In the wake of new legislation which thwarts efficiency in the real estate market, Wesleyan Student Bennett Montrose ‘25 teamed up with his cousin to work on solutions. Together, they created Solde, a company started during the summer of 2024. Solde is a Software as a Service (Saas) business that utilizes computer programming and AI to assist real estate brokerages and agents in light of new legislation which limits the flow of information. Below is the short interview with Bennett Montrose, the co-founder of Solde. The interview is segmented into questions and answers, which is the condensed and paraphrased version of our hour-long conversation.

Question: Can you briefly describe what your business achieves?

Answer: It is basically a real estate AI communication service. It relays information regarding listings about commission percentages, information about the listing, and more between buyers’ agents and listing agents. It also allows agents to request showings, track engagement, and manage showings. The most crucial part is that it provides commission information on listings.

Question: Why is this an important service for real estate agents?

Answer: There was an NAR (National Association of Realtors) settlement released in August of this year (2024), which is effective nationwide. In the legislation, it is no longer permissible for aggregated commission information to exist on any website, nor commission information to be present whatsoever on MLS (Multiple Listing Service). This settlement attempts to make pricing more fair and the market more transparent, but it also provides added difficulty for buyers agents in finding how much they might earn on a listing, and makes listing agents less visible. The MLS website is an (almost) all in one service hub that agents use to find listings, commission information, and property notes about listings. It is used by every agent in the industry. This hub is now much less useful due to the NAR settlement because the law requires commission information to be two-clicks away from the original page. 

Question: How does your service work around the NAR settlement?

Answer: Well, thanks to the settlement, the buying agents have two options to find important information about properties. They can either directly contact the other agent or find this information in a public domain that is two clicks away from its original page. The former would inundate listing agents with dozens of unsolicited calls and the latter would then require the listing agent to create a unique website (as to be not aggregated) at least two clicks away from the listing for every listing they manage. This is incredibly unreasonable for real estate agents to navigate, especially those without a technical background in software. The reason why this company started and where it fits into the market is because real estate agents will not want to be consumed by dozens of phone calls for information that has previously been far more accessible. They want the information at their fingertips. We created this service to do just that. We partner with agencies and brokerages to sell software to them at a low rate per agent. The service allows listing agents to register addresses including notes and commission information. Basically they text the service claiming they are the listing agent for a property, and then they register the information for the property. Since the property is registered in our database, it will then get a lot more engagement since it is not hidden two clicks away and does not require a phone call for the information to be accessed. Another benefit is that then, the listing agent is able to monitor this engagement, seeing how often people text about the property. The software is also completely free for buying agents, so, for no cost, virtually anyone is able to text our software to receive information about a property they are interested in.

Question: I can see how this is beneficial for buying agents, as they now have easier access to the information needed at no cost, but why exactly is this beneficial to listing agents who have to pay for the service?

Answer: Listing agents will no longer have to actively respond to dozens of phone calls, and they will have a central hub where they can see engagement with properties. They can also manage showing requests. The service is also available for a low monthly cost. Listing agents would want buyers agents and anyone else interested to be able to easily access property information for free because this would give them more engagement. Also, brokerages are able to subsidize the cost of this service with the help of title companies. If the brokerage wants the service, but cannot afford the cost per agent, title companies may pay for some of the cost, and brokerages may pay for some of the cost. What that looks like on our end is that we get extra profit because both parties are paying over half the cost. Title Companies want brokerages to have this service in order to get more engagement and also receive some advertising from the service because the text would include that it was sponsored by XYZ title company. Our profit margins are increased greatly by the partnership between brokerages and title companies. 

Question: Does anyone else benefit from this service?

Answer: Mortgage companies have also expressed interest in our service. These companies are curious about what data we collect in our database, so we are able to sell data to these companies as well as selling our service to agents.

Question: How did you come up with this business idea?

Answer: My cousin is in real estate, he was describing how his work became harder with the NAR settlement, wishing there was some solution. I immediately thought, “this problem is solvable with a series of true or false questions that can be asked through agents.” And I also thought, later on, that this solution sounds like an issue best addressed through techniques in computer programming. I eventually got to programming this solution and developed the software for our service. My cousin is the primary sales representative for our service as he is a real estate agent and more connected to the market through his firm. I focus more heavily on the operations and software development side of the business.

Question: How does this service work:

Answer: It is actually in the process of an update, so I will give both what it originally accomplished and what it will due after the update. The original model took two roles: the listing agent and the buying agent. The listing agent will text the service saying that they have a property, at say, 123 Main Street, and put into the text service the commission percentage. Then, the software searches for all locations of that street, using google maps, and finds the full address of that location, responds to the agent saying “Is 123 Main Street in XYZ city the address you would like to register? The agent can then respond yes or no, and if the agent says yes, the software will register that location with the commission along with any other information they want to include. This additional information can be something like “this is a beautiful property, the owner plans to sell in three months,” or whatever else they want to include. This will conclude the remarks of the interaction and the chatbot will give a summary of the service to the texter. Also included in the service, the MLS website will now include a specific phone number (text XYZ 123 Main St) for more information. This will instruct whoever is looking at the property to text message our service to learn information about the property.

Buying agent:

The buying agent will text into the 123 Main St phone number listed on the MLS page, and the chatbot will clarify if the address listed is the correct address. If the buying agent responds in the affirmative, the chatbot will respond with the commission percentage along with the information that the listing agent included. The chatbot will also ask if the buying agent would like to request a showing for the property, inquiring about their name, brokerage, and date and time for the requested showing. If the buying agent responds with these details, our service will text the listing agent that a buying agent has requested a showing (showing the relevant details). The listing agent can now confirm, deny, or reschedule the showing request. If they choose to reschedule, they can propose a new time for the showing. In any case, there will be a text sent to the buying agent.

Update:

The update to our software allows the conservations to be less formatted and more conversational through the use of Open AI’s API.

Question: Where do you see your business going?

Answer: Well, we have over 400 agents signed on already, along with partnerships with one title company and engagement with multiple mortgage companies. Our hope is that we can corner the market in Arizona, where our company started. If we can make that happen, our long-term goal is to see if we can get this implemented at larger companies. We hope to jump from firm to firm, and also partner with parent companies that we have already partnered with in order to take our company nation-wide.