Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our HCW at Home with reAlpha Tech. For those unfamiliar, reAlpha is an AI-powered real estate technology firm developing an end-to-end integrated home buying platform designed to automate and streamline the traditional real estate transaction. This morning, we have the pleasure of speaking with reAlpha CEO, Mike Logozzo, and CFO, Piyush Phadke. Gentlemen, welcome.
Thank you very much, Scott, and appreciate the time.
Of course.
Morning, Scott.
Mike, I think maybe a good starting place might be providing a little bit of color on the problems reAlpha is looking to solve in the home buying market, and how the introduction of AI may be able to accelerate solving some of those pinch points.
Sure. So from a problem standpoint, home buying today, it's I would consider it fragmented, it's manual, often not very transparent or opaque. And I would say on top of that, buyers juggle multiple tools. They interact with multiple parties, and that just increases uncertainty. So our vision is really a single integrated platform from search, and realty through mortgage and through title, and then accelerate this through AI by, like, organizing tasks and timelines, synthesizing market transaction data, and, like, embedding real-time guidance, into, like, the actual execution of the transaction.
I think it's very important to note that, you know, human experts still play a key role, and we utilize AI to augment and not necessarily replace. Let the humans do what they do best, and let the AI do what they do best. The AI enables better transparency, predictability, and ultimately, that results in a more informed buyer.
No, I think that makes a ton of sense. Can you talk a little bit about where you guys are using AI in the business today, and where you think you might be able to add some additional benefit through AI capabilities in the future?
Sure. So, we certainly are using it today. I'll give you maybe two or three examples, and then talk a little bit about looking ahead. So from a current use standpoint, we have Claire, which is basically our AI concierge, and Claire is actually starting to evolve into more of the, not just providing guidance, but also journey kind of coordination and helping them through the process. We've recently launched a Home Buying Hub, which is really more, I would say, platform orchestration. So if you think about, you know, kind of having one-stop shopping where you could keep track of where you are in the process, whether it's through the realty or the mortgage or the title, you have a one single place to go.
And then, we also have developed a lot of things in the back end, like mortgage workflow support, like through our AI loan officer assistant, to help with, like, sorting docs and data, and helping them basically evaluate whether or not there's, you know, missing components, missing documents, inaccurate information that the loan officers could then go back and follow up with the home buyer on. I had mentioned earlier that, you know, AI is not... It's basically here to augment humans and not really replace the licensed roles that we currently have.
Sure.
And our focus has always been around greater clarity, better coordination, and ultimately, like, more consistency. I've always said that, you know, home buyer, they go through, you have 10 home buyers that go through 10 different agents, 10 different mortgages, and 10 different title companies, and end up with 10 totally different, you know, results. And what we're trying to do is at least, you know, bring that consistency wherever we can and the clarity wherever we can as well. Looking ahead, I would say that we definitely need deeper platform integration. And ultimately, if you look at our last quarter, right, we brought in two acquisitions.
So, the Prevu acquisition, which is a digital realty company that's come in, but then we've also signed a definitive agreement for InstaMortgage. And although that is not closed, you know, that's going to result in deeper platform integration to bring all of those, you know, into the product. Looking for ways to have fewer handoffs through integrated CRMs as well, and then ultimately better execution at scale, because as we scale, we want to be able to do it as efficiently as possible.
Mike, you mentioned Claire and some of the kind of back office AI functions. Is this proprietary technology to you, or are you using someone else's models?
It is proprietary. So, we have our own full stack AI development firm. We had acquired them back in, you know, 2024 early and fully integrated now, so they are our full-blown tech team. A very talented group of techies, I should say, for lack of a better term. And they've been very instrumental as to where we are today and where we will go moving forward.
Do they perform work outside of reAlpha, or are they solely responsible for building your tech stack?
When we had acquired them, they had a small client base that we allow them to continue to service. However, reAlpha is by far and away the bulk of what they do and the priority for them. So we make sure we're staffed accordingly to make sure that we, you know, service everybody according to what is expected. But, you know, we're constantly having to, you know, ramp up, and if we want to scale, you know, we need to have the team ready to scale along with us.
Sure. No, that makes a ton of sense. Let's talk a little bit about the products that reAlpha currently offers and maybe a little bit about, you know, the geographic footprint currently, and how that changes with some of the recent M&A in 2026.
S ure. So, Piyush, maybe what I'll do is I'll talk a little bit about the products, you can talk about the geographic footprint.
Sure.
We'll get a little bit of that. So, I'd mentioned, you know, earlier, we have the Home Buying Hub. So this is kind of like the single coordinated experience that a customer can come in from, like, searching through financing and through closing the transaction. We have Claire, which we had talked about. So this is like our AI-powered home buying concierge that, you know, we're looking, we're looking to continue to enhance Claire into more of a, a coordinator of, of the entire process as well. We have, obviously, real estate brokerages. So we offer realty. Basically, this has been integrated through the Prevu acquisition as well.
We have mortgage services, so we currently have a mortgage brokerage through reAlpha Mortgage. But as I'd mentioned, we currently signed a definitive agreement with InstaMortgage, and InstaMortgage is actually a lender. So, you know, we'll have both a mortgage brokerage as well as mortgage lending services, and all of this is supported by the internal AI tools, you know, that we've developed for them. And then from a title coordination standpoint, you know, we're tying closing logistics into the platform as well. We'll talk a little bit more about title, I think, as we go. But title, I would say, out of all of the services that we offer, is the lightest currently, and we're looking to spend a little bit more time and focus on building that up.
