JUDD HOFFMAN: I'm Judd Hoffman, CEO of Ethica AI.
PHIL HAWKINS: I'm Phil Hawkins. I'm the California Association of REALTORS® CEO.
JUDD HOFFMAN: All right, so what we're going to do first is show you a little video, then I'm going to ask Phil some questions, and if you guys have any, you can ask us a little bit about Ethica and anything you want to ask Phil. You guys good? So tough questions that way, easy questions this way. I think he has that opposite, but we'll see.
[DEMO VIDEO]
JAMIE: Hi Matt, I'm just leaving my open house. How'd you like Main Street?
MATT: Well, Rachel hasn't stopped talking about the swing set in the backyard since we left. We really think this could finally be the one.
JAMIE: I was hoping you would say that. Let's put together an offer so that you can have the best chance to get this home.
MATT: We'll take your advice and offer $1.295 million.
JAMIE: Perfect. I'll put together a draft and send it right over.
MATT: I have a good feeling about this one, Matt. Thanks Jamie, for always being available and for your expertise.
JAMIE: It's my pleasure. We'll talk soon. Hey Siri, call Ethica.
ETHICA: Welcome back, Jamie. As your AI transaction assistant, how can I help?
JAMIE: Let's start an offer for 138 Crocker Avenue in Daly City.
ETHICA: All set. I've started a new offer draft and texted you the setup link. I see you've opened the link. I've applied your competitive template for conventional financing, pre-filled the county, APN, and seller's name. I just need the buyer's name and offer price.
JAMIE: Matthew and Tiffany Bower, $1.295 million.
ETHICA: Got it. Everything is ready for review. Your template fields appear in green while your current offer details appear in black.
JAMIE: Ethica, before we send, can we add the wine refrigerator to the included items?
ETHICA: Done. Anything else?
JAMIE: Ethica, let's pause here while I review the RPA.
ETHICA: Absolutely, Jamie. I'm here whenever you need me.
JAMIE: That looks perfect. Go ahead and send it to the buyers for signature, both text and email.
ETHICA: For your protection, you'll need to acknowledge the documents and personally click send for signature. Great. Your buyers have received the signing packet. I'm here if you need anything else.
[END DEMO VIDEO]
JUDD HOFFMAN: So do you know what that is? This is a full transaction assistant for you. It fills out C.A.R. forms. So we have three forms right now, RLA, RPA, and BRBC, and you can do it all from your phone, 100 percent. But the big difference here is there's nothing for you to learn. Ethica learns what you need. There's no app, there's nothing. Like true AI that I haven't really seen here. It actually learns what you need and what you want and figures that out on a daily basis.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Phil a couple questions. If you guys have some questions, ask away. All right, Phil, as you talk with agents across California, how is the job of being an agent changing, and what's becoming harder?
PHIL HAWKINS: Well, since most of you are from California, I'm going to be preaching to the choir here, but transactions. We're down in transactions, that most of you know. From about 2000 to 2022 in California, we had between 400,000 and 450,000 transactions in the state. Since 2022, we're hovering around the 270,000. That's a big difference. So there's a lot less transactions.
The client, and again, I'm preaching to the choir here, your clients are looking for the REALTOR® to respond 24-7. You know, real estate's never been a nine-to-five job, but I would say it's getting worse over that time period. So they're looking for quicker access, more demanding, and transactions have gotten harder, not easier. So it's kind of all the above when you say, you know, what's going on in the real estate market in California. So everything's gotten harder.
JUDD HOFFMAN: Everything. Fair enough. When C.A.R. began thinking about how AI can help its members, where were you looking, and what were you looking for for its agents?
PHIL HAWKINS: So, and we've been talking about this, looking at this for years now, and saying, first I should say AI is a tool. AI is a tool to make your life easier. It is not there to replace the agent. It is not there, you know, to take over. It is a tool for agents to use.
Now, we're always trying to figure out how can we help our members use AI as a tool to help them in their business and ultimately help the client, make that experience with a client better. So, you know, we're always looking at what we can do to help educate our members, and this product was, it was natural for us in working with Ethica to deliver this product to our members.
JUDD HOFFMAN: What made C.A.R. decide this was something every member should have as a member benefit?
PHIL HAWKINS: So, all of our members do transactions at some point, maybe not every year, but all of our members do transactions. In my role, the California Association of REALTORS® is a trade association, and in my mind a trade association is to make our members' lives better, and we're always looking for products such as this that makes our members' lives better.
