this.
00:19So tell me a little bit about how you got to Lofty and how your extensive industry
00:25experience is shaping the company's vision for the future of real estate.
00:30Thanks for asking. I mean, I love that question. So I've been in the space for about 20 years.
00:33I've started, I won't say the companies, but from websites and we used to send out fax machines,
00:39copies to show pictures because it's too hard to download. So it's been that long, right?
00:44So I've been with a lot of companies over the years from the top enterprise level company in the space
00:49formerly to lead gen companies and PPC companies and all of that. And so one of the things that
00:56come into Lofty and why I'm here, I took two years off and I came back to the space because I wanted
01:01to work with a forward-thinking organization that's thinking not just CRM, not just what's in the market
01:08today. I wanted to be with a company that's forward-thinking the next five, 10, 15 years out
01:13and really connecting search to settlement with AI in a dynamic way, linking property management,
01:19prop tech, FinTech in a search to settlement to create more opportunity transactions. And that's
01:25what Lofty's vision is, is about creating that full, that full end-to-end search result to get
01:30consumers working with professionals within the FinTech, prop tech, insurance-based, whatever. We
01:36don't want to just be one resource. You want to connect the consumer to who they need to work with
01:41long-term to create lifetime value for the industry. That consolidation of your platform
01:46mirrors some consolidation that's happening in real estate. Absolutely. And I'm sure that's
01:50intentional. Yes. But can you talk a little bit about how consolidation is impacting the real estate
01:56profession? It's actually leaps and bounds just in the last 12 months alone. So what you're finding out
02:02right now is that everybody's searching to create that search to settlement within mortgage. And there's
02:07always been barriers between those two companies, you know, not being unified in one product. Now,
02:13those barriers in all the things that are happening are reducing that. That's number one. Number two,
02:19you're seeing a lot of consolidation between mortgage companies buying real estate, you know,
02:25companies and partnering with them. You see a lot of real estate companies starting more and more
02:31mortgage companies. A lot of them are getting property management companies. So what you're seeing is that
02:35as the commission lawsuit is coming in, they're looking for different ways to create revenue streams
02:41and the full revenue commissionable opportunities that happen in both markets. As that gets constrained,
02:47the way to continue is to access that revenue on one ecosystem. And the way that IEI is working today
02:56with companies like ours and other companies, it's how to provide the best resource to make that a one-stop
03:01shop for just the agent independent contractor, all the way up to corporate that's offering those
03:06subscriptions down. Historically, traditionally, the real estate agent is the quarterback of the home
03:13purchase and the home sale transaction. But there are some competitors for that role, right? Other
03:20folks who want to be in on that leadership of the transaction. Absolutely. How is Lofty helping agents
03:25and team leaders protect that quarterback role? You know, that's probably the best question I think
03:30I've heard in a long time. It's probably at the core, my foundational belief being an agent in the
03:36space and own the brokerage or part owner of that. Really, the buck starts at the agent level. And
03:43interesting that a stat like 85 to 92% of all real estate transactions that agents make starts with
03:50direct marketing, flyers, mailers, postcards, and not online leads. It's meeting people, shaking their
03:55hands, taking them out the coffee. And guess what AI can't do for you? It can't shake your hand and
04:00take you out the coffee. So really, what we really need to do is empower that. Empower that model that
04:06allows agents to have an independent, private, permissionable purpose to contact people legally
04:12and create an ecosystem of a database that's both personal, private, and independent that allows them to run
04:17their business at a team level, agent level, even a franchise level, but everybody's either top down
04:23or bottom up. We don't want agents to lose that connection to their personal database or people
04:28they can go to. So here at Lofty, we're really big on creating AIs that drive that relationship.
04:35It's really difficult for an agent in the space today to think about a raw lead that comes on,
04:41homeowner or renter, that signs up on a lead form. How do you create a relationship with somebody you
04:45don't know? You can't do it. You can't watch 10,000 leads at one time. You need your AI component
04:51to watch, cuddle, snuggle, create a relationship with somebody you don't know. And the whole point
04:59of moving forward is to make the agent the center of that relationship. I don't think AI is going to
05:04take them away from that, but we don't know what the future is going to be, but it's always going to
05:08start with an agent. And right now, if 85% start that way, I don't know how we're going to get that
05:13lower to 50. It's still going to be there. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And,
05:18you know, we're hearing a lot about end-to-end home ownership platforms,
05:22search to settlement, as you described it before. How do you help agents give their customers that
05:29experience that's a little bit more seamless and is a little bit more end-to-end, but again,
05:33where they stay at the center of the transaction? That's another good question. So if I'm an agent in
05:37the market, I want to have all my search, not just for raw internet leads, but my friends and
05:44family on listing alerts and market reports and data, because they're going to go out to get it
05:48from Zillow, from portals. I want agents in our organization here at Lofty, right,
05:54is all about creating that personable mobile app experience for the consumer to search.