Right. Perfect. And then, Piyush, what does the geographic footprint look like today, and how does that change with InstaMortgage and Prevu?
Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the time, Scott. So, you know, we're very excited about our products and where we are. You know, from where we started to where we are today, we've definitely grown. Now, I don't think we want to be someone who can be something for everyone, so we don't necessarily have to be in all 50 states. I know there are companies who can do that and have the scale, but where we want to focus is where the growth is, where the population centers are, where the high transactions are, and so that's kind of how we grew deliberately. We started our realty business in Florida. In Florida, we can do title, mortgage, and realty.
And with the acquisition of Prevu, which happened most recently and closed in November, December timeframe, Prevu gives us another 11 states plus District of Columbia. So we're in 12 states, plus District of Columbia. It may be 13 states, but if you look at that roadmap, and we have... you know, we have maps in our investor presentation. A lot of it is... it's the largest states in the country, but then also, like, the high-growth states. So think of Florida, think of California, think of New York State, t hink of New Jersey, think of Virginia, North Carolina, Texas.
That's where we can do realty, and that's what we care about. Because, again, those markets are, you know, if you look at the top 10 markets, they're anywhere between 60%-70% of home transactions. So there's the opportunity for revenue there. So that's on the realty side, which has definitely grown, because prior to acquiring Prevu, we were really only in Florida, Georgia and Texas, right?
Yeah.
We had a very small footprint. We didn't have a ton of agents, kind of, boots on the ground. Now we do. We do have the ability to service people in big markets like New York and New Jersey. And, you know, obviously, we're still focused on Florida and Texas and California because those are growth areas. From the mortgage perspective, that's actually where we have the biggest footprint. We're in about 32 states with just reAlpha Mortgage today. Again, we're a mortgage broker. You know, as we go through and close a transaction with InstaMortgage, those states will increase. There's some overlap, there's some, you know, there's some new states, but more importantly, we can be a lender in that, in all those states.
And what that allows us to do is just make more on each transaction, and in a way, we can pass more savings on to the customer. So I would say mortgage is our biggest footprint, followed by realty, which has definitely been enhanced with the Prevu acquisition. And as Mike mentioned, you know, listen, our title services, it's still a nascent business. You know, we're in 3 states today, Florida being the primary one. But, you know, ideally, we'd like to be able to offer all three services, you know, across, say, 30-ish, 32 states.
Perfect. You mentioned not being the be all or end all for the entire real estate market. Who is kind of the target home buyer that benefits most from the technology?
Sure. So I would say we are focused on where most of the transactions are. So not necessarily the large ticket transactions, although we do play in those states like New York and California-
Sure.
T hat tend to have the larger ticket transactions. When we think of our kind of average mortgage or, you know, average transaction, it's between $400,000 to 600,000, right?
Right.
So, you know, in a lot of places, in a lot of the states that we play, say Georgia or Florida or North Carolina or Texas, you can get a pretty good sized house for that, right? Or a pretty large apartment or whatever you're looking for. You know, that may not buy you as much in Manhattan, right?
Right.
But you know, we're looking for... We wanna cater to kind of the most customers as possible, right? And when you think of that, the swath of America, that is... and that's really most of America.
Sure.
I think 90% of the transactions are around that size. You know, that's where we think we can provide value. And if you look at kind of the savings that we can provide on realty or mortgage or title, you know, for those buyers, $8,000 could be several mortgage payments, right? Or it could be, you know, you're redoing your whole bathroom and your whole basement or whatever. So, we think we can really provide bang for your buck for our customers there.
Let's dig in a little bit there, because I'm not sure how many investors kind of understand how the rebate program works and what kind of, you know, potential catalyst it is for bringing kind of new buyers to, or new customers to you guys. So let's talk a little bit about that unique value prop that you guys are able to offer versus, you know, more traditional home buying experience.
Sure.
Sure.
Mike, you wanna go through that?
Yeah, I'll go ahead, and please feel free to chime in. But I think it's really important to note that, you know, this rebate is structural. You know, it's not a promotional thing that we're trying to do here, and it comes from bundling services, and what I mean by this is that because if you think about a traditional transaction, a home buying transaction today, a homebuyer, they hire a realtor. A realtor has a customer acquisition cost. They go through a mortgage broker, and ultimately, a lender.
Yeah.
Each of them have customer acquisition costs. Title companies have customer acquisition cost. If you create a vertically integrated platform, and you stick the customer at the top of that, and as they go through, they have the opportunity to get all of those services in one place. Essentially, what we've done is we've taken that CAC and we've divided it up, and we've created efficiencies as a result of that. In addition to creating these AI tools that we utilize, both on the front end as well as the back end, to make even our operations more efficient.
T hese efficiencies we could then use to give back in the form of a rebate. So, you know, the buyers, they receive a rebate when they use multiple services. The more services that they use, the higher rebate that they can get. So it's not guaranteed, right? If they don't use our services, they don't get the rebate.
Sure.
If they use realty, obviously, they can get, I think, 1%; mortgage, another 0.5%. So it enables them. It's a win-win. The way we say it is, "Hey, look, this unlocks additional multiple streams of revenue for reAlpha," which is a great thing. But the efficiencies that we've gained, we can give that back to the customer, then it's a win for them as well. And to make things, I think, even, even, I would say, more valuable is we're giving them flexibility as to how they want to use that rebate.
Yeah.
Because we own the mortgage part, right? Do they want- do they just want cash back? Do they want to use it as part of their down payment? Do they want to maybe use it as a, a way to buy down their mortgage interest rate?
