MINNEAPOLIS -- The country’s newest real estate specialist is Mae (short for Maestro), and she was just born this year.

The “synth human” is really part of a new AI-powered platform that will put a (digital) face on Minneapolis-based HomeServices of America, which owns mortgage, title, insurance and escrow companies, among others. The nation’s biggest homeownership service provider also owns major brokerages across the country, including Edina Realty.

Though HomeServices has always maintained a relatively low profile in an industry that prizes brand recognition, the company is now trying to raise its profile through a rebranding effort and the launch of new technology that aims to make it easier for consumers to access all of its offerings.

In an interview edited for clarity and length, CEO Chris Kelly shares more on the company’s strategy and how Mae will help HomeServices agents navigate the buying and selling process.

What can Mae actually do?

From a consumer perspective, I’ll be able to go to the Edina Realty website and interact with Mae and have it do searches for me. On the back end, the agent is connected to the consumer and can help compile what this consumer is looking for, so the agent and consumer are in sync with one another. She serves as kind of a bridge between consumer search and what the agent is doing to directly assist their client.

What’s the goal of the Maestro platform itself?

To have everything that an agent and consumer needs to buy and sell real estate on one platform rather than having to use a set of disparate tools. That’s the Maestro suite of tools; Mae is the public-facing persona of that platform.

So Mae is more than just a pretty face?

The thought behind Mae is really to try to meet the consumer, maybe not where they’re at today, but where I really think they’re going to be in the next couple years. When they’re looking for something, they just want to be able to speak, and then the AI system goes and finds it for them. The consumer wants to just hold that phone up to their mouth and say, “I’m looking for certain houses in Eden Prairie, and I want four bedrooms and three baths minimum and near this school” and not have to go through all these time-consuming checkboxes and things like that.

Does this replace any current system?

It’s a complement. If you have someone who very much still wants to search in what I would call a traditional manner, that is always going to be available to them

Will buyers and sellers have to interact with Mae?

We’re not forcing this on anybody. Right now, you may go to a website and a chat bot may pop up and say, “Hey, can I help you? Type in your question here.” Mae is very similar. On the real estate search website, Mae will come up and say, “Can I help you with the search?” That’s your opportunity to either engage in search in that fashion or if you want to do it the traditional sense.

So will Mae literally be the face of the company?

Over time, we can develop different personas. What he or she sounds like and looks like in different markets may be different. Mae is our HomeServices persona, but we can certainly customize as we move forward.

Your company touches virtually every aspect of the buying and selling process. How will Maestro integrate all of that?

Based on all the consumer surveys and sentiment we see, they want that truly seamless experience and that means from a digital perspective, as well. We use the line, “If it feels like a strip mall, like they’re conveniently located next to each other, but it doesn’t feel like a singular experience, then there’s improvement to be made.” So that the consumer feels like, “I truly went to one place to get everything that I needed to buy and sell.” So there’s a digitized process behind that as well, too.

What we’re building on the back end with the AI is to bring all of those things together so what mortgage knows about the consumer, the brokerage knows, and again, for the consumer’s perspective, it doesn’t feel quite so clunky. The other analogy I like to use is, wouldn’t it be nice, whether I’m going to my primary doctor, my dermatologist, or whatever it may be, that all these same forms that I fill out at all of these different places, like if we truly are supposed to have digitized medical records, that they already have my information? I don’t have to fill out the same thing every single time I go to the doctor’s office. By creating a singular consumer profile, that information can be pushed and pulled based on the services that the consumer is utilizing within our ecosystem.

Is there any risk Mae will replace agents? Or that consumers will think they don’t need an agent if they have Mae?

No, because what we’ve seen is that the same fears came up when the internet was coming to rise in use in real estate. If listings are available online, why would I need a real estate agent? What we found is that more people are using real estate professionals today than even before the internet.

So we know how Mae helps homebuyers. How will it help agents?

If we can use these AI tools to help the agent unload what I would call some of the administrative tasks, that allows them to spend more time doing the human stuff, leaning into the relationship with the client, which is really what’s most important to them. Most consumers say they’re hiring an agent for that professional advice; it’s negotiation experience. I always say it’s also part of the therapy work they provide because it’s an emotional process. It’s very emotional to buy and sell a house, and so the agent is there to help provide that guidance, as well. Those are things that we don’t have any fear that AI will replace.

In addition to Mae, why rebrand with a new logo?

The logo and redesign are really just a byproduct of what we were doing from a strategic standpoint. HomeServices has traditionally been what I would describe as a holding company that’s very much in the background, and we still will always [be that]. We’re very proud of our local brands and the local leadership.

What we’ve seen over the last decade is that so many of these conversations around real estate, whether it’s about private listings or [Multiple Listing Service] access or whatever, those are all happening at a national level now. Whereas before, those were very market or regional driven. We really believe it’s important for HomeServices to evolve from a holding company into what I would call a parent company.

How do you ensure that local focus remains?

It’s not that we want to replace anything because there is so much value and cachet and credibility with so many of our local brands. What we want HomeServices to be is actually a complement to that and actually have value. If you look at it from another industry, like within Marriott, you have all of these other brands that mean something to different types of consumers in different markets, but they’re all part of that Marriott Bonvoy parentage. That’s very similar to how we would view ourselves, too. It should mean something for a company to be part of HomeServices.

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