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Courtesy of Built Technologies
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for real estate investors, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future issues straight to your inbox.
If you rent an apartment, you've probably “talked” to an AI agent to help you fix your leaky toilet. But what if you, as a building contractor, submit a financing request to your lender? This is a much more complicated process – and there is now an AI agent for that too.
Built Technologies, a provider of construction and real estate financing technology that was valued at $1.5 billion in 2021, is taking its proprietary software to the next level, introducing an AI agent that is in testing with some of its lender customers. Now, Built says it's ready for the broader market.
“We’re trying to improve this ecosystem across the construction real estate value chain,” said Chase Gilbert, CEO of Built Technologies.
This agent is implemented specifically for so-called draw requests. Once a developer or construction company completes each phase of the process, they traditionally ask their lender for the next phase of financing, the draw. Processing typically takes days or weeks as loan officers must review documentation, review progress, assess risk, and approve disbursements. Now the so-called draw agent takes over.
“There is an opportunity to fundamentally serve the ecosystem and we have actually developed technology specifically to connect key stakeholders so that everyone sees the same information at the same time and can request funds or make payments with greater confidence,” Gilbert said.
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Over the last decade, Built has worked with lenders, both bank and non-bank, as well as those in the private lending space, to help them manage capital improvement construction projects and get their money from their capital partners more quickly and easily.
Customers include US Bank, Citi and Fifth Third. Built also helps with payments to downstream trading partners such as general contractors, subcontractors, architects, lawyers and designers. That was the original software.
Now AI comes into play, and now Built has created what Gilbert calls an embedded teammate that can do all this work and guarantee that everything is compliant because there is no human margin for error. Built has been testing the agent with some of its lenders, including Anchor Loans, over the past three months.
The company now reports 95% faster underwriting approvals with reviews completed in just 3 minutes, 400% higher risk detection compared to human-run reviews, and 100% compliance with each lender's policies and procedures.
According to Built, companies using the new agent reported a return on investment (ROI) of 300% to 500%, even on portfolios with only about 500 loans. Companies came to this conclusion by comparing the time and operational cost savings achieved through automation with their investments. Lenders participating in the pilot said they saw a significant reduction in manual workload and increased efficiency without the need to hire new employees.
Gilbert said the AI agent responds to trillions of dollars' worth of construction drawing data that Built has compiled over the last decade.
“And this is where AI really shines. It needs a lot of data and context to become intelligent and make decisions, and we certainly have a lot of proprietary data on that,” he said.