Yeah.
Obviously, in today's environment, that can be a really important thing. So, you know, not only getting a rebate, but the flexibility as to how you want to use it, I think is, you know, is a, it's a great value add to a homebuyer.
No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about the home buying environment currently. You know, the Fed cut rates 3 times in 2025. I think the prevailing expectation is for another, you know, at least 2 cuts here in 2026 and potentially more. Are lower interest rates a material tailwind for your business?
Yeah, I'll... Piyush, again, I'll go, then feel free to chime in.
Sure.
Obviously, lower rates, they help buyer confidence and affordability.
Sure.
There are a lot of people now that want to sell their home, but they're sitting on a 3% interest rate, and the last thing they want to do is sell a home at 3% and then buy another home at 6%.
Yeah, hands up, you know.
Right. I mean, it's a very difficult thing for them to do. So, you know, lower rates are going to unlock it and certainly create those tailwinds for us. But I think an important thing is that, you know, rates, they're a tailwind, they're not a strategy for us, and we need to build something that is going to be not dependent on this.
Yeah.
I honestly think that, you know, even in a higher interest rate environment, people could benefit by using reAlpha because of the opportunity to buy down the interest rate.
Yeah.
You know, take that rebate to buy that down. So, you know, we're trying to build a tool that does not necessarily need to be dependent on Fed, you know, Fed decisions to cut rates. You know, we want to be able to have a tool that's independent of that, that people can still get value and unlock value.
Yeah, I think that's a good point. You know, when you, when you think of it, Scott, you look at the last couple of years, rates have been high. You know, home sales have been low, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I know the last four months were pretty good. I think January was pretty bad. There was just... I just saw an article out in the Journal where home sales were way down, mostly because of the weather in the Northeast-
Sure.
A ctually, even in the Southeast, right? So that kind of put everything on pause. We saw that with our brokers. You know, we kind of look at a bunch of stats, we look at tours, we look at, you know, all those things. And for a week, across the eastern part of the United States, those stopped, right?
Yeah.
Because there was 14 inches of snow everywhere. So, you know, listen, that impacts the business. You can never be, you can never be resistant to all macro trends, right? Any company, from us to the largest companies in the world. But like Mike said, we want to be efficient so that... You know, we've been operating in a pretty tough environment the last couple of years, right?
Sure.
We've increased our revenue pretty, pretty good, pretty well, quarter over quarter, year over year. And, you know, we're hoping, we're optimistic that rates do decline. You know, there's two opportunities for us to make money there. One, if rates decline, obviously, there's going to be new home purchases, right? So that's an opportunity for our customers to save money. Secondly, when rates go down, a lot of people got into high interest rate mortgages over the last couple of years. Right? So we think the refi business is a great opportunity for us. There's a lot less customer acquisition cost there because we've already gone through it with the customer, whether it's on the, you know, on the mortgage side.
Sure.
So that's another great opportunity for us. So, you know, we're optimistic about, you know, what the future holds. I think, like you said, the ex-w all Street expectations are that rates come down a couple times. I think we saw that in October, where rates came down, but they didn't come down as well, as much as people expected, so actually, the 30-year mortgage went up, right?
Right.
So, you know, we can't control those things. We just wanna... Like Mike said, if interest rates are high, to a certain extent, that $8,000 means a lot more to people-
Yeah.
R ight? Or whatever it is, than if rates are, you know, 2%, like they were during the pandemic.
No, I think that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, outside of the kind of mortgage handcuffs that we spoke about, what else are you seeing in the home buying market today that would make you more optimistic or maybe even pessimistic about real estate activity levels in 2026?
I would categorize the market as being, like, stable, but selective. So there's buyers out there, they're active, but they appear to be just more thoughtful, and they're-
Yeah.
M oving a little bit more methodically. Affordability is still driving behavior. You know, there is some inventory out there, it's improving. But, I don't know, people just don't seem to be acting much with a sense of urgency. I think, you know, execution quality is really gonna matter here in this type of market, and that's what we're bringing to the table here. I feel, you know, optimistic about 2026. I think that somebody who is maybe fundamentals driven, that, you know, sees kind of the value that they're gonna get by using a product like ours, and fewer speculative, you know, type dynamics in the space, ultimately will yield a, I think, a good year for reAlpha. That's my outlook. And Piyush, I don't know if there's anything that you wanna add.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, listen, I think we, we have to, you know, we have to make kind of our, our best educated guess in terms of how we're gonna plan in terms of people, personnel, and growth.
Sure.
You know, so the way we do it is, you know, we're still planning conservatively, right? We've been through a couple of, conservative years on the home buying side, right? That just... And rates were very high. We have made acquisitions, obviously, one of them closed, and we're already starting to integrate Prevu, and we're seeing the fruits of that. You know, we're not underwriting aggressive assumptions, right? We're not saying that, "Oh, we're gonna acquire this company, and they're gonna, you know-
Yeah.
D ouble or triple in revenue," right? But we think we're gonna. We think we're very balanced. We do a lot of diligence on both Prevu and InstaMortgage. We're very balanced in terms of what we think they can do as part of our platform. We wanna kinda control what we can control, right?
Yeah.
We can't control the interest rate, we can't control tariffs, we can't control macro, right? But we can control the customer experience with reAlpha. We can control how our agents, either our real estate agents or our mortgage brokers, deal with customers, right? When you think of, you know, AI is very important. One way that you just think about it, anyone who's bought a home or an apartment, you know, I remember the first time I went through that, I probably had to upload my 401(k) statements, like, 10 times, right? To different portals of the banks. You know, first to the bank, first to the realtor, you know, and then-
Sure.
