Camphor’s AI Property Search: Disrupting Real Estate Exploration

Finding a perfect home is more than just about location and price now. You must want to find out the neighborhood history, distance from the nearest supermarket, or the appreciation rate.

However, finding all this information can be a hassle. That’s where Camphor comes into the picture. Founded by Roshan Srinivasan and Shawn Patel, Camphor is an AI-powered Property Search tool launched on October 25, 2023. The tool aims to offer a unique and data-driven approach to how homebuyers, real estate agents, and brokers explore properties. 

In the little time the tool has been in the market, it has generated massive buzz with its unique approach and utilization of AI to provide a more enhanced customer experience.

Camphor’s AI: Your New & Smart Assistant to Finding Homes

Camphor has released its AI-powered property search tool in public beta, inviting homebuyers, real estate agents, and brokers to become a part of this property search revolution. The tool is developed on a proprietary datalake and uses a powerful AI assistant to find deep property insights. 

The Camphor AI assistant is currently launched in the Bay Area, CA, and New York City, NY. If you are interested in properties in these areas, you can access the assistant here – http://search.camphor.co/

Camphor is looking forward to transforming the way people interact with real estate data.

The Challenge: Personalizing the Homebuying Experience

There are countless platforms to search for real estate in the market. And many of them are really good. However, they still fail to address a few of the buyers’ pain points. For instance, you can use a platform to find details like carpet area, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and budget. 

But what about details, like nearest school districts, neighborhood nuances, appreciation rate, or remodeling possibilities? The traditional process does not involve addressing these issues, even though they have a significant impact on the buyer’s decision to buy a home. 

To personalize the homebuying experience and answer these questions, Camphor was launched. 

Founders’ Journey: From Tech to Real Estate Pioneers

Camphor’s founders, Roshan Srinivasan and Shawn Patel had backgrounds in product management and engineering before they decided to move into the proptech space. 

Roshan was the first product hire in a startup backed by a16z, NEA, and Energize Ventures in the automotive industry. He was also a product manager at Roblox. Shawn has worked as an engineer(hardware and ML) with Google and Uber. 

Both Roshan’s and Shawn’s families had real estate backgrounds. Roshan started looking for good real estate investments to make a passive income while Shawn’s family had some investments in residential and commercial real estate. 

Their past roles provided them the experience to seize the proptech opportunity they found after being part-time real estate investors. Both of them met through mutual friends and realized they shared a common passion for solving this specific data problem in the real estate sector. And soon, Camphor came into existence.

Beyond Bedrooms and Budgets: Camphor’s Mission to Redefine Personalized Home Searches

Camphor is a new player in the proptech space. However, their mission and claims look promising. They want to transform the way people search for real estate. Their AI property search tool curates data from various private APIs and public data sources, consolidated into Camphor’s datalake. It focuses on data, such as zoning, transaction history, property hazards, parcel info, financials, neighborhood, weather, mortgages, and more.

They have also started focusing on the revenue model. They recently introduced a monthly and yearly subscription model for Camphor’s premium version for investors and serious buyers in the Bay Area and New York City. This premium subscription offers access to zoning information (ADU eligibility, zoning laws, and more), liens, permits, and off-market listings. 

The Property Search Experience: How It Works

Camphor’s AI property search tool allows users to ask qualitative or quantitative questions. There are two levels to the data – 

List of Properties: Users can search for properties based on various attributes, such as specific locations, MLS numbers, property types, and more.

Individual Property Information: If you shortlisted a property, you can find more information about that by asking questions about the neighborhood, transportation options, school districts, or local amenities.

It can only provide data for the Bay Area, CA, and New York City, NY, at the moment. However, Camphor plans to expand its property search tool to more cities and regions in the coming months.

Two Avenues of Exposure: AI-Powered Search and Developer-Friendly API

Camphor believes their primary product is their data. And they expose it in two significant ways:

AI-Powered Property Search: This tool is designed for buyers, agents, and brokers. You can input a natural language query to receive property insights instantly. 

Enterprise Suite for Brokerages: Camphor has recently introduced enterprise-style products for brokerages. Brokerages can use Camphor to enhance their personalized search experience, boosting conversions from homebuyers. Additionally, they offer early access to a separate product that helps agents in pre-filling listing information. It significantly reduces the time required to upload a new listing from 1-2 hours to just 15 minutes.

API for Developers: Camphor also offers an API for developers. This allows proptech companies and developers to integrate real estate insights smoothly into their products.

What’s Next? Continuous Innovation and Geographic Expansion

Camphor’s decision to launch its AI property search tool in the public beta phase is just the beginning. The team plans to release new features every week. They will be focusing on expanding the tool’s filtering options, enhancing performance, improving reliability, and expanding to more geographic locations.

They have been constantly working on improving the tool and recently launched the addition of zoning data and the Camphor AI assistant for property reports.

Zoning: The new zoning data has been added for the Bay Area, CA, and New York City, NY. This will provide homebuyers and investors the opportunity to dig deeper into a property’s usability. For instance, you get answers to questions such as 

• Can the property be used for short-term rentals?
• If a single-family home can be transformed into a multifamily property?
• Or can an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) be installed on the property?

AI Assistant: Property reports contain a lot of information that can be hard for buyers and investors to understand. Camphor has introduced the AI summarization feature to provide necessary information, such as location scores, census, and MLS descriptions. You can just go through the summary to get all the relevant information. Got more questions, you can just ask the AI assistant. And it will provide all the answers.

Launching in public beta is a strategic move for Camphor, inviting a wider community to provide valuable feedback. The team believes in the power of collective insights and anticipates uncovering novel use cases for their tool beyond the intended scope. Homebuyers, real estate agents, brokers, and those in the residential space are encouraged to get involved, provide feedback, and join the private advisory group.

Spreading the Camphor Home Buzz

The public beta launch is a strategic move from Camphor. They invited a wider community to provide feedback. Camphor’s team believes in gathering insights from users to reveal new use cases for the tool. 

Homebuyers, real estate agents, brokers, and those in the residential space are encouraged to get involved, provide feedback, and join the private advisory group.

Camphor also encouraged them to share the news with others to help more people with their property search journey. They will soon have a ‘Sign Up’ option, so you don’t just have to ask someone to ‘check out’ their tool.

Camphor’s mission is clear. They want to provide the necessary tools to real estate professionals and consumers to make smarter decisions using data. As personalization is becoming a key attribute in the real estate space, Camphor’s AI Property Search tool looks to bring a positive change to the game.