Sunlight Matters

Masterkey with Giulio Colleluori

• Dave Wallace • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Welcome to the second episode of Sunlight Matters. In this episode, we explore the fascinating connection between real estate, artificial intelligence, and the importance of sunlight with Giulio, the founder of Masterkey. Masterkey is revolutionizing the home buying experience by giving buyers the tools to make more informed decisions through AI-powered property analysis.

One of the most exciting features of Masterkey is its integration of sunlight mapping, a game-changer for anyone looking to understand how natural light affects a home. Sunlight plays a crucial role in real estate, influencing everything from property values to daily comfort and even well-being. In cities like New York where high-rise buildings cast long shadows, knowing how much sunlight a property gets can make all the difference.

In this conversation, we dive into how AI is helping home buyers analyze properties more efficiently, why sunlight is a key factor in making a smart investment, and how tools like ShadowMap provide valuable insight into a home’s exposure to natural light. Whether you are in the market for a new home or just fascinated by the role of sunlight in urban living, this episode is packed with insights you will not want to miss.

SPEAKER_01:

How you're using AI, I think, is fascinating and is a lesson to so many people.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun. Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything. Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the podcast. Julio, do you want to just give a brief introduction to yourself and tell us a bit about Master Key?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, my name is Julio. I'm the founder of Master Key. Master Key is a platform for home buyers to represent themselves throughout the real estate transaction. So while they're buying a home, uh it's born out of a personal necessity for such a platform. I was uh home shopping myself in Santa Cruz, California, uh a few months ago and uh found myself uh having to sign a bunch of paperwork with a buyer agent that uh I didn't know at the time. And uh that didn't sit well with me. Uh in the paperwork I had to agree to pay them uh a set amount of money before they had honestly added any value to my life yet.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh explain that to me, sorry, because I guess No, absolutely the audience we have is from around the world, and I think one of the things I've discovered is just how different buying a house is in various places. But if you could just talk us through that.

SPEAKER_02:

And to be fair, it's extremely counterintuitive in the here in the United States. So basically, the way uh buying a house worked, well, till last year is you buy uh you buy a house and you get an agent, right? Uh real estate agent uh to help you with your purchase. And the seller, whoever's selling the house, also get their own agent. However, how do this agents get paid? It was pretty uh obscure, uh say the least. So it wasn't very clear. Uh the way it was working is basically the seller was paying their agent about uh 5 to 6% fee. Uh and then that agent would split that fee with uh whoever ended up buying the house, the agent. The fee was split, but was paying uh paid uh ultimately by the seller. There was a big uh class action lawsuit uh last year in the United States that ended in what's now referred to as the NAR, National Association of Realtor Settlement. Basically, long story short, uh now the buyer, when you go to buy a house, you have to agree to pay out of pocket your agent uh for the you know whatever amount you agree upon. Uh in most cases around 3%. So uh before I even saw a house, I was asked by this agent to uh sign this paperwork that said, hey, if you do end up buying this house, you gotta pay me 3%. And that seemed a little bit absurd since I never talked to the agent. And I'm like, are you even qualified? So I started thinking about solutions, and then that's how I came up with Master Key.

SPEAKER_01:

So when you kind of look at the US market, I guess you sort of see some pretty f sophisticated um websites. So, you know, I mean we're gonna talk a bit about Zillow because Master Key uses Zillow, but they look like you know, you could actually buy a house without talking to anybody, but that it doesn't sound is the case.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. I mean, there uh there is today like a million ways to buy a home, but uh the way that most people do it is through uh an agent, right? Like you could get someone to help you because the system is by design very complex and not very transparent. So many people feel uh overwhelmed and feel like they they need the extra help, right? Which is true. I mean the it is somewhat complex, but in my opinion, it's not nearly as complex as they make it look like.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, okay. So tell us about Master Key then, because as I sort of just alluded to, you're sort of basing it on Zillow listings. And you know, Zillow is the the grand granddaddy or grandmummy of you know property property websites, I think, probably globally, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

100%, yes. Uh at least here in the United States.

SPEAKER_01:

One second, my dogs are making a noise. Shush!

SPEAKER_02:

Sorry. Yeah, Zillow is the kind of go-to uh place here to look for uh real estate, but I believe the the the feature specifically you were talking about is our AI property analyzer. So to give us some background on and context on that, it felt uh a bit absurd that while we're supposedly hundreds of days away from uh what they call artificial general intelligence, this this idea of super intelligence, we're still buying houses and analyzing houses like we were 40 years ago. Like uh with you have your local agent that's been living in the town for their whole life, and hopefully they have the knowledge and uh you know ethics to give you like an honest opinion on the house. And uh so basically we built this property analyzer to bridge that gap a little bit. And uh basically today anyone with a Zillow listing can come to Master Key and can get a free report on any property, and the report includes anything from the ownership history to the tax history, um, the price changes, the sunlight now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, basically a whole bunch of data points that uh the user might be wondering if they're considering buying uh the property.