A nd, you know, if you just think about that, then you have a human checking those, right? To make sure that they... your pay stubs. Like-
Yeah.
T hat's, like, a really easy, kind of low-hanging fruit for why wouldn't AI check all of that stuff, right? Make sure you have all your income verification, and then the broker, the mortgage broker can say, "Okay, well, our, our software checked this," and, "Hey, you're just missing this W-2," instead of... You know, it's obviously gonna make less mistakes than a person, right?
Yeah.
But you still have that person there verifying it. So if we can focus on the product, focus on the customer experience, we can add value and provide savings to customers, I think that's gonna be a differentiator for us.
Should we think about the business having seasonality based around kind of the annual real estate schedule? I mean, spring/summer being, you know, kind of higher action quarters than, you know, fall and, and winter?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's completely correct. I mean, if you look at home buying, you know, it's been going on for 100 years in the U.S., right? And there is a seasonality. Like you said, spring and summer, and even early fall, those are the big kind of quarters or months, right?
Yeah.
You know, it's not too many people are buying houses. Although we did see an uptick in December, not too many people are buying houses in January, right? A lot of it's tied to, you know, school year-
Yeah.
Y ou know, kind of, you know, all that stuff. Summer is a busy season for us, and we've seen that historically with reAlpha. We've seen that historically with Prevu, right?
Yeah.
W e've seen that in the diligence that we've done in reAlpha, reAlpha Mortgage. So, you know, we're kind of built for that. We're not, like, overstaffed now, and then understaffed then. You know, we're trying to make sure that we're right staffed-
Yeah.
T o take advantage of it. And we think we're, you know, we'll see what happens. I mean, obviously, we can't predict if something like 2021 happens again, but,
Of course.
Y ou know, we'll staff up. But there is a seasonality component, and we're kind of always adjusting to it. Remember, we're... you look at the seasonality overall of the business, but then also look at the seasonality. We're doing acquisitions, too, right? So last year we didn't have Prevu. Now we do-
Right.
H ave Prevu, so we could offer a lot more states. You know, last year we didn't have InstaMortgage. You know, at some point this year, soon, we will have it as part of our business. So,
Yeah.
S easonality plays a component, but that's something that we know.
So on staffing, how do you currently attract talent to the platform, whether it's agents or mortgage brokers? And does being a publicly traded company provide some advantages in that respect?
Sure. So, as far as talent attraction, I would say that we're looking for individuals who are maybe a little more mission-driven, for lack of a better term, where, you know, they see the friction out there in home buying, and they wanna fix it. If you're old school, if you're an old-school realtor or even an old-school tech techie, reAlpha is not gonna be for you.
Yeah.
You know, we want people that understand that, you know, the system is broken, and the way of doing things yesterday is not the way that things need to be done today or obviously in the future. So, you know, we want those types of individuals to come in and be a part of our team here. You know, we want to be appealing to agents and loan officers who want a better way to work.
So, you know, providing them with tools so they could service more clients, without having to keep adding more loan officers at the same rate, for example, or more agents at the same rate. If you can give them better tools, allow them to focus on what they do best, and then let the tools let them work on, you know, maybe the more mundane stuff, it's a win-win. It's, again, a win-win for everybody.
Sure
A s well. And, you know, we wanna focus on enabling talent, not necessarily replacing talent. So, you know, we plan on scaling, and as we plan on scaling, maybe we don't need to grow, you know, at the same rate because of all of these tools and things that we've done to enable the team that we have currently. As far as the techies, you know, that come onto our platform-
Yeah
Y ou know, we want people who are, you know, that are, very, bullish on the latest AI tech that's coming out. I mean, just in the last few weeks, the developments that have come out are, I would say, are game-changing. And, you know, we want the type of people who come into reAlpha that want to embrace that than not be afraid of it and say, "Hey, look, you know, I could, I could use this as a, basically, a force multiplier."... if I, if I utilize these tools. And it makes great developers, you know, even better.
Yep.
So, you know, we want people to have that mindset, that want to embrace tools to make them better, but also make the company better, and not be afraid of it. And then, you know, being a public company, you had asked, it certainly has advantages. You know, we have the ability to offer, you know, RSUs, restricted stock units, to key employees, and it's a great retention tool. It gets them, it gives them some skin in the game.
Yeah.
You know, they get in on the growth of the company as well. So, Piyush, I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add about the RSU component?
Yeah, I mean, listen, I think we really like RSUs, and generally the market likes RSUs for companies because it is a longer term play, right?
Yeah.
It's not something where people get the stock and then they sell and they leave, right?
Right.
I know companies have made that mistake in the past. You know, RSUs vest over a period of quarters and years, where you can share in the upside of the company. And we kind of have that RSUs, we have those RSUs not only for the executive team, but also across the board, you know, we've made acquisitions, right?
Yeah.
That's appealing, you know, to help people stay and wanna be aligned with the company long term. You know, we use RSUs for... We actually just launched a new program a couple months ago to recruit high-performing loan officers, right? Who wanna have, okay, you know, the loan officer business by and large is mostly a commission-driven business, right?
Right.
You just get paid your commission on the loans you bring in, and that's great, but, you know, with us, since we are a publicly traded company, you have a potential upside-
Yeah.
W here you can get RSUs. And so not only are you making your commission, which you would make at any mortgage brokerage, but now you have long-term buy-in with the company. So that's really attractive. It's attractive to our other subsidiaries that are, you know, international, right? Whether we're in, you know, India or Singapore, if you're a developer who's looking to come to a startup, or have that kind of startup environment, and you're an AI developer, you know, we can offer something that startups can't offer, right?