06:01The idea of that, if you're going through an inspection, and then this is future state,
06:05you know, things that were going to happen in the future, right, where you want to be,
06:09you want to be able to have an inspection so the homeowner or at one point can click a button and
06:13know what the, you know, order a plumber, order all that from their app. They can just get that
06:20automatically bid and done right away. We have a process, we're working on that right now. We want
06:25to be able to create that home ownership portal type business that allows an agent that has any,
06:31Julie Smith, who exists in five other websites, who exists on Zillow, who's shopping in the mall
06:40for clothes. We want agents to be the personal shopper. We want to create an environment where
06:47they're helping design what you should be purchasing. And we need to think about this as that way,
06:53because that's the winning formula for AI. It's the winning formula is to create a personal experience
06:59AI between your personal agent AI to the shopper with you being at the center of it.
07:06And that's what we're doing at Lofty. So it really sounds like you're much more than just a CRM.
07:12Oh yes, much more. Tell us about the other components of that end-to-end platform that
07:16you're building for agents. So obviously everything starts off with
07:20the agents, you know, way they can, you know, they're storing them all their consumer or
07:25at a big brand SEO website all the way down. So whether it's a corporate site that's got,
07:30you know, a hundred thousand agents and, you know, 500 franchises all the way down,
07:35we want to create a membership. It's a different way to look at this business.
07:39Yeah, yeah. Instead of buying individual products,
07:41why not look at this as a membership, a subscription. So at Lofty, an individual agent
07:46can come purchase our subscription from Lofty. They get the full stack. And that's a certain price.
07:52Or if we partner with a broker, they can offer Lofty at the full stack down, but it's a lot less
07:58because they're offering that at a lower price. It's still the same product. It's not watered down.
08:03What that encompasses is a full website, sub domain website or full website. But we also have a full
08:09AI powered, a SEO system that's already built into our system, either on the subscription direct,
08:15or if you're a broker, like if you have a brokerage and your agents want to have an SEO site, 49 bucks,
08:20they click a button, they upgrade to that version of Lofty, not 300, 49, and they get a full SEO
08:26system. And it's really dynamic, but it's all AI driven. It's like SEO simple for an average agent.
08:31Yeah. So that that agent may want just that. If they have our CRM, which is your backend,
08:37but between there, you need an IDX, you need nurture, you need a full nurture for lead nurture.
08:42That is not a CRM. A CRM is not designed to nurture raw leads. The CRM is designed to create
08:48relationships. Right. So then you have to have that tracking of your relationship. So we have the CRM,
08:53we have transaction components. We're building an AI to write the transaction, edit the transaction with
08:59your AI agent. We have an AI sales agent to monitor what you're doing at the individual agent level,
09:04team level, broker level that manages your productivity as a salesperson. So it could be
09:09agent permissible purpose, team permissible purpose for their agents or broker all under one hierarchy.
09:16And then on the backside of things, you want your AI tracking where you're spending your money,
09:19how much money you're getting, what your commission on a dollar you spent for a lead
09:23or your effort as an agent. So if you're wanting to do social media, why don't you have an AI that
09:28does it all for you. But then it gives you the reporting on how much money that provided for
09:34you. You know, Brian, what I'm hearing is that Lofty is all in on AI, like you're infusing it into
09:40every component, every component in this ecosystem that you're building. Yes. So you're kind of moving
09:46beyond the hype. So Brian, how do you prioritize AI features that actually drive productivity over the
09:52hype? That's a great question. And there's a million ways to answer this. But at the end of the day,
09:57agents, when they're looking at AI brokers, when they're looking at AI, there's really two forms,
10:01AI agents doing jobs for you, you know, helping you do your job, writing content,
10:06those types of things. Everybody has ChatGPT and AI built, but we want to go to the next level.