JUDD HOFFMAN: Why we really like C.A.R., and to kind of piggyback on what Phil said, is it's also about compliance, right? And so what we find too is agents love to kind of figure out how to be more compliant, how to help their clients a little better, and why we love the partnership and member benefit is C.A.R. makes sure that you guys have compliance, it's regulated, and it's something you can use on a daily basis.
Also, to our right, everyone that has a phone, scan the QR code, and let me tell you what that's going to do. We can say everything, you guys wanted a demo. This AI shouldn't be a demo product, it should be a product that you use. So if you scan that QR code, Ethica will call you and set up a demo for you. That's the first demo, right? She should be working for you. And that's also why we love and why we decided to be a member benefit. It should be free, right? Everyone's so afraid of AI right now, and everybody in here has AI.
PHIL HAWKINS: Can I say not free, included in the dues.
JUDD HOFFMAN: Thank you. It's not free, it's included in the dues. Did I say that correctly?
PHIL HAWKINS: You said that correctly. Thank you.
JUDD HOFFMAN: Just like we practiced. Thank you, thank you.
PHIL HAWKINS: So I would also say, if I can add to this, this is built to be a mobile product, and all of you have your phones on you right now, all of you are probably looking at your phones right now. REALTORS® are out in the field a lot, and this hopefully, and this is the goal, this hopefully frees up that time, because you can start that transaction, you saw the video right there, on your mobile product and actually complete it at that time, rather than going back to your office and typing up things.
And I don't know about you, I'm getting older. If I'm in front of that client and they tell me, like I think the example was there, we want to include the wine fridge, there's a good chance by the time I get back to the office, I'm going to forget that. But if I go to the car and I start filling that out right then, there's a better chance I'm not going to miss that.
JUDD HOFFMAN: And that's a great point. The impetus of this, great point Phil, was every REALTOR® hides a laptop underneath their passenger seat. They have a laptop and they're running back to their office. This is 100 percent on your phone. You can literally leave a dinner, call Ethica, fill out a BRBC and send it. Trying to free up time. It's an actual system.
PHIL HAWKINS: And you don't have to finish it, correct? You can put everything you knew it right then and then finish it at a later date, so you don't forget that part right there.
JUDD HOFFMAN: And Ethica will know where you stopped, what you didn't fill out, and will go exactly to that place.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. It looks like a great product. I'm also a vendor of AI, and just to get the real estate agent to jump in a call with me, it's so difficult. So I'm curious what you guys are doing to, I mean, being part of the benefits is great, but what I've been trying to do to actually get them to start using it, because they're so busy, right? They don't have time for anything.
JUDD HOFFMAN: It's an amazing question. Adoption has been the biggest, right? So what are we doing is, vendor to vendor I guess, it's making it easy. And so we're meeting agents where they are, in their car, right? Eating lunch in their car, just making a phone call. So what I found is, one of the founders is, you know, you heard that, she left, the REALTOR® from Texas, what's the app? Not having an app, right? You just pick up the phone and you're speaking to her. That's, we're finding that the less you have an agent to put on their plate, the more adoption you'll have. They can do whatever they want while they're driving. How many people drive and make phone calls, right?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You said it was a full like assistant, so we could do counter offers, requests for repairs, everything?
JUDD HOFFMAN: Great, great question. Like an assistant, we're teaching her slowly but surely. So the way we decided to build this is just like that. You guys ever hire somebody? What do you do? One task, next task, next task. It's agentic, right? So it's learning. It's learning the BRBC, getting that right. Learning the RPA, getting that right. RLA, getting that right. Next is AVID. We're doing something with the AVID that's really cool. How many people, when you go through anything in a house, you write stuff down on a pad? Now you can actually take a picture of that memo pad. Every little thing that's on there, it'll actually push up to your AVID. Like it's actually going to be a real assistant. Like AI is something that's so incredibly powerful. If you use it correctly, it'll change your whole life.
JUDD HOFFMAN: How does Ethica change an agent's transaction?
PHIL HAWKINS: You know, I wouldn't say it completely changes it. What it does, it's your assistant in doing the transaction. So I mentioned that this is a mobile product. So we live in a mobile world, and it's another tool to help our agents. And ultimately, I'm hoping it saves the agent more time to allow them to do other things. You know, I talked about the transactions being down. Our members are spending more and more time trying to find transactions now. You know, you have a client, you're doing everything you can with that client, but they are trying to get that next client, and freeing up some of that time is going to help them.
JUDD HOFFMAN: 100 percent. Thank you. And you know what? You saw, when Jamie was on that video, she had a dinner to go to that night. She was still able to go to that dinner instead of having to go back to her office. That's all we're trying to do is save time. Anybody else? And I know we're over time, I'm sorry.
