Unlock Real Estate Success with AI Assistant Tools

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Andrew McGrath, founder of Maira, a mobile AI realtor assistant. They discuss the features of Maira, how it enhances the efficiency of realtors, and the future goals for scaling the platform. Andrew shares insights on the importance of AI in real estate, the subscription model for users, and the overall vision for Maira as a comprehensive tool for real estate workflows.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Andrew McGrath’s Website
    • Andrew McGrath on LinkedIn
    • Andrew McGrath’s Phone No: (415) 818-9678

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Andrew McGrath (00:00)
  the number one thing is that our platform lets realtors get back to being realtors and not business admin or lawyers or paperwork jockeys. I don’t know a single person who became a realtor to do paperwork. It’s always they wanted to help people and be with people.

  Michelle Kesil (01:50)
  Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Andrew McGrath, who has founded Maira a mobile AI realtor assistant. So excited to have you on the show today, Andrew.

  Andrew McGrath (02:08)
  Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

  Michelle Kesil (02:10)
  Yeah, of course, I think the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching creating this platform that’s supporting realtors and yeah, has the features that are built by the realtors to really get them the functions that they need for their operations. So let’s dive in.

  Andrew McGrath (02:31)
  Happy Zoom. Yeah, where should we start?

  Michelle Kesil (02:33)
  Yeah, first off, for those that aren’t familiar with you and your world, how about you just share what your main focus is?

  Andrew McGrath (02:40)
  Absolutely. Yeah. So started my real estate career five years ago. I’ve been practicing residential real estate in the Bay Area and I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of a top performing team. And in that timeframe, went from being an intern all the way up to one of the integral parts of that team. When our team was doing about a hundred million dollars a year of transactions and I was overseeing, I would say 80 % of the backend operations.

  And that led me to realize that whether it’s, you know, entry level agents all the way up to very experienced scaled out teams, there’s a lot that goes into the transaction that clients never see. And there’s a lot of inefficiencies and different scattered tools in that back of office workflow. And that’s really the problem that we’re tackling is can we, can we give realtors a all in one tool?

  that allows them to manage more deals and do it more efficiently.

  Michelle Kesil (03:36)
  Yeah, absolutely. So what does your platform do? What are its main features?

  Andrew McGrath (03:45)
  So at its core, does everything an executive assistant would be doing. We have all the client context from connecting with an existing CRM, as well as all the MLS data for the local MLSs. And this data is used to create a really robust context engine that lets the realtor not only manage their business, but predict where the business is going.

  also does disclosure reviews and summaries and offer drafting. So there’s the purchase agreement, the lease agreement, ⁓ sale listing agreement and buyer broker agreement directly in the platform. And those are auto-drafted and sent out to DocuSign. So the main fun feature is that all of this is done through a voice and text interface. So it really is like having your own assistant where you can call it, you can text it.

  And there’s also a traditional dashboard, so the familiar aspects of a real estate tour there, but you can do it while driving.

  Michelle Kesil (05:35)
  Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned that this is an AI platform. How does AI work in this setting?

  Andrew McGrath (05:45)
  Yeah. So AI kind of gets mystified a little bit because it’s such a hot topic these days. But really what AI is, is in this instance in particular, it takes a bunch of key data fields in a client’s, know, context, their name, where they’re looking. And it takes these data fields and puts them into a language model or like a conversational data structuring where

  the spoken words of the realtor and the text interactions of the realtor are used to search and populate that data and use that data to match it with properties. there’s all types of interesting things we can do there where we can match up timelines and do predictive matching. Also, can say, know, John Doe is looking for a three bedroom, bath.

  needs to have a nice yard and then it’ll automatically flag every single property in the MLS that matches those descriptions. So it’s really an advanced pattern recognition tool where it’s recognizing patterns in the properties and clients and matching them together.

  Michelle Kesil (06:57)
  Awesome, that’s cool. So is this meant to replace what an assistant would do or what functions does it take over?