Right.
We actually have a Nasdaq-listed company, so you can get some shares where you can kind of... You know, you're building something, and you're part of that growth. So we think it really works with alignment for employees. And like Mike said, we want people who are gonna fit in this environment, right? This is not an environment where... And Mike and I both came from large companies, you know, you're not just gonna punch in, you know, punch in the clock and then punch out after eight hours, right? It's not that at all.
Right.
You're doing a bunch of different things. Your job description when you were hired may say one thing, but we want... If you learn and do more things, you can do a lot of different stuff.
Yeah.
And it's constantly changing, so we think that's the exciting part of reAlpha, and we wanna attract talent like that.
Sure. No, I think that makes a ton of sense. Let's talk a minute about strategic priorities for 2026. Are they, you know, P&L in nature, in financial in nature, or are they things that may not show up on the P&L this year?
I wouldn't necessarily frame them as, like, financial versus non-financial.
Okay.
What we've done is we've created strategic priorities on how we want the business to run and operate and grow. So, you know, execution quality is kind of like our starting point. Our priorities are, you know, integration across the services, particularly the, you know, the M&A transactions, you know, that we've brought in to get operational consistency, system reliability, and then ultimately scale. And within those, there's going to be a capital requirement as well, you know, that we're going to need in order to maybe-
Sure
D o these things. Then obviously, there's going to be a result that, you know, we'll get as a result of doing them, you know, doing them well and successful. So, you know, there is financial woven into it, but the way we're currently doing it is really more about larger strategic priorities that have both a financial and non-financial component, that yield, you know, a positive result.
Yeah. Yep. Well, let's talk about M&A for a minute, because you guys have been awfully, awfully active. You know, if we think about the acquisitions completed over the past several months, can you talk a little bit about the criteria and what an attractive transaction looks like for reAlpha?
Sure. Piyush, do you want, do you wanna take this one, and I'll chime in?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, happy to, happy to get into it. So, you know, listen, we look at, we look at M&A as really, it's a way for us to build our platform, right? And we're not just looking to grow and acquire revenue for revenue's sake. So what we've been focused on the last couple of years, but in particular the last few months, is we've been focused on real estate and mortgage, and also title.
We've been able to close a, close a transaction in real estate. We're really excited about the Prevu transaction. We're already seeing it bear fruit for our customers. You know, mortgage, obviously, the InstaMortgage transaction is announced but not yet closed, so we can't yet integrate it. But we're excited about that opportunity because, again, it provides more, more options for customers, right? We're not just a broker now, we're a mortgage lender.
Sure.
So that'll be exciting. And then, you know, we are looking, we're actively looking, we have a really good pipeline of title opportunities, whether they're, you know, smaller scale or larger scale. We do wanna expand out from three states, right? We'd like to be in, you know, ideally, kind of 30 states for all three, right?
Yeah.
And we realize that takes a little bit of time, and we wanna make sure that when we buy these businesses, we wanna reduce the friction between services. Ideally, you want a seamless handoff from one to the other, right? Just that makes it more appealing, aside from the savings, it makes it more appealing to the customer. So, you know, for our filters, we do have filters for acquisitions, right? I mean, we wanna-
Sure
M ake sure that first it's a strategic fit. That was one of the things that really, really excited us about Prevu. It was kind of an online brokerage. They were very tech-forward, right? They were smaller, but, you know, we felt that within our platform, with our development tools, that could really take off. We wanna operate as kind of one system to the customer, at least. Obviously, in the back end, there's gonna be a lot of things going on, but the customer, again, we talk about the seamless experience. We want it to be a very smooth experience for a customer, because when you think of it, the, a home purchase or a home sale, but a home purchase is usually the largest financial transaction anyone's gonna do in their life, right?
Yeah.
And so with that, there's a lot of stress. There's obviously financial stress, stress about jobs, things like that, market stress. And so we wanna at least take some of that away, where people can, you know, "Hey, I'm gonna save some money. This is pretty seamless, they've helped me do this." So, you know, that's kind of what we've been focused on and, and what we'll continue to focus on. What we wanna avoid is, we wanna avoid, you know, disconnected assets, like things that, just acquiring an asset for maybe because it has a good cash flow profile but doesn't really fit into the rest of the business.
Yeah.
We're not really looking to do that. We're not looking to roll up a roll-up strategy without integration, right? I mean, that people have done that, and there are firms that do that, right? Even public companies and certainly-
Yeah
P rivate firms. But that's not what we're looking for. And ideally, we're not looking to do complex deals, right? And you can see this in the deals that we've done, 2024 versus 2025. 2024, the deals that we had done, we had a lot of them had, you know, a cash component, a stock component, a preferred stock component, an earn-out component.
Right.
You know, we've simplified that, right? So now we're like-
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, it's gonna be cash and stock, right? Like, that's, that's it. So we wanna make it simpler. It's simpler for the market to digest. It's simpler for the buyers and the sellers, right? This, certainly, the sellers like that. So, you know, that's kinda how we care about it. And listen, the entire team, from Mike on down, when we see a target, and I remember how we did this with Prevu and also with InstaMortgage, we're all involved in the diligence, right?
Yeah.
