Beyond Bricks and Mortar: AI's Transformative Impact on Real Estate

When borrowers enter the loan process for a real estate purchase, they’re faced with a mountain of mind-numbing, impersonal, and often confusing paperwork. 

Not only that, but they can also anticipate defect rates between 5 and 10% from their loan officers — meaning they’re not getting the best interest rates, their loans will not reach approval, the process will take longer than it should, and more.

AI may be the solid solution to both of these dilemmas. Pavan Agarwal, CEO at Sun West Mortgage Company, is the visionary behind Angel AI. Touting the slogan, “AI You Can Bank On”, Angel AI is on a mission to manage financial inquiries quickly, efficiently, and empathetically.

What is Angel AI? 

Behind big-ticket financial decisions, such as mortgage loans, there is a plethora of manual decision-making at hand. If you’re in the financial industry, you know all too well that making a single mistake throughout that lengthy, manual process could cost your company millions to fix. Furthermore, a singular mistake could unfairly deny your customers from receiving a loan or put them in a bad financial situation. 

In 2018, Pavan and his team began assessing the manual nature of financial processes. Cue the lightbulb moment — AI could help. The team took AI’s offloading ability into consideration, and work began on Angel AI.

The team began by capturing Sunwest's internal data, including financial data, loan information, customer service reports, wins and losses, and more. By adding a layer of government rules and regulations, their functional training data set was built, and they could begin construction on the model. 

The goal of the model is to assist real estate agents, loan officers, and consumers by providing the best loan options for all parties based on historical and personal data. The AI communicates directly with the consumer to collect their data in a personalized way, lessening the stress of filling out boring and redundant forms. 

The model works with the loan officers and agents to provide them with the information they need to make decisions and level with the consumer. 

While some may believe that the model is going to take over loan officers’ roles, that is not the case. Legally, loan details must be communicated to the consumer, and the officer must ensure the consumer fully understands the proposed loan.

Angel AI’s role is to provide accuracy in an efficient, personalized way — and they’re achieving it at an unprecedented rate.

Accuracy from Angel AI

When rolling out the platform in 2018, Pavan and his team expected reluctance from agents and consumers to use it out of fear of accuracy. So, they found a solution.

“Before we rolled it out, I had years of experience with it. I knew how accurate it was. So, I rolled it out, and I put a warranty on it,” Pavan says. 

Pavan trusted the model so much that he guaranteed its accuracy, telling consumers that if a mistake or defect occurred, he would honor the loan on his books. 

Since 2018, there have been between 60,000 and 70,000 transactions run through the model, and Pavan has only had to write a check for four of them — that’s an accuracy rate of nearly 99.99999%, much better than the 90-95% traditional accuracy rate of the manual system.

What’s in Store for the Future of Angel AI? 

The overall goal of Angel AI is to take all of consumers’ financial planning into the hands of the model, ensuring the efficiency of each financial decision, loan application, and more.

Recently, the model was only available to real estate agents, offering them the capability to loop in loan officers and consumers. As of its launch during the Super Bowl, the model is now also available directly to consumers. 

With a large team of over 200 engineers, Angel AI is constantly evolving and updating. 

“We literally have upgrades and new features coming out on a weekly basis. It is expanding very rapidly,” Pavan says. 

One of the major gains Angel AI has made is its credit repair tool. The tool will serve to automate credit repair and report disputes in a low-cost, efficient way. Over 50% of Americans need some form of credit repair, yet the process is often too tedious to maneuver, and repair agencies are expensive. With this tool, Angel AI is aiming to change that.

With a strong display of trustworthiness and efficiency, Angel AI is moving to change the world of real estate financing.

Interested in learning more? Listen to our full conversation with Pavan on the latest episode of Ungated Conversations, where we take a deep dive into the worlds of finance and AI, discuss the next steps for Angel AI, and dig into common problems the model is working to solve. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast player.