Real Estate's Nouns and Verbs
How Sidekick's ontology system bridges workflow gaps with AI
The US housing market is famously complex. Every residential transaction touches two parallel universes of data: the MLS that presents the listing to the world, and the private transaction‑management systems that help manage the deal from contract to close. For decades, those universes have spoken different dialects: real estate data can feel like an impossible amalgamation of RESO fields, local MLS nuances and proprietary (and in many cases, closed-off) back office services.
I’m encouraged to say that this is all changing. That we as an industry are approaching a moment of clarity and interoperability driven by recent advancements in AI. And this change is being shepherded by nouns and verbs.
We’re creating a new operating lexicon at Sidekick. Drawing lessons from Palantir’s data platforms, we are building an ontology layer that combines the MLS universe with the private, fragmented inner workings of brokerage operations and an agent’s day-to-day client management. We have long called for modernization of the industry’s pipes; our approach is to build systems around a new set of nouns and verbs that are native to the AI-era in which we now live.
Real estate technology systems have become more “integratable” in recent years, with the rise of low-code and no-code connectors like Zapier. It’s been an incredibly helpful advancement in un-siloing data and allowing more unified views of how agent and brokerage businesses can run. Yet, the ultimate impact of these changes has been incremental without solving the basic incoherence of the underlying data structure. Sidekick’s system ontology creates change that is categorical: an OS for brokerage work that’s small enough to reason about, but strong enough to rationalize the myriad datasets and workflows that have proven to remain intransigent within the industry.
It’s an incredibly exciting moment to witness that, for the first time, transaction paperwork appears eager - and capable - to write itself. That understanding the value of a property against comparables and the broader market can be fine-tuned by a language model. That identifying client intent can be supported by an analysis of thousands of interactions, relatively instantaneously. That alone should prompt every brokerage to examine its foundations, and use the current moment to take a step back and begin to build for the next decade of change - where can value be created, and where can cost be saved. If not now, when is a better time?
Our teams are offering free assessments of brokerage infrastructure to identify the highest leverage ways to drive operating efficiency through AI. If you’re interested in a complimentary assessment, schedule one below.
Michael Martin, Co-Founder/CEO Sidekick
