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Miami Association of Realtors (Miami) is the most recent MLS to link up with Sidekick, an AI productivity solution spun out of Avenue 8, an independent brokerage based in California.
A May 20 press release from the software company said that Miami’s market is an ideal location to push the product’s benefits, which heavily emphasize completing more in less time using text-based queries and conversational commands to circumvent consistent interaction with an actual front-end design, or software interface.
“Our partnership with Miami to bring Sidekick to South Florida is an incredibly exciting milestone,” said Michael Martin, co-founder of Sidekick, in the statement. “This partnership broadens our influence and enhances our ability to support real estate agents with AI. Equipping agents with tools to enhance their productivity helps to push the industry forward into the future while creating value for agents at all levels.”
Sidekick is less than a year old, having been rolled out in November 2023 to help tech-forward Avenue 8 agents, which number around 400, quickly create CMAs, marketing collateral, listing presentations and execute other critical business tasks in minutes rather than hours. It can also send emails as well as read and manage calendars
At its heart, Sidekick functions as a virtual assistant, a sign that the cottage industry of off-shoring actual people to handle business activity, popular in real estate, may be facing upheaval.
Martin made clear his team’s plans to make Sidekick publicly available. Like most AI-based products, it merely needed time to learn. In Miami’s case, Sidekick will absorb its market statistics, specific property types and other pertinent data points as it’s asked to perform. Given the level of activity in Miami, it should learn quickly.
“It is critical that agents demonstrate value across two vectors: specific knowledge and speed,” Martin said in a November email to Inman. “Many have the former, but the latter is a constraint. Even if you’ve been working in the industry 20 to 30 years, the ability to quickly generate, analyze, and assemble information across a variety of modalities is incredibly challenging. It’s not about having a personality or a face or a name — it’s about functionality and speed.”
Martin explained that Sidekick can create spreadsheets on mortgage options that may appeal to a subset of buyers, and then turn that data into an Instagram post, for example. The AI can also leverage computer vision to quickly create listing descriptions and is programmed to not hallucinate, meaning it won’t “guess” at what’s in an image.
Teresa King Kinney is the CEO of Miami Realtors, and called the relationship “exciting” and another example of the organization’s dedication to serving its agents’ customers.
“This reinforces and advances Miami’s commitment to innovation by providing our members with the absolute best in leading edge technology to better serve their buyers, sellers and investors and make a difference in their real estate business,” King Kinney said.
Miami Realtors is the second major MLS to partner with the AI product. Inman reported May 6 that San Francisco Association of Realtors also agreed to supply Sidekick to its 4,000 members.
Miami Realtors was founded in 1920 and serves 60,000 agents.
Sidekick’s developer, Avenue 8, boasts agents across the Bay Area, Greater LA, NYC and Palm Springs. It told Inman there are plans to open more offices in the coming year.
This collaboration signifies Sidekick’s expansion into the vibrant South Florida market, delivering its state-of-the-art integrated datasets and AI-driven workflow tools to over 60,000 real estate agents across South Florida.
