Roshan SrinivasanThese past 2 weeks, Camphor has been hard at work on the addition of two features which we are super excited to launch right before Thanksgiving here in the United States:
- Zoning: We’re really excited to announce that we have added in zoning data for the Bay Area, CA and New York City. This will give homebuyers and investors the opportunity to ask for relevant questions around whether a property can be used for short term rentals, if a single family home can be converted into a multifamily property and vice versa, or if an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) can be installed on the property.
- AI Assistant: Property reports are inherently hard to comprehend. Our AI summarization feature, synthesizes MLS descriptions, location scores, zoning, census, and hazard data. Now you can just read the descriptions we provide without needing to grock the full report. If you have further questions, great! You can just ask them through Camphor AI. Try it out today at search.camphor.co! 🚀
🚥 Zoning Data across the Bay Area and NYC
What does zoning data provide?
We’re very excited to announce we provide zoning information for both the Bay Area, CA and New York City. The level of information we provide for zoning includes what a property is permitted to be used for, what it can be conditionally used for, and what it is prohibited from being used for. Examples of attributes you can query on include whether a property is zoned to be used for student housing, can be used for farming, or used as a retail business outlet.
Additionally, we provide more high visibility attributes that investors care about like whether a property is permitted for installing an ADU, can be used as a single family unit, or multifamily, and what type of construction a property is (ie. mixed-use, residential, etc.). You can search by these characteristics in our engine to identify properties that meet the criteria you are looking for.
What can I use this information for as a buyer, agent, or investor?
As a homebuyer or agent, but for often, for an investor, you want to know if you can potentially optimize your investment in a property by being able to generate cash flow in some respect. Whether it is to help pay off a mortgage or as an investment property, this information is valuable in identifying you much you can increase your expected rent with a few renovations to the property and more accurately identify the cap rate or cash-over-cash returns you can generate!
🤖 Camphor AI Assistant
What is the Camphor AI assistant?
Property reports from any of the standard property search engines are incredibly hard to read. We previously had released a whitepaper on how AI has the ability to truly reshape property search. Our solution to make this easier is leveraging LLMs to generate a summary of the report with all the key details a homebuyer cares about. If you as a buyer, investor, or real estate agent have more questions about a turnkey property, you can simply ask it in the chat interface for the AI assistant. Once you have dived deeper, if you have a very specific question, then you can finally turn to the property report to dive deeper or share with others.
Why is this better than using property reports directly?
As previously stated, property reports are hard to read and understand. Because of the shear volume of information on a page, historically, it’s been easier to just contact the listing agent directly and ask. That said, in many cases, the listing agent may not have the information you are looking for off-hand and either will need to take a few days to weeks to respond after contacting the seller, or they may even refer you to the other records and resources directly, which may or may not be the most accurate depending on how recent the site was updated.
Camphor’s AI assistant pulls the most recent data per property we cover, so as a user, the data is the most fresh and in a standardized format to query. Simply ask your questions to our engine and find what you are looking for to expedite the home purchasing and search process for yourself!
🚀 Product Demo
Check out the following demo where we highlight being able to search for properties in Marin County, CA that are eligible for installing an ADU and for use as a short term rental as well as generating an AI summary of the report (as well as ask further questions about the neighborhood).
As you can see we now provide more optionality regarding filters to investors and homebuyers, and also make it easier to understand more about a property. If you have further questions, you don’t even have to try and understand the full report - you can just ask a question about the neighborhood, crime in the area, and more without having to try and grock a full report that Zillow, Redfin, Homes.com, and other sites provide.
😉 Give us your feedback!!!
If you are a homebuyer, real estate agent, real estate broker, or head of a brokerage in the residential space that is interested in joining our private advisory group, we will give you access to early product updates and the opportunity to give feedback before we release new updates. Fill out the form below to sign up! 📄
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