SPEAKER_01:

It's what what's so wonderful is is your background development.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, it but what's I background is technical.

SPEAKER_01:

But what's so wonderful is you're taking existing data and augmenting it with other data to create a fuller picture of a property.

SPEAKER_02:

100%. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

We're we're gonna try and have a little look at um Master Key in a second. So I've not done screen sharing on a podcast before, but we're gonna give it a go because I think it's really worth worth but it, you know, you do everything from a kind of audio review of the website, which I I think is is fascinating because you know, for someone like me, I get most of my information by listening, not reading. So, you know, I suddenly like, oh, this is brilliant.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah, that's that that is something I probably haven't touched on, I should probably mention. Uh, part of the RAI property analyzer is that little you know, couple minute podcast uh with uh kind of an overview of uh the property in general. And that's yes, as you were saying, like a lot of people digest information these days with podcasts like this. And uh, you know, no one wants to like try to interpret like 15 different charts. So we figure for all those kinds of people, uh we have yeah, uh basically a brief AI-generated podcast overview of the property.

SPEAKER_01:

And then you you do sort of like highlights of the property, sort of summarized highlights. And you know, I just like this is really added value content. So, you know, it's not often that you kind of see something where somebody's thought about how they could use generative AI to really enhance the experience, but I think you've done that because what you're now offering is sort of a a level of information above what Zillow offers.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And to be, and I appreciate that you found that useful. The thing is, uh, a lot of real estate, a lot of problems of real estate are um based on the fact that uh the markets are very fragmented. What I mean by that is that the little town in Illinois will um compare it to the you know Santa Cruz California market might be might look completely different. They all have their own nuances. It's available for if you're interested enough to like actually look for it online and do your research. It's all there, but it's time consuming to do that research, and most people don't even know they can do their research. On top of that, there is uh the big problem where like what it's all available, it's all in like you know, you're gonna have like I found myself having like you know 20 different tabs open where uh where I was looking at a property, and then you're gonna have to like skip through all those tabs and try to like memorize all those information. Now, if there's one thing that generative AI is great at is consuming a lot of the data, a lot of information, and kind of give you like a this more holistic understanding of whatever subject you're trying to summarize in this case the you know a real estate property.

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's it's great. Now, of course, we're here to talk about sunlight, and you you sort of mentioned it already, but one of the features that you've got is the uh shadow map, sunlight mapping, isn't it? And uh I'm interested because you reached out to Shadow Map, how did that sort of come about?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So I found out about Shadow Map uh pretty recently, and I was honestly mind blown. Uh I was like, well, this is such a useful service. And to give you some background, I moved to New York City uh about three years ago, and I don't think I ever appreciated sunlight uh as much as since I moved to New York City. Now, the reason for that might not be obvious, but because of all the high-rise buildings in your city, sunlight is pretty scarce, you know, a hot commodity. So much so that you know a lot of uh uh apartments or units that are south facing uh uh tend to get more sunlight and you know happen to be priced like pretty often priced like you know 10-20% above the regular market in your city. That's to say, yeah, sunlight is extremely important in your city. It's uh a data point that I really wanted to incorporate in uh uh the property analyzer because uh uh while yes, it's particularly important in your city, it's important ever any, you know, and anywhere when considering any real estate investment.

SPEAKER_01:

So is that sort of I mean, based on your personal hunch or is this something that when you've talked to people, they talk about how important sunlight is as 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

So uh the market uh that I I've most experienced with is the New York City market, and yes, everyone in New York City is talking about sunlight.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm gonna try and show what I mean, it's extraordinary actually when you use Shadow Map to have a look at New York City, because you end up going, yeah, I mean, people are living in shadows the whole time. So I'm just gonna share this screen. Is it here? We go. So this is uh Central Park. Can you see that?

SPEAKER_02:

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So this is Central Park, and you know, just here is the Essex House Hotel, which is my chosen hotel when I stay in New York. I love it. This is a day, and you can see how the shadows like really impact buildings. So from sort of three o'clock onwards, a lot of this this part of um of Manhattan is is basically in shadow, and it's actually extraordinary. If we kind of zoom in a bit, you can kind of see that impact.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, they've particularly that area you're zooming in on. Uh, so that's billionaire row, and it some of the tallest buildings in the city are there, which you know cause it to be even more affected by shadows than anywhere else. As a matter of fact, uh it's quite controversial for new buildings on Billionaire Row. One of the subjects that it's uh pretty talked about is uh uh the shadows they create on Central Park and how they affect uh uh you know the flora and fauna and because all of a sudden, you know, that you get a new building and a whole new section of Central Park isn't shadowed.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean if you if you sort of go around and have a look at sort of various places. I mean, I you'll have to forgive me, I don't know where this is, but you know, anywhere where there's tall buildings, you're getting um yeah you're getting pretty dramatic shadows on the yeah, it's a problem all over the city.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I mean, yeah, it's uh the unfortunate reality of near city is like uh to give you an example, the house where I live in used to have windows, right? Uh it's an old building uh from I think like 1907 or something. And I guess after they built this, uh, someone came uh to build buildings next door and they completely shut down their windows. So now the living room doesn't have or doesn't have any windows anymore. Like they're I don't I don't understand how that could have possibly been legal, but it happens in the city.

