In this week’s Inman Tech Roundup, the National Association of Realtors’ RPR picks up an award for its artificial intelligence-powered analytics platform, Martha Stewart wades into proptech, Douglas Elliman details its new AI ambitions, and the Trump administration enlists private tech firms in a new offensive against cyber-fraud.
Here’s what you need to know:
Analytics platform of the year goes to NAR subsidiary
Realtors Property Resource has won “Real Estate Analytics Platform of the Year” in the sixth annual PropTech Breakthrough Awards, the company announced Aug. 13. RPR, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Association of Realtors, serves NAR’s 1.4 million-plus members with property data, market trends and reporting tools at no additional cost.
The award nods to platform upgrades RPR has rolled out over the past 18 months. RPR Mobile AI CMA, launched in 2025, scores comparable properties and generates four pricing strategies into a customizable 20-plus-page branded report.
This year, RPR added editable comp search criteria that let agents adjust parameters while AI rescores comps automatically. The company also revamped its reporting tools with mobile editing, agent branding and report links that refresh every 48 hours, plus an AI ScriptWriter suite that turns market data into articles, social graphics and video.
“Our members are at the center of how we innovate at RPR,” Jeff Young, CEO of Realtors Property Resource, said in a statement. “Their needs shape how we evolve the platform and what we prioritize, ensuring new technology translates into practical tools that make their work more efficient and help them better serve their clients. We’re proud of what we’ve built alongside them and excited to keep building on that work.”
PropTech Breakthrough Managing Director Bryan Vaughn praised RPR for pairing nationwide property data with AI that “keeps the professional in charge of the answer.”
What this means for agents
The recognition underscores that RPR’s AI CMA tools and editable comp scoring are now free, NAR-backed alternatives to paid pricing and reporting platforms. They are worth a look before spending elsewhere on similar tech.
It’s also a signal that RPR intends to keep building out AI features rather than letting the platform stagnate.
Martha Stewart co-founds AI home management app
Martha Stewart, the lifestyle media icon, is getting into the proptech game.
Hint, a home intelligence platform, co-founded by Stewart, Yih-Han Ma and Kyle Rush, recently launched for free on the Apple App Store. The app uses AI to build a “living profile” of a home from public records, utility and environmental data, and homeowner-uploaded documents like inspections and warranties. The app also proactively flags maintenance needs, expiring warranties and rate changes.
The platform runs on four features: a document repository dubbed the Property Historian, a “Personal Home Advisor” for renovation and upkeep guidance, ongoing monitoring the company calls Proactive Management and referrals to service providers that the company says stay independent of any commercial ties.
“A well-run home requires attention and good judgment,” Stewart said. “Hint makes that easier by helping homeowners stay organized and informed, so they can care for their homes with greater confidence and become better stewards of their property.”
Hint said it won’t use homeowner data to train AI models or share it without permission, and users can delete it at any time. The app is free for now. The company plans to introduce subscription features later.
Stewart will speak about Hint and how AI is changing home management at the Blueprint conference in Las Vegas on Sept. 23.
What this means for agents
Hint is a reminder that homeownership tools are increasingly living outside the brokerage relationship, with clients potentially getting maintenance and renovation guidance from an app rather than their agent post-close.
Hint’s Personalized Commerce referral feature is also worth watching because it puts the app in a similar lane as agents in steering homeowners toward service providers.
Douglas Elliman’s ‘disciplined’ AI initiative
Douglas Elliman is launching a company-wide AI transformation that it expects will gradually cut non-commission operating expenses over the next three years, treating AI as a cost lever rather than just a client-facing tool. The company has formed a dedicated AI team to run the effort, according to its Q2 earnings report.
The initiative runs on two tracks: resetting costs across existing business units and building Elius, a proprietary real estate intelligence platform. Both will run on Google Cloud’s AI models and infrastructure. Elius is pitched as surfacing insights and guidance beyond what static listing portals offer.
“For generations, residential real estate has been organized around the transaction, and for just as long, the data that those transactions generate has been monetized by nearly everyone except the brokerages that created it,” Douglas Elliman CEO Michael S. Liebowitz said in the Q2 earnings call. “Third-party portals and platforms built billion-dollar businesses on the back of data that our agents and our clients produced. We are changing that model.”
Liebowitz added that Elius is designed to take Douglas Elliman’s proprietary luxury real estate data and build a platform with the potential to generate new products, new revenue streams and entirely new businesses beyond brokerage.
“Our AI transformation is in early stages, but we are excited about where this technology can take us,” he said. “Equally important, we are pursuing it from a position of financial strength with no long-term debt and over $100 million in cash.”
“This is a disciplined, self-funded pursuit,” Liebowitz continued. “We expect to fund this initial Google Cloud rollout and Elius discovery and development work through existing resources with a modest net incremental investment, as a substantial portion of the spending replaces our existing technology expenditures.”
What this means for agents
The practical takeaway is that the savings target non-commission overhead as tech and back-office workflows rather than agent splits, and the timeline is gradual. Liebowitz pointed to 2027 before meaningful savings materialize, so this isn’t an immediate change to how agents operate day to day.
The bigger long-term question is what Elius means for agents’ data and client relationships. If it succeeds in monetizing the proprietary transaction data agents generate, that could create new revenue streams tied to the brokerage rather than the individual agent.
White House launches offensive against cyber-scammers
The Trump administration is deploying “privateer” tech companies to conduct offensive operations against transnational criminal organizations behind cyber-enabled fraud, according to a White House national security memo issued in August.
The move formalizes a public-private approach to combating scams that federal officials say cost American consumers more than $20.8 billion last year.
The memo describes ransomware, phishing, financial fraud and impersonation scams as increasingly the work of coordinated transnational groups rather than lone actors. Seniors, children and low-income families are disproportionately targeted. It also flags AI as a force multiplier, letting criminals run scams at a scale not previously possible.
Federal data cited in the memo found 73 percent of U.S. adults have experienced some form of online scam or attack.
What this means for agents
The new Trump administration initiative is a reminder that wire fraud and impersonation scams targeting real estate closings aren’t isolated incidents but part of a larger, increasingly AI-enabled criminal infrastructure the federal government now considers serious enough to fight offensively.
It’s also worth flagging to clients during closing, since the memo’s warning about scaled-up, AI-powered scams applies directly to the wire-transfer fraud that’s hit homebuyers in the past.