We'll each take a, we'll each lead a certain piece of it, work with our team, not only in, you know, in the U.S., but also across geographies, to make sure the accounting and the finance and the modeling and those things. You know, Mike, Mike works a lot with operations. You know, we have our CMO works a lot on the, you know, on, on the marketing side, and how can we scale up marketing? Our CTO, obviously, on the tech, tech integration side, which is key for us. And so we're all very involved, and we wanna make sure that all of us in the executive team are signed off on an acquisition, aside from also the board. Because, you know, we're gonna be the ones integrating this.
There's been a lot of focus on that in this year, in these last two acquisitions, and that will continue in the future.
Given how active you guys have been, how should we think about M&A being part of the growth strategy going forward? Do you need to take a pause here and digest for a bit, or are you guys continuing to remain in the market and look at opportunities?
We're gonna continue to remain in the market.
Okay.
No need, no need to pause. You know, what, what we need to do is ensure that as we're integrating or as we're acquiring, we're integrating them well. You know, I would say, you know, some of the downfalls of M&A deals are the post-M&A integration.
Yeah.
So, you know, we need to make sure that we have a very solid, you know, post-M&A integration plan in place, with dedicated resources, to ensure that it gets done, correctly. If you have too many of those going on at one time, it could get very, very complex. So, you know, I think there's, you know, a good cadence and, strategy, you know, that we have in place as we move forward. We'll continue to execute on that. But, you know, the one thing that, we know, and we're gonna be very, I would say, open about communicating, is that we want to grow both organically as well as inorganically.
Sure.
You know, we say that, you know, if reAlpha... in order for reAlpha to be, let's say, an everyday product, right? You know, a product that people know, we need to have—the product needs to really shine. And so that organic growth is gonna be very important for us. You know, people need to use it, love it, tell their friends and family about it, and, you know—
Yeah.
A nd continue to grow that way organically. But we also know that sometimes that takes a little bit of time. It's an iterative process, and we wanna continue to show the market that we're capable of growing inorganically as well, you know, quarter- on- quarter, year- on- year.
Sure.
It's gonna be a combination of both.
Mike, can I ask about InstaMortgage? Bringing on a direct lender, two questions there: Does that create a conflict with the mortgage brokering business? And then, what is the funding mechanism, and how does that impact the balance sheet?
So I'll speak about the, you know, potential conflict of interest, and then maybe the funding aspect.
Yeah.
Piyush could speak to. But with respect to InstaMortgage, no, it's actually very complementary. You know, we talked a lot about that because, obviously, brokers, you know, they like to... They shop the deal around.
Yeah.
But what we've done is essentially, you know, we could create essentially a buy box, where, you know, we have InstaMortgage—we have criteria with underwriting, and we kinda know the type of a homebuyer, you know, that we would wanna bring on. We could continue to operate that way with the broker. And there's going to be those who maybe don't fit that buy box as well.
Sure.
It could be due to various reasons, whether it's credit-related or whether it's just situation-related or the type of home. And that, that's where the broker can go ahead and continue to go and find the best deal for the customer.
Yeah.
The one thing I think is very, very important is that we're having InstaMortgage doesn't mean that the broker has to sacrifice. If anything, we think that it's going to enable the broker to get deals done faster, the right deals-
Yeah.
Done faster, but then also giving them the flexibility, if there's not a good fit, if it doesn't fit our buy box, they're gonna go out there, and they'll find the right tool for the right situation for that homebuyer.
Right.
So giving them that flexibility. So, you know, when I was at, when I was at BMW, you know, you know this, but I'm not sure if everybody else did, but I was in BMW Financial for, what, 18 years. And, you know, we did similar things to where, you know, we were financing people to buy cars. You know, we had a buy box, right? We had a credit scorecard, and there are people who fit into that, that obviously we wanted, and they would benefit from, you know, having, you know, great rates and all that, but there are some that, that didn't fit it as well.
Sure.
We had the ability to go and shop that around, and you could still get a fee, you know, for doing that. So it's a very similar model. You know, we're just bringing it into home buying.
Okay, perfect. And then on the funding mechanism, just help us-
Sure.
kind of understand what the balance sheet impact is?
Yeah. So today we, you know, we don't have any corporate level debt.
Sure.
You know, we don't, we don't have any warehouse facilities because we're not a lender today. InstaMortgage does have warehouse facilities, right? So they, they're a lender, you know, it's, it's they're pretty much, the facilities are a kind of low-level industry standard. They're gonna be distinct from our corporate capital or our operating capital.
Yeah.
So we're not gonna be using those facilities to fund our operations or anything like that.
Right.
They would just be there to fund loans, and then again, those loans are, you know, syndicated out, right, pretty quickly. So it's, it's fairly standard. Obviously, you know, you look at the large players like Rocket, that's, that's kind of their business. That's what they do, right?
Sure.
In the billions of dollars. We hope to get there, but we're not there yet.
Right.
So, you know, listen, like Mike said, it just gives us flexibility, right? It allows us to offer customers more options, right? You know, and 'cause remember, InstaMortgage is also a mortgage broker, right? So not every one of their deals that they're brokers for, they lend-
They lend too.
R ight. They have their own relationships with... I mean, at reAlpha, we have relationships with hundreds of lenders, right? You know, we, we I think it's like 100+ lenders. InstaMortgage has their own relationships. We kind of combine those together. You know, if it doesn't fit our buy box or if the, you know, there's no problem-
Yeah.
We still get a fee, right? We still get a brokerage fee, right?
Right.
We may not make as much as we would if we did the brokerage and the lending, right?
Sure.
It's really a way for us to provide more options to the customer. They're not gonna lose anything. We're not gonna shoehorn them into, "Hey, you have to use us as a lender.
Yeah.