SPEAKER_01:

That's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. But I can absolut I can see sort of just you know, and I've there's lots of other buildings other than those on Billionaires Row taken taken from but you can see why shadows become and sunlight and access to sunlight is so important. And you know, for me, the reason I like shadow map was you know, I live in a nice property in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside in the UK, but it does have problems with with daylight and shadows, and it wasn't until I started living here that it kind of really hit home what that was like, and hence why when we think about Master Key, is actually putting that daylight sort of mapping, sunlight mapping into the actual experience itself makes so much sense, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

100%. It's so important. Uh yeah, a lot of our users already commented on how useful they found it. Yeah, I mean it's one of the main data points for me personally when I evaluate a property.

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm gonna try, and I'm not sure how well this is working, but let's assume it's working absolutely fine. I'm gonna go to Master Key and um do you wanna just talk us through what we've got? So this is a new feature called reimagining your home, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Uh so uh basically this uses generative AI to allow users to reimagine certain spaces. So if you drive to the right, I think the right side, you'll see that like, oh what if we change the kitchen on uh this property? I found myself often wondering when uh considering a new home how I would make spaces my own, right? Often after buying a property, you remodel certain areas that yeah, you kind of make it your own. And this kind of allows you to get a look into what that would look like. Then here we have trending properties. So these are recent properties that people that received a lot about votes, and you'll see they say trending because up there you see a score where users can upvote or downvote properties based on their investment potential or whether they like it. Sometimes it's just an exciting property, right? Like a unique property. But yeah, that's kind of like the background on that.

SPEAKER_01:

So right at the top here we've got the AI property analysis, which as you say is a this one's a minute kind of little minute.

SPEAKER_02:

It's supposed to be a brief overview. Obviously, it's not gonna go in depth. This one is less than a minute, so you can imagine it's not gonna be like a full in-depth overview. Just supposed to give you the gist of the property. You know, it's a more digestible way, as we were mentioning earlier, to uh kind of uh understand the overview of about a property.

SPEAKER_01:

And then you've got this section which is the good, the bad, the ugly. You know, I think doing things like this is just so useful to people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and this one's got a cave structure.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, this is a unique home. And by the way, yeah, if you go on the link on the right on Zillow, you can see the actual property on Zillow. So if anyone's more interested on you know seeing the actual property on the Flintstones. So this is unfortunately, so these are what previous users. So if you go to the left, if you scroll more to the left, this is uh that's hilarious. That's what previous users have used this for. So but you can see what people how people reimagine. Obviously, this one is a joke, but you can imagine how it could be used in other ways.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, no, totally, totally. So I'm I'm gonna skip to sunlight as well. So here we're within the page, we then have the shadow mapping of the property as well. So essentially we can then just move, toggle around, and we can see that this house Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

So you can see how sunlight affects uh the property. So this was again a really important data point for me. So I'm super excited about our integration with Shadow Map.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, and it's got a nice little way of looking at it over 24 hours. I mean, the being able to because that this is the other thing, is when people buy houses, they sort of stand in the garden or outside the property and they can see what it looks like on that day. Whereas what we've got is the feature which enables you to actually be able to look at it on a on a on any day of the year, and that's actually behind a pay gate. For many people that's a very, very useful feature, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Especially because you know uh you know what it looks like versus what it might look like uh in the midst of the winter might be completely different, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And can you tell me are people using Shadow Map?

SPEAKER_02:

So uh while we can't tell if people are using Shadow Map specifically, like we can tell that within our master key and an AI powered analysis, a lot of people seem to at least be watching the, you know, the checking out the shadow map section and uh the sunlight section. Yeah, no, a lot of people found it useful. As I said, some users uh have also explicitly told us that uh about how useful that integration was.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, no, no, and it's it's interesting because I asked the shadow map team actually, and they can see a lot of traffic coming through from Master Key. So with with that, and then some of the other data points that they have from some of the other integrations, we can see that people are really valuing it. And it seems particularly when people are very close to making a decision on a property, it's data that they really want to know. And um and I guess one of the things, I mean, it's great to have it so so visible on Master Key, because it's one of those things where it's an unknown need for many people, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Yeah. And that's kind of the one of the main problems of real estate. It's uh what I call the unknown unknowns. People don't know what to ask for. Uh and that that's where the job of the realtor today uh revolves around a lot. Uh just kind of knowing what to even look out for. A lot of people buying homes don't know, like you know, to ask for specific things like sunlight. Like, oh that's you know, that's something that can I just add, and then they BS you as well.