10:11That's the hype people are talking about, right? Doing some jobs, writing a contract for us,
10:16but really separating that hype for where AI needs to go. It needs to put agents in a position that that's
10:22making their job easier so they can actually make more money doing other things that they need their
10:26AI to do, which is communicate their leads, set appointments for them, help them do lead gen,
10:32help them do automatic social media posting. And so agents are focusing on revenue generating activities
10:38and using and freeing up their time to do more of that in their system. The hype of AI is about
10:44making sure that I'm getting in front of people that want to buy a home without having to do any work.
10:50And that's really complex. That takes the entire search to settlement from a lead,
10:56from it first registers all the way through, through a converted process through AI. That's
11:00the hype we all want to get to. The hype that maybe agents are kind of getting excited about,
11:05it could write a content or a postcard for me, or it could do that. Yes, that's great.
11:09You want to go deeper.
11:10I want to go deeper. I want to go as deep as you can into wishing a dog a happy birthday.
11:16Anything that has, and making the agent the center of that relationship. And your AI has to really know
11:21birthdays, content related, but it has to be a living example of you in front to that consumer
11:28to make them create a relationship with you. Not take you out of the relationship,
11:33giving more people to shake their hands.
11:34So let's end with a roadmap question. What should your customers and partners look forward to from
11:43Lofty over the next 12 months? You know, that's a really good question. And I think the biggest
11:47thing aside from AI and creating the seamless search to settlement, top line product down that
11:53Lofty already has, and we're leading the space, run your business down, provide agents with the best
11:58end-to-end search to settlement platform. That's great, but not everybody wants to live there. We want to
12:03make products that are really dynamic, accessible to all agents to create different revenue
12:10opportunities from empowered by AI. So we're releasing quite a few products. We have a data
12:15product that we're coming out with. A lot of companies want access to data. So they want to
12:19have more homeowner data, different types of data resources. And we have that type of product for a
12:25mortgage company or those types of things. Or if you're a real estate broker and you have a website and
12:29you're buying MLS data, why not just give that to you? So you don't have to buy a platform,
12:34you are getting it at a lower cost. On an agent level, what I'm really excited about, which is
12:39already released as we speak, is any agent could just generate a lead. 65% of agents have websites,
12:4665% say they didn't get a lead. 80% have websites, 65% they didn't get a lead. So wait,
12:51how are we fixing revenue here if 65% of agents have a website but they're not getting leads? And then
12:57about 90% of agents have CRM aren't getting leads from their CRM. Well, why not provide leads in a
13:02box at ATM? So we just came out with a blast product. It's called Blast by Lofty. And today,
13:09you can log in today if you wanted, click a button and generate leads in one week with no product.
13:14Just push a button and with a listing, post it out there, get a lead. You can have any product in
13:18the space. Every agent could do it. They could do a zip where they can hyper local leads. We're talking
13:25seller leads. People live locally. Click a button, 99 bucks. They're generating 10, 20 leads in a week.
13:31So it's really, this is really the end-to-end platform. This is separate. They could just buy
13:36that. Yeah. If they don't want an end-to-end platform, then they're not getting leads from that
13:39CRM. Why not just get leads if they can't afford to buy an end-to-end platform? Or more importantly,
13:43their broker's not providing them maybe the membership or subscription. We have a website
13:49plus where it's full SEO website. We're going to be coming out within this year. And that allows
13:54for agents to have a full market center, lead gen, advertising, full website experience,
14:00and they'll be agnostic to CRM. So if you had follow-up boss or some other CRM, fine,
14:05you can use our best of breed AI-driven full nurture system, but you don't need to have our CRM.
14:11Or conversely, why not have an automatic farming tool that does all your AI farming,
14:16postcard farming, retargeting, advertising, have an exclusively zip code that's powered by AI with
14:23seller lead gen, but that's CRM agnostic or website agnostic. So we're trying to create a pathway
14:31to make agents money. It doesn't have to be one way. Right. Either end-to-end or plug certain
14:37widgets into your own system. That drive results. And they can do that. And I'm really excited about
14:41that because we want to be the prop tech organization for mortgage and real estate
14:47agents, not just the end-to-end platform. Brian, amazing conversation. Lots of exciting
14:51developments underway at Lofty. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.