Xome® was proud to be the host sponsor for the Five Star Conference, held in Dallas, Texas in September and celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Five Star brings together attendees from across the industry and provides opportunities for networking, collaboration, and professional growth for like-minded real estate professionals.
We were excited to have Xome team members participate in roundtables and panels across the three days of the event, including the Lending Forum, Property Preservation & Management Forum, Single Family Rental Round Table, and Mortgage Servicing Forum.
Xome also hosted attendees at a number of events, including the Opening Night reception and two learning opportunities to give an inside look at what’s happening at the company, as well as to share the newest industry insights and how we’re innovating.
A groundbreaking study reveals the truth about foreclosures
In partnership with Xome, independent economist Dr. Jim Murdoch presented the findings of a new study on the effects of foreclosure sales in metros across the United States. The study looked at the neighborhood impact of foreclosure sales on home values. Unlike most published research on the impact of foreclosures, this study focuses on the period after the housing crisis in the early 2000s, taking a look at foreclosure sales that took place between 2013 and 2018.
Dr. Murdoch examined over one million records from 16 different metros in California, Florida, New York, and the Northeast Corridor. The study looked at a combination of data points — distance from the foreclosure sale, time since the foreclosure sale, and various property characteristics — to challenge the common perception that foreclosures have a long-term negative impact on nearby home values.
As Xome CMO Greg Goyne said when introducing Dr. Murdoch and the research, “we wondered what actually happens post-foreclosure. If you think of the foreclosure sale as Day Zero, what’s the rest of the story?”
The study produced some surprisingly nuanced results. Foreclosures are often a difficult circumstance with deep impacts on homeowners, families, and communities alike. But the insights from the study helped to highlight the silver linings that can come from the dark cloud of foreclosure sales: helping homeowners transition through a sensitive, challenging situation and creating a foundation for future positive impact in the surrounding community.
Click here to learn more about the results and download the executive summary, white paper, and academic study.
A focus on the future of technology at Xome
During an exclusive “brunch and learn event,” CTO James Curl gave attendees an inside look at the latest product offerings and new innovations going on behind the scenes at Xome. The Xome engineering team has been working to improve innovation, accuracy, and efficiency in the software development process in order to deliver the best products possible. According to Curl, “My mission is to continuously focus on creating the right type of customer experience.”
To that end, he shared how the team is embracing “what it means to be agile” through “continuous integration and continuous deployment methodology and thought processes.” Xome’s entire development stack has shifted from on-premises hosting to being completely cloud native with an API-first approach, a single data lake, containerized architecture, and increased automation. All of this helps to streamline processes and bolster security across the board.
Curl also talked about the updates made to the Xome platform to help provide a best-in-class experience for our clientele. This includes improvements to the buyer journey; the introduction of our award-winning Learning Center and the Xome Auction SimulatorTM; and development of new features such as the Xome Value Estimate, the Rental Valuation Estimate, and the Remodel Value. He also touched on upcoming features such as our Portfolio+TM offering and our self-serve seller platform.
Xome is also focusing heavily in AI tools to help increase productivity throughout the development and testing lifecycle. Increasing these efficiencies allows the team to devote more time to feature development and gain speed to market. By using a home-built AI model along with other tools, Xome developers have seen 25-30% productivity gains.
Curl said, “We view AI and machine learning as major game changers for our industry…if we can spend less time worrying about deployments, and we can automate as much as possible, then we have more time to build features and more time to be customer experience obsessed.”
He summed it up best: “We are fully committed to making it as easy and straightforward as possible to work with us. And so, all of our tech investments are in that direction.”
A real-time look at how Xome auctions work
During the same brunch-and-learn, Mike Hayward, vice president of auction operations at Xome, shared an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes during an auction. During the entire session, auctioneers in the room worked live auctions to showcase how it all works.
Hayward explained the process to attendees and how properties are marketed to try and connect the right buyers to the right sellers. “We have over hundreds of thousands of bidders within our network that we can reach out to,” he said. “A lot of our marketing is targeted to bidders that we’re trying to get a hold of — if you bought a property that’s in Baltimore that’s occupied for $500,000 a year ago, and we’ve got another property that fits that description, we’re going to reach out to you.”
He talked about how important it is for Xome to make sure that buyers and sellers are well-aligned to make sure there is a right fit on both sides of the transaction. Hayward’s team was on hand helping to facilitate that via live bidding as they typically do during auction days, but letting attendees in on what they do to help make sure that the auctions run smoothly. According to Hayward, “the auctioneers that we hire are auctioneers that are looking for sales. They are former asset managers. They know the business.”
Hayward also praised the work of the Xome engineering team and how they’ve worked to improve the overall customer experience. “Our tech team has done a great job of streamlining a lot around our buyer experience.”
The Five Star conference was a great experience for the Xome team, allowing us to connect with people from all over the real estate industry and showcase the innovative things that are happening now — and the exciting things coming soon. We look forward to sharing and learning together again in 2024!