  Andrew McGrath (07:09)
  Well, it’s twofold. There’s the realtors who have assistance and there’s the ones who don’t. If you have an assistant, they’re going to be able to manage a much larger volume of deal flow and take a little bit of the human error element out of it. One key use case here is if there’s a team of a couple of agents and data is living in one person’s platform and might not necessarily make it over to the other, and then it’s the role of the assistant to kind of piece everything together, that job becomes way easier. The other thing is

  the large part of the real estate community that does not have an assistant and they now have access to a similar, let’s say 80 to 90 % of the capabilities of a human assistant for a fraction of the price point, which allows a lot of people who are struggling to get over that hump of their business is doing all right, but maybe they have more deals than they can manage, they can now go and do

  do the business at a higher level without dramatically increasing their overhead.

  Michelle Kesil (08:11)
  Yeah, absolutely. What do you feel are some of the main keys that have made the biggest difference in allowing this platform to be able to run smoothly and differentiate itself from other platforms out there?

  Andrew McGrath (08:26)
  Well, I think one key differentiator is it’s built by a realtor. There’s a lot of tech solutions that aren’t necessarily ⁓ super keyed in to what realtors need on a day-to-day basis. And a real aha moment here that led us to using a voice interface, because I realized I put 60,000 miles on my car in the first three years of being a realtor, which kind of made me realize my desk was not.

  at the desk, my office or my desk was generally in the car. So having a platform that does the work where a realtor does the work is a huge differentiator.

  Michelle Kesil (09:02)
  Yeah, absolutely. And what’s your focus with this app? Are there any other features that you’re hoping to get on there?

  Andrew McGrath (09:46)
  Yeah, so right now we’re doing all of the features that a client doesn’t see. So the entire, the entire back of office workflow from the second a new lead enters the funnel all the way to closing day. And that’s, that’s our main focus right now. Early 2026, we’re looking at expanding into everything that the client does see. So that’s open house portals, lead nurturing, followups, getting context directly from.

  the client in a way where, you know, they receive a little text survey and can add even more insight into things the agent might’ve missed or just getting things from their perspective as well. Cause the more context we have in the platform, the better job we can do of doing predictive matching, identifying trends and the whole, the more data the AI engine has in it, the better it does. And of course,

  keeping in mind the compliance and client user privacy and making sure everything is done in the best way possible there.

  Michelle Kesil (10:47)
  Yeah, absolutely.

  What are you most focused on scaling to with this platform?

  Andrew McGrath (10:54)
  Yeah, we really want to scale out across the California Bay area as our initial user base. That’s where we have the most active connections. But turning this into a national platform and an industry standard where individual agents now have much greater capabilities, teams have better cohesion, and brokerages as a whole have a competitive edge against outside players trying to disrupt the way real estate works.

  the rumors or whispers in Silicon Valley that the realtor might not be needed soon. And I think that couldn’t be farther from the truth. So really helping provide value on every level of the business organization so that people are reminded how relevant realtors are and how much, you know, really how much the industry needs some support when it comes to the technology side of things.

  Michelle Kesil (11:47)
  Yeah, definitely. Where do you see technology being able to really leverage realtors and support them the most?

  Andrew McGrath (11:56)
  Yeah, I think the number one thing is that our platform lets realtors get back to being realtors and not business admin or lawyers or paperwork jockeys. I don’t know a single person who became a realtor to do paperwork. It’s always they wanted to help people and be with people. And it’s a really strong prevailing trend that realtors are very charismatic people, people, they’re go-getters.

  They’re not necessarily people who love doing admin work. So helping realtors do what they’re good at and letting our platform do the rest of the business is a huge value add. And if I had this early on in my career, I could only imagine where my production would have gone, you know, using this.

  Michelle Kesil (12:42)
  Yeah, absolutely. And as you’re using it now, how do you see it adding to your business?

  Andrew McGrath (12:51)
  think the number one thing that it really helps me with is getting really good context into my database. Because instead of meeting with someone and then taking some notes on my phone or saying I’ll remember it and then, know, XYZ other thing pops up, which it always does. You know, maybe I get the data back into my, you know, CRM.

  an hour later or even sometimes a day later. Now something happens and I’m shooting off a text. Something happens and I’m making a quick phone call and all of that data is getting right back into my database and it’s super fresh, accurate data with lots of context because I can just talk. You can say something as brief as, hey, add a new client to the database, their name is John Smith, or you can talk to it for 10 minutes straight about context.

  And either way, the data’s getting back in there really quick and really effortlessly. So I think that’s the main thing that I see in a day-to-day. And then of course, there’s all of the really tedious stuff that’s more of like a once-a-week activity with the disclosure reviews, the offer drafting. I mean, it’s saving people using it about 20 hours a week. It’s just incredible in that regard.

