HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
FEATURED ARTICLE
manufacturing output and productivity are increasing.”
The Rise of Non-Bank (Often Digital) Lenders 5-Year Change Q4 2016 Purchase Loan Originations (Top 5)
The initial efforts to transform manufacturing involved such basic tasks as using a robot arm to move parts and weld. In a similar sense, we’re only at the starting point of the AI revolution. There’s more to come and what comes will transform real estate and finance with the same zealous efficiency that re-made the factory floor. • BlackRock said in March that “asset managers who simply use the same techniques and tools from the past will limit their ability to generate alpha and deliver on client expectations.” Now, says the company, it wants to harness “the power of ‘human and machine’ to efficiently and consistently deliver investment performance to our clients.” • “Digital lending,” said National Public Radio earlier this year, “is expected to double in size over the next three years, reaching nearly 10 percent of all loans in the U.S. and Europe. There are now some 2,000 digital startups, many of which are using artificial intelligence to analyze the troves of data created every day.” (see chart on this page) • “If not already the buzzword for 2016, AI will be the buzzword for 2017,” said Trulia in January. The company says it has “created and deployed a Recommender Engine that
16,000
2500%
2231%
14,000
2000%
12,000
1500%
10,000
8,000
1000%
6,000
566%
500%
4,000
315%
0%
-74%
2,000
13%
0
-500%
Caliber Loans Wells Fargo
Fairway JP Morgan Chase
Quicken Loans
There is no reason and no evidence to believe that real estate and mortgage lending are somehow a “special case,” immune to the changes — and disruptions — which AI and data are now creating throughout the economy. Data — and how it’s gathered and used — is the transcending technology of our time, one that will create quantum leaps in terms of speed, accuracy, savings, revenues, globalization, and efficiency. Like smartphones in 2007, it will rock our world. Manufacturing Parallels For the past few decades “automation” has generally meant changes on the factory floor, the use of software and robots to endlessly repeat given tasks. The result has been a workplace revolution, one where production increased while 7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost. Between 1970 and 2010 manufacturing blue collar
employment shrank from 25 percent of the workforce to just 10 percent.
“Yet,” said The Washington Post in November, “American factories actually make more stuff than they ever have, and at a lower cost. Manufacturing accounts for more than a third of U.S. economic output — making it the largest sector of the economy. From that perspective, it’s hard to argue that American manufacturing today is anything but a success.” While U.S. residents are very aware of the internal job market, what’s generally not understood is that the employment situation worldwide is equally in flux. Automation and technology are moving back and forth across national boundaries with electronic speed. As a result, says Bloomberg, “factory jobs are shrinking everywhere” and yet
JUNE 2017
ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS • P4
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter