Ashley Stinton of the National Association of Realtors’ REACH: 5 Questions

Ashley Stinton is in a unique position to introduce proptech to residential Realtors and real estate professionals in general.

As managing partner at the National Association of Realtors’ NAR REACH accelerator and investment program, she plays a key role in determining which proptech solutions scale across the housing market.

Stinton’s position has led to nearly 40 percent of her most recent cohort being minority-founded or minority-led. Female-founded companies in the REACH portfolio include Propy, an online AI-assisted title and escrow platform; Fractional, a capital raise and partnership startup; and Pearl, a home performance evaluation company.

Commercial Observer spoke with Stinton in early March about the trajectory of her professional growth and that of technology at NAR REACH, the search for tech companies to aid Realtors and the consumer, and meeting the market for proptech and artificial intelligence where it is in relation to those cohorts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PropTech Insider: You have been with NAR REACH for about seven years. That’s a long time in one position focusing on technology and the investment side, especially as a woman professional. How did you come to, and grow successfully at, your current position?

Ashley Stinton: I started working on some special initiatives with NAR and those initiatives led me to exposure to the Second Century Ventures and REACH teams. My time as a mentor really piqued my interest, and, at that time, the REACH program was exploring expansion. So, essentially, I was brought on to help map that expansion from one flagship accelerator that had one cohort per year in the U.S. residential sector. 

We expanded vertically by offering a program for the commercial sector here in the U.S., and then six additional international programs, including Canada, Australia and in the Middle East. For the last three years, I’ve been devoted to our U.S. residential program.

You have directly selected and helped grow more than two dozen startups, collectively representing more than $1 billion in valuation, focused on affordability, new construction, immersive property tech, and agent safety. How do you quantify the value they add to the companies with whom they work?

It’s a really good question, and I can give the worst answer in the world, which is: It depends. 

Some of them we can attach a financial value to, but the impact that we look for is really well beyond the financial value. A good example of that would be a company called Notarize [an online platform for secure, legally binding remote notarizations.]. They approached us back in, I believe it was 2017, when remote online notarization made people kind of scratch their heads and say, “What is that? Do we want that?” And, through the support of the NAR’s advocacy team, we were able to help them succeed in making remote online notarization across the nation, which was extremely helpful for a lot of verticals well beyond real estate.

Are the proptech startups you’ve selected over the years aimed directly at supporting Realtors or do they help consumers directly as well?

All of the above. We really look at the entire ecosystem. We often get tagged proptech, but we’re looking at anything and everything that is adjacent to real estate. So we’ve invested in home services, title, mortgage, escrow, even post-close transaction solutions that support the consumer. So well beyond what is classically defined as proptech.

For example, the inspection process continues to be a significant pain point for consumers. For Realtors, it can slow down the transaction — it can add costs, time and friction in the negotiation between seller and buyer. So QwikFix, through their AI-driven report generation, essentially ingests and then quickly and very accurately is able to generate a report within 24 hours to help both a Realtor and a consumer assess that inspection report. More importantly, it can quickly generate quotes for repairs, so that both seller and buyer can then ultimately decide how they want to handle that, and what repairs should be addressed immediately. 

But a key component is that it also has accurate pricing. You know, it’s pretty easy to Google, “How much does the average kitchen model or some kind of maintenance cost?” but that may not be localized. They really do a couple of key things in delivering efficiency to the transaction.

Another one that some might know as a consumer product, but it’s really an ecosystem, is a company called Foyer, which is for aspiring homeowners. I liken it to a 401k or a financial co-pilot for aspiring homeowners. The idea is to help aspiring homeowners save for those down payments faster. It also helps them with financial education and literacy along the way, so that their readiness is as high as it can be. 

And, then, of course, when they are ready to transact, who within the ecosystem do they need to be connected to? When do they need to be connected to higher-quality experiences? More efficiency and saving faster for a house sounds pretty good to everybody.

A number of NAR REACH’s portfolio companies are minority- or female-founded. Was selecting such companies part of your mandate?

Originally, we focused on technology first and foremost, but it is absolutely a consideration in how we evaluate. Some 60-plus percent of Realtors are female, but we look for diversity in every form of makeup, expertise and background. I’d say at least 40 percent of our founders are Realtors or who have experienced real estate in some professional capacity, which can be really important. Of course, we’ve met great founders who didn’t necessarily come from real estate. So it’s diverse in every sense.

You weren’t a technology person originally. What have you learned about proptech in your work over the years? And what do you see as your future work and investments with NAR REACH?

On the software side, it’s been an interesting journey to keep up with, because even in my — I’ll call it short seven years with this organization — that’s changed dramatically. Seven years ago, it was — I don’t want to use the word “easier” — but in some senses, it was faster to find the leader in a category. Proptech was more novel to this space. Now it’s a very, very saturated space. AI is very hard for our key constituents to keep up with, because it’s changing by the minute. So I think the pace of adoption, the saturation and the mind share are the things I’m paying the closest attention to. 

I also believe a key part of our role is to help the residential real estate professional unpack all that, which is what NAR REACH is intended to be. There are more than eight great technologies we want to signal to the industry each year. These are the eight that we think will have the highest impact — not just now, but five, 10 or 15 years from now, because there are a plethora of technology solutions popping up every day.

We do favor a lot of AI solutions in this new cohort that will launch in May, but it’s such a fragmented and diverse industry that we also need to meet consumers and real estate professionals where they’re at. That means investing in really sophisticated institutions for those who are comfortable with them, but it also means choosing solutions and making available solutions that don’t require a Ph.D. to learn how to use.

It’s just meet the market where it’s at. With one and a half million members of NAR and 2-plus million professionals in different capacities at large, it’s really important that we serve them with as many solutions as we can.

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.