  Michelle Kesil (14:07)
  Yeah, that’s awesome. So what are your kind of goals for how it’s going to support both like the realtors, the investors, and the end users?

  Andrew McGrath (15:01)
  Yeah, right now we’re super focused on the residential realtor. The next groups that we’re looking to support, of course, are their clients, but also investors and the commercial side of the industry as well. So the one stop shop for all real estate workflows is really what we’re building towards. And currently we’ve been shipping a new feature or functionality about once a month. And that, puts us on pace to basically be able to do.

  what any aspect of the industry needs us to do. One nice thing about joining the platform in our early stage is your feedback as a user does directly influence the features that we’re building out and the direction that we build in to make sure that we’re building something truly valuable.

  Michelle Kesil (15:46)
  Yeah. So are you currently like testing it with just agents around the Bay Area?

  Andrew McGrath (15:52)
  Yeah, so we actually just finished our testing last month. We ran a pilot program with initial, you know, Bay Area realtors, and we’re now scaling out to all of California. And also we have some users nationally as well. So the nice thing is you can just upload your own contracts for your state. You can add some context about your state specific rules and regulations around real estate transactions and the platform is ready to go.

  basically anywhere in the world, right now, of course, we’re focused in the United States. So focus right now is putting it in the hands of anyone who wants to use it. Really, we’re looking to scale as quickly as possible and get this in the hands of people who have wanted to use AI or want to explore what that looks like in their business, but haven’t really had a real estate specific tool that lets them do that.

  Michelle Kesil (16:43)
  And is this like a subscription service or how does it work for the users?

  Andrew McGrath (16:50)
  Yeah, so subscription service, the first month is free. You can make sure that it works in your business. And then after that, it’s $75 a month for individual seats and teams and brokerages and enterprise model is as low as $50 a month, depending on the amount of seats placed.

  Michelle Kesil (17:08)
  Awesome, that’s so exciting.

  Andrew McGrath (17:10)
  Yeah, it’s about one one hundredth of the price of a human assistant and can be added on top of existing assistance and teams in a way that provides a lot more value than it’s costing.

  Michelle Kesil (17:25)
  Absolutely. So is there anyone in the real estate world that this wouldn’t serve or it’s kind of for everyone that is in that world?

  Andrew McGrath (17:34)
  Right now, one vertical that we haven’t really looked at yet is the property managers. ⁓ the rental managers in the commercial setting ⁓ and the multifamily residential, we’re mostly focused on the transaction, client context, and documents. any professional in the real estate setting that’s going through those types of workflows.

  We’re not really doing vendor choreographing or repairs or any of that yet. We’re really trying to stay hyper focused on the parts of the industry that we know intimately. And then from there expanding the team with professionals who do understand these other aspects of the business.

  Michelle Kesil (18:22)
  Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. Sounds like a great platform that can help many people.

  Andrew McGrath (18:27)
  Yeah, I would love for you to give it a try. It’s quite the tool. mean, just a few years ago, this would have been something straight out of a sci-fi novel, but now that it’s live and in our hands, it’s pretty hard to believe. It’s a really powerful platform overall.

  Michelle Kesil (18:44)
  Yeah, amazing. So before we wrap up here, if somebody wants to reach out, connect, learn more, try out the platform, where can everybody reach you, reach the platform, and yeah, connect deeper.

  Andrew McGrath (18:58)
  Yeah, so our website is https:trymaira.com/ or if you just look up trymaira.com it should pop up. But one fun thing is you can actually just call Maira and she’ll walk you through the onboarding process. So if you want to give her a call at 415-818-9678, she will tell you what she does and walk you through the onboarding process just like

  a human concierge would.

  Michelle Kesil (19:27)
  Wow, that’s next level.

  Andrew McGrath (19:29)
  Yeah, know the most friction we can eliminate out of the business, the better. know, realtors are busy. They’re already dealing with a bunch of tools. So giving them a tool that works as hard as they do and is easy and quick to set up is a huge problem that we’re tackling.

  Michelle Kesil (19:46)
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Thank you for being here.

  Andrew McGrath (19:53)
  Absolutely, yeah, thanks for having me.

  Michelle Kesil (19:55)
  And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Andrew who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on the next episode.