SPEAKER_01:

So, you know, I was in a house the other day because we were sort of thinking about moving. I went and had a look at a house, and my wife said, Oh, the kitchen was lovely and light. And I was like, Well, actually done the shadow mapping before, and I said, I can't it couldn't be light because that but you know, uh we'll go back and have a look. We're in the house, went back and had a look, but they turned all the lights on, you know. So we turned off the lights and the kitchen was really, really dark.

SPEAKER_02:

And I was like, well, those are important things that you want to find out before you buy a home, ideally, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_02:

And a lot of times the way I see uh Shadow Map also being very valuable in the context of real estate. A lot of times you go to this open house or you go to tour a home, it's not gonna be, you know, uh sunset or early in the morning. So you don't really get the full picture like of how bright it is. Chances are if the seller agent is smart, they probably put it at the time that it gets the most sunlight, I would hope, right? And so you get, again, you're not getting the full picture. The problem with real estate a lot of times is a problem of information asymmetry, meaning like the buyer doesn't have all the information they need to buy a home, where the seller has an incentive to, you know, just kind of not hide, but like not disclose an information that could prevent the buyer from uh uh you know having some negotiation leverage. And so this is where Shadow Map in this case and Master Key more generally steps in and kind of tries to bridge that gap.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think it does a fantastic job. Well, I should also say that you know, for for me, sunlight's important for other people. You know, there's I imagine properties in the US where it's very hot and uh what people are looking for is evening shade, you know, shade and things like that. So you know, it's so and again, as you say, it's sort of like all of us have a mental list of things which are kind of important to us. It you know, be it access to schools or access whatever it is, you know, sunlight is one of those things which I think is really important to many, many people. So 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

Certainly important to me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I I mean I read some research, I think it came out of out of China, which is people will pay a premium for sun blessed houses, you know.

SPEAKER_02:

And it's uh Well in in New York City, I've read specifically numbers that again, if an apartment is south or west facing, which means it gets more sunlight, it can be priced ten to twenty percent higher than uh you know their counterparts that are not.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I know wow. It's and it's it's interesting, isn't it? Because there's a whole body of it's not evidence, but people kind of talking about reconnecting with the sun, how important it is, and you know, for for just health and well-being in general. And I think like if you think about how much time we spend in our homes, you know, having that as something which we're satisfied by, I think is is for many of us really, really important.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's extremely important. Uh and I mean that's you know, scientifically proven that sunlight does have a big effect on uh health and uh um you know your well-being.

SPEAKER_01:

No, fantastic. Well, look, I we're sort of running out of time, but I I just wanted to say, like, I love Master Key. I think Master Key, even if you're not interested in property, but everybody's interested in property, aren't they? Frankly. I'm just judging by the the vast numbers of people which turn up the property websites. But Master Key is a great example of how using things like Gen AR you can really add to the experience, add value. Um, you know, I do you have any idea what Zillow might think of it?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I I don't know what Zillow thinks of it, what I hope they think of it is uh kind of a complimentary product uh to Zillow. It's not so Zillow, uh we're we're not in the business of selling properties, we're in the business of helping buyers get the context they need when considering a property. And also empowering buyers more generally to just navigate the whole uh real estate transaction. So just kind of giving it all the information they need. Again, as I mentioned before, it's an information asymmetric problem, and we're providing the information uh the buyers need.

SPEAKER_01:

But if you think about you think about every real estate platform out there, like Zillow is the benchmark. I would say almost globally. Well, not almost globally, definitely globally. I guess in terms of uh in terms of enhancing other platforms data must be huge as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Yeah, again, we're starting with supporting these little properties, but in the future we definitely plan on supporting other um uh platforms as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us. That was a brilliant, brilliant conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thank you, uh Dave, and thanks for the kind words.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I'm sorry about the dogs, everybody.

SPEAKER_02:

I actually couldn't hear them at all.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, well, that's good. Fingers crossed, but they were certainly barking in the garden. So it's my three dogs. Once they start, they all kind of set each other off.

SPEAKER_02:

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I'm very very lucky. Anyway, listen, have a great day, and uh, you know, I really do look forward to sort of seeing how Master Key evolves. And just one final thing is it's evolving all the time. So not a week goes past where you haven't done some product development or other.

SPEAKER_02:

Hopefully, we gotta keep moving. But thanks so much for having me, Dave. This was uh great. Best of luck with the future of Shadow Map.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic, thank you.