It's just really more customer choice and, you know, allows us to offer more to customers and potential more savings. So that's why we're excited about it. It doesn't really increase our risk or our balance sheet risk, 'cause again, we're not using these facilities for anything but that specific mortgage lending. That's it.
Right.
You know, they're not huge facilities. They certainly cover the volume that we have, plus more. So we're excited about that. You know, we'll transfer all that stuff over when, you know, as the transaction closes. But it's really a way for us to offer more to our customers. Again, the biggest thing is, like Mike said, if something doesn't fit, and InstaMortgage has been doing underwriting for a long time, right? If it doesn't fit their underwriting box, then they would just wouldn't offer to be the lender, right? There's a lot of lenders who have a lot of different, y ou know, 100 different lenders have 100 different underwriting boxes, right?
Sure.
Whether the criteria, high risk, low risk, whatever, it's normal underwriting. So we want to offer them options. It may not be with us, but that's okay. They still have options to close their home loan.
Beyond brokerage, mortgage, and title, which we've spoken about, any additional services that you guys have talked about potentially folding into the ecosystem?
We are. We're looking at things that even go, you know, beyond closing. When you think about, like, insurance, for example, moving coordination, utility setup, you know, other types of things when you consider, you know, the home buying journey that happens. So, you know, we are not gonna stop, you know, at title. We're gonna continue to look at other options.
Yeah.
But we want to be very focused right now. We realize that there's an opportunity to get title up to speed on where we currently are with mortgage and realty. We need to continue to expand on our realty component as well. So, you know, I would say immediate focus will be more realty and title focused.
Yeah.
Then once we get those up to speed, and then we'll start looking at, you know, more complementary-type services that may even go, you know, past closing.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I think, Scott, a big thing is, like Mike said, if you just look at realty, mortgage, and title combined, those are like a $100 billion potential market, right?
Right.
So there's a lot. A nd, you know, and our revenue, you know, just came out. We're in the range of, like, $4.5 million per year. So just, it's not even a drop in the bucket for that, right? So-
Yeah.
You know-
There's plenty, there's plenty to keep you busy with what you have in front of you.
Exactly. Exactly.
Sure.
So if there's a good opportunity in these, what we call kind of post-closing services, we'll certainly-
Yeah.
L ook at it, right? If it's at an attractive accretive multiple for us. But there's so much to do in, you know, even in mortgage, even in mortgage, even in real estate, even in title. So we're gonna focus there.
Perfect. As we look at 2026 and kind of the growth plans that you guys have laid out, Piyush, should we expect, you know, significant additional operating expense to support this growth? Or does a lot of that OpEx come through the acquisitions you're making, at which point, you know, you're able to find some efficiencies and maybe, you know, pull some costs actually out of the business?
Yeah, I mean, so I think for us, we're not so much focused on, you know, OpEx versus leverage. It's really how our investments can scale, right?
Yeah.
So, you know, Mike mentioned this before. This is not like we're not looking to have AI replace all of our employees or anything like that, right? Like, that's not the case at all, because they're-
Right.
O ur employees are a critical part of our growing our business.
Yeah.
And so when I look at it, you know, I look at the infrastructure that we've built over the past few quarters, right? We've built out teams kind of everywhere, every geography that we're in, whether it's the United States, Nepal, Singapore, India, you know, we've built out teams. And so we feel that we've built the teams to a stage where they can really, you know, start to scale up in terms of revenue. And we're seeing that because while we built out the teams, we did have significant revenue growth over the last year.
Yeah.
We're hoping to have continued revenue growth. I don't think it's something where to triple our revenue, we need to, we need to triple our headcount. I don't think it's that at all.
Yeah.
That's actually where we can take advantage of our being able to scale. You know, we've put in systems and workflows to kind of help us grow and really grow exponentially. That doesn't mean that we're not going to add people, right? We will add people, you know. If you think about one year ago today, you know, we had just—I was literally one week into the job, so we just gotten a full-time CFO, right?
Yeah.
We did not have a CMO. We did not have a CTO, right? So we didn't have any of those functions. We hired those over 2025, you know, and we're not looking to hire another CTO, right? Like, that, that's there, and, and that can scale-
Sure, s ure.
T hat can scale. So, you know, that, that's important. The biggest thing is we don't wanna have a super, super high-cost base, right? We wanna. If we look at things, if we're looking to hire, you know, how can we do that most effectively, most efficiently? What... A couple good examples of that, and Mike mentioned, we have our own full-stack AI development team, mostly-
Yeah.
M ostly based in Nepal and India. And, you know, just a lot of your other clients, I'm sure, the cost efficiencies that you get for hiring an AI developer, say, in India or Nepal versus, you know, versus the United States, are significant, right?
Right.
There's multiples, you know, multiples of salary here, obviously. We've kind of... I've done that with my finance team. My finance and accounting team is almost all in India. And, you know, there's a really talented base there of not only software developers, but also finance, finance professionals. So I think if we're looking to grow, we're gonna look at the kind of the lower cost environments first.
Yeah.
But that doesn't mean we're not gonna grow if we need to. I think, right now, where we are, our headcount is very well positioned to take advantage of the market, but also take advantage of the Prevu integration and then the InstaMortgage, you know, bringing them on board, closing the transaction, integrating them as well.
Y ep. No, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, seemingly there should be a ton of operating leverage in the business, right? That-
Exactly.
Kind of come out here over time. You know, a question that always comes up with companies early in their business development, like reAlpha is, and I think you touched on it there a bit, but how do you balance prioritizing revenue growth with being able to provide some sort of pathway to profitability?
