From Appraisers to Algorithms

How AI is changing the future of home pricing

Ric Edelman: It's Thursday, October 26th. How much is your house worth? You can probably give me a ballpark figure, but to get an official answer, you know the kind of answer that your bank or your mortgage company wants to know. Then you've got to hire an appraiser. This person will go visit the property. They'll make a visual inspection. They'll look at the building's layout. They'll check for prices of comparable properties on the street. They'll consider the neighborhood's amenities, like schools and the community swimming pool. They'll pay attention to potholes and the models of cars parked along the street.

But in the future, your appraiser will not be a person. It'll be AI. Algorithms can now look at your house using Google Street View. It can scour the internet for data about the neighborhood. It can render a price that's amazingly accurate. At MIT, they trained AI by showing it data on 27 million houses, and they found that the software was remarkably effective at describing the neighborhood's profile, including facts about its poverty, crime and public health. They are now training it to use public images from real estate websites, along with social media, to examine the interior of the houses.

Soon, that AI will know if there have been upgrades to the kitchen or bathroom, and you'll get the report in seconds, not days or weeks, and for a fraction of what you pay today for an appraisal. By the way, if you're an appraiser, you. You're going to get a pink slip. Start looking now for another line of work.

Yeah, tech's pretty cool. It's also pretty disruptive. You can either lament this what ever happened to the good old days? Or you can acknowledge honestly, the good old days really weren't all that good. You really want to live the lifestyle of Queen Victoria. Your house is a whole lot better than her castle was. You've got indoor plumbing and heating and air conditioning and a toilet. She had none of that. Do you ever visit the Titanic Museum? Those first class cabins that the Ascots and the Vanderbilts died in were far worse than the ordinary cabins on a Carnival cruise ship today.

So let's move into the future. Okay, instead of trying to hold on to the past, disruption is the name of the game, and we need to recognize that disruption is just another word for innovation. And all innovation starts with the basic building blocks, the elements, and the tools we need to create new and better everything. And that means we need to start by looking at disruptive materials.

I'm talking about the basic building blocks copper, lithium, nickel, zinc, manganese. Cobalt. Rare earth metals. Platinum. Carbon fiber. Palladium. Graphene. These materials are projected to grow in market share from 4% to 23% per year over the next decade. That's because these materials are crucial in the development of emerging technologies and industries. I'm talking renewable energy, electric vehicles, advanced electronics. Historically, they've also been a good hedge against inflation.

That's why you ought to consider the Global X Disruptive Materials ETF. The symbol is DMAT. It invests in companies that are producing these metals and other raw materials which are being used in lithium batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells, robotics, even 3D printers. Check out the Global X Disruptive Materials ETF symbol DMAT. It's available at Global X ETFs.com. The link is in your show notes. Or if you're an investor, ask your financial advisor about it.

One last thing I want to mention to you. I'm really excited that a very dear friend of mine, Robin Goldfin, is producing a play. This is Robin's second play that he's produced in New York, and I'm really excited about this one. The premiere is Thursday, November 9th. The play is called Flawless. It focuses on Estella, a daughter who's watching her father care for his wife who has Alzheimer's disease. We see her father's love, his extraordinary patience and unwavering commitment as Estella herself moves through time and space to learn the flickering power of memory. They're only going to be 12 performances. The premiere is Thursday, November 9th. Jean and I certainly are going to be there. This is off-off Broadway at the theater for New York City. Off-off Broadway is so much fun.

As I mentioned, it's Robin's second play to be performed in New York, and what is perhaps all the more remarkable is that Robin, we've been friends since high school, one of the most important people in my life. Throughout those very formative years, Robin himself has been a member of the faculty at NYU, where he has taught creative writing for the past. I don't know, 30, 40 years or so. Robin now is himself struggling with an illness, and while it's very different from Alzheimer's disease, it is just as devastating. It's a massive systems atrophy. It's similar to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and it's going to have the same outcome. Despite his condition, Robin is often at rehearsals and he's for sure going to be at the premiere. The links to the play FlawlessThePlay.com and Indiegogo. Robin is trying to raise money to produce this play. I encourage you to provide support so we can provide an artistic examination of Alzheimer's disease. Flawless the Play. Dot com and Indiegogo.com. Thanks for your consideration. 

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