Shemeer Ahmad, CEO and co-founder of Vaughan, Ont.,-based Valery Real Estate Inc. (contributed).
Artificial intelligence has already changed how real estate agents work, and as adoption grows, Shemeer Ahmad wants to be the one leading the charge.
Ahmad, CEO and co-founder of Vaughan, Ont.,-based Valery Real Estate Inc., believes AI can now handle much of the administrative work that consumes agents’ days. He recently launched Homie, a suite of AI-powered virtual assistants designed specifically for real estate workflows.
Homie works by deploying more than a dozen specialized OpenClaw AI agents – or “homies” – on the user’s own dedicated server, each with the capacity to handle a different task, like CRM updates, comparative market analyses, offer paperwork, showing coordination and social media content.
Valery describes itself as Canada’s first AI-powered brokerage, which is charting new territory in personalized market insights, in addition to helping agents with routine tasks.
Homie’s foundation is the AI workflows built for agents working inside Valery’s own brokerage over the last three years. It took just four weeks to take those workflows and build Homie on OpenClaw, a personal AI assistant framework that Ahmad saw as a natural fit for the real estate industry.
“What we decided to do was take all of our existing AI workflows and all of the things we’ve gained from talking to hundreds of agents and package this admin assistant that is ready to go from day one, so you don’t even have to train it,” he said.
The goal, he said, is simplification. “We’re essentially trying to consolidate everything for agents and not have all of these disparate tools that they use, and only have one single interface that they talk to that can manage all the different parts of their business.”
An pre-built alternative to DIY assistants
Homie’s biggest competitor, Ahmad said, isn’t another software company, but agents trying to build their own AI assistants from scratch.
Valery has set up a community for people attempting exactly that. But for agents who want something ready to go, Homie handles the heavy lifting. Onboarding involves a brief setup with inputting the user’s name, brokerage, logo, writing style, etc., followed by about an hour of integration work.
“The goal is not to replace your CRM. The goal is to leverage your existing toolset, so you don’t have to learn anything new or make any switches,” said Ahmad. The system uses a conversation interface, and according to Ahmad, “The more you talk to it, the more you realize how capable it is.”
The multi-agent structure also addresses a known technical limitation, said Ahmad. AI systems can struggle when asked to process too much information at once, and by isolating each agent to its own environment, Ahmad said Homie sidesteps that constraint.
To prevent errors, every workflow includes a human review step by default. “It’s not going to just send an email, at least not until you tell it to explicitly. It’ll draft an email and when it gets the green light, it’ll send it out,” he said.
Ahmad said getting human eyes on each step adds time to completing tasks, but “I think that’s a great trade-off to ensure you’re getting the right information out there,” he said.
Privacy and data controls
Data privacy remains a common concern around AI adoption in professional settings. According to Ahmad, each agent using the platform decides what information the AI has access to. He said the isolated server setup is intended to limit that access to only what the user chooses to share. “The reason we’ve set it up on an isolated server is to prevent it from gaining access to pieces of your computer that you wouldn’t want it to have access to,” he said.
Ahmad said the platform does not permit third-party AI providers to train on user data. As well, Homie is also working toward running on local AI models, which would eliminate external data transfers. “That’s something we’re working hard toward so that you own the infrastructure top to bottom, and you know that your data is safe within a private server.”
Early days
Homie is currently in beta with 16 users, each of whom paid a deposit of more than $1,200 for early access.
Ahmad said the product will be priced at $300 a month. The company is focused on individual agents for now, though several teams have reached out about custom builds, he said.
“The ideal persona is someone who has a lot of work, but they don’t want to hire an administrative assistant or virtual assistant because of the cost barrier,” Ahmad said.
Ahmad said he does not see AI as a threat to agents, but rather it is something that will fundamentally change how they work.
“An agent using AI will replace one that isn’t,” he said.
“Homie is one of the ways we’re trying to make this more accessible so that agents can provide more value and stick to the things that move the needle and really help their clients, which is strong customer service and building relationships.”
Courtney Zwicker is a digital reporter and associate editor for REM. Based in Atlantic Canada, she has over a decade of experience covering daily business news.