Sure. You know, maybe I'll give my two cents-
Yeah.
Mike can chime in as well. I mean, listen, we look at profitability as a progression, not a single milestone, right? That we have to be profitable by this period. Like, that's-
Right.
T hat's not how we look at it. I think we want to focus on operating discipline, right? We want to control... focus on having a controllable cost structure, a scalable structure, right? Where we don't have to add... You know, we wanna—if we want to increase our mortgage unit 2x, we don't have to add, add 2x people. We certainly don't have to do that. You know, we're very focused on that. It's, it's not growth at all costs. I think-
Yeah.
You know, being in the market that we're in and kind of the small microcap tech space, you know, investors historically have cared, number one, kind of one through ten about revenue growth, right? That's what they care about.
Yeah.
They care about revenue growth. They want us to, they want us to grow. They do care about... Listen, everyone cares about EBITDA and net income, and all of those things. I think those are to come, right? There's a lot of different examples of companies that that have made it, that started off and didn't make a profit for their first 10 years, right?
Sure.
You know, and now they're minting cash. So I think we're first and foremost focused on revenue growth. We don't want to buy a business that's losing a ton of money just to buy that revenue, right? We want it to eventually have a path to kind of be break even and profitable. And listen, from a CFO standpoint, you know, it's much better to be generating cash. You can kind of reinvest that in the business than having to go out to capital markets, right? But eventually, I think that's our goal, but for now, I think we are focused mostly on revenue growth. That's the disciplined revenue growth with a low cost structure. That's our focus in our acquisitions, in our integration.
Yeah.
That's kind of our daily focus from my perspective, but I definitely want Mike to chime in.
Yeah, I mean, I agree 100%. I mean, you know, I would much rather be a growing, you know, company from—in terms of revenue than, you know, a profitable microcap. You know, I wanted to make sure that we could, we can continually grow and show the market that quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, this company is slated for something, you know, very... I would say, very big and something that they would want to be a part of. Profitability is a lever. You know, we could choose to shorten our path to profitability and get there sooner, but as Piyush mentioned, you know, we're—we are reinvesting back into our growth-
Yeah.
B ecause we believe that that's what the market wants to see. And we do, we do have a path to profitability. As we do M&A transactions, we see how that would impact it, whether that would shorten it or keep it the same. It certainly wouldn't want to make it longer, as Piyush mentioned. You know, we're looking for companies who are, at worst, break even, right? We want companies that are profitable, that are gonna even help us out even further in our path to profitability. So, looking for the accretive deals there.
Sure. And I would imagine at some point you, you know, you're making the conscious choice, right? To, to forgo near-term profitability in order to, you know, continue to take advantage of top-line opportunities, and I think that's, you know, I think that's absolutely fine, and I think investors kind of recognize that, that strategy. I know we're starting to run short on time here, but before we go, I just want to touch quickly on the balance sheet and maybe what your expectations are for, for cash requirements in 2026.
Sure. Yeah, and listen, the balance sheet is obviously my focus every day.
Sure.
We want to keep it. W e want it to be flexible and simple. I think, you know, when I look back a year ago, our balance sheet was quite different. We had a significant amount of ratchet warrants. We had, you know, $5.45 million of debt, that was coming due, around this time. You know, and we had, you know, we didn't have a ton of cash.
Yeah.
You know, if you look back on our flash financials that we released a couple days ago, we're over $7 million of cash in our balance sheet today, so we feel really good from a cash position. You know, we have no, like I said, corporate level debt. That debt was repaid last year. We did a couple of equity deals. We did an ATM. We have an ATM with the banking side of Wainwright. So we want to have a flexible balance sheet, because we want to be able to have cash to fund our growth. And so, you know, we don't have a ton of obligations. If you look back to 2025, those ratchet warrants, you know, we did a warrant inducement deal in April-
Yeah
A nd a lot of those warrants actually converted. I think we had over $13 million plus of proceeds in those warrants that happened over 2025 that we disclosed as they happened. So a lot of that warrant overhang is gone, right? So with that, we do have a lot of shares outstanding, but there's no, like... There's not a ton of warrants left, right? So, so that's good from our perspective. Listen, we're always looking for, you know, we want to be liquid, we want to have optionality. You know, I would say our cash burn-
Yeah.
R oughly is about $750,000 a month, right? Is kind of how it is. You know, given that if that's the number and we have over $7 million, almost $8 million of cash on our balance sheet today, you know, we feel like we're in pretty good shape-
Yeah.
W ithout even accessing the capital markets. We'll be opportunistic, right? We're gonna see what's out there. We're gonna see... Obviously, we were opportunistic last year when we had a super high volume day. We did an intraday deal. We have an ATM. We think that's a very efficient cost of capital, but we want to make sure that we have kind of a simple, controlled balance sheet that really supports our strategy, and that's. W e think we've fixed the balance sheet from last year, and are in a good position today. We saw that where we were able to do acquisitions. You know, when you don't have any cash, it's tough to do acquisitions.
Sure.
We were able to get some cash in the balance sheet. We were able to talk to Prevu, close that deal. We were able to announce the deal with InstaMortgage, and, you know, hopefully some acquisitions coming here. So that... Really, we just, we, we're in growth mode, and we want to make sure that we have the cash and the capital and the access to capital to do it.
Great. Well, I think, guys, this is probably a pretty good place to stop today. I think we've given the investors on the line a fair amount to digest. I want to thank both of you for your time and attention today. And folks on the call, should you have any questions regarding reAlpha, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly at.