Mave, an AI assistant for real estate, announced it raised C$2 million in pre-seed funding and launched its beta program for agents and brokers. This funding round, which was raised and closed in just a few weeks, was led by Relay Ventures and N49P, with participation from Alate Partners, Clarim Ventures, and Gambit Partners, along with several angel and strategic investors, including a past president of the Toronto Real Estate Board.
After Mave founder and CEO Raz Zohar and his wife bought their first home, they became curious about the extensive and time-consuming work that real estate agents do behind the scenes to close a deal. There are 4.5+ million homes sold yearly in North America by 2 million agents across 350,000 brokerages. Raz wanted to understand why agents spend over 35 hours doing administrative work for each transaction and why the industry has not improved this much.
So, he became an executive assistant for agents across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and gained firsthand experience with the constant demands on agents’ time and their reliance on phone calls, texts, and emails to manage tasks while juggling client needs across the city.
Raz learned that brokerages aim to support agents, but with their commission split per deal getting smaller and smaller, many lack resources for dedicated backend assistance. And recognizing this gap and the opportunity presented by the rapid improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM), Mave was born as an AI assistant for real estate agents and brokers.
Even though Mave has been operating in stealth mode, it has attracted interest from 6,000+ real estate agents across over 90 brokerages in the GTA. And from this pool of potential users, Mave has selected 1,000 to initially onboard as part of its beta program.
To support the agents, the Mave team has worked on securing access to extensive market data and related property information through partnerships with real estate boards and other data providers. As the Mave AI assistant is trained using these deep insights, real estate agents can harness market and neighborhood insights to respond instantly to client requests and deliver greater customer service.
Agents just have to text Mave questions such as “What is the price per square foot of homes in this postal code?” Through Mave, research and analysis no longer take agents an entire day.
with the Mave AI assistant, agents are more productive, and brokerages can finally offer the type of support their agents need to turn the stressful, anxiety-producing experience of buying or selling a home into a seamless transaction. And Mave quickly automates backend tasks, such as creating social media posts, marketing materials, e-mails, and presentations in seconds, not hours or days. Since agents primarily use their phones to text or message their back-office teams, Mave seamlessly fits into existing workflows, enabling agents to interact with the AI assistant through text messages just as they would their real assistants to get tasks done.
The daily wins and use cases shared by agents testing the platform have exceeded Mave’s expectations. For example, for one agent participating in the beta program, the ability to quickly respond to a client’s questions and price the property promptly enabled them to secure a listing within 24 hours. And another agent that used Mave to optimize a listing saw showings go from zero to 11 in one week. Another agent used Mave to create the concept, script, post, and caption for an Instagram campaign, leading to a sale for $100,000 over the asking price.
Among the first Mave beta customers is PSR Brokerage, a luxury boutique real estate firm with over 150 agents in Southern Ontario, including Toronto, Muskoka, Forest Hill, Vaughan, and Port Credit. The brokerage specializes in resale and pre-construction sales, supported by high-end marketing services for its clients. Within the first week of signing up to participate in the Mave beta program, 60% of agents use the AI assistant at least six times per week.
KEY QUOTES:
“Not much has changed in recent years about the way the real estate industry operates. To modernize their brokerages, many look to existing tools for help. But these can be overwhelming for agents to use given the sheer volume of tasks for each listing and the fact that agents are always on the go. Mave is the first solution we’ve seen that really solves the core problems the industry faces in a way that is easy enough for any agent to adopt. Raz’s vision is to harness the power of AI so any brokerage can streamline its backend operations and support its agents using something as simple as text and nothing more. We believe in Raz and his team and are confident that this is the right approach for the industry. With a critical mass of brokerages using Mave, it will become the operating system for the residential real estate industry.”
-Alex Baker, Managing Partner at Relay Ventures
“While our initial focus is on handling marketing tasks, with the funding in place we are expanding our development to establish Mave as a full-time assistant. Mave will handle key back-end administrative tasks, from coordinating an open house to finalizing contracts better and faster than ever before. This will enable agents to focus on what matters most – servicing their customers and growing their brand.”
-Raz Zohar, founder and CEO of Mave
“Mave gives our agents a competitive advantage by providing them with the exact support they need to improve their responsiveness to clients. Clients have high expectations of realtors to know every detail about thousands of listings. With Mave, we finally found the perfect solution to enable our teams to meet this demand effortlessly. With essential information at our agents’ fingertips, productivity and client service are enhanced, empowering us to win listings more frequently.”
-Joshua Chisvin, VP of Resale, Partner at PSR Brokerage
