Why we exist
In March 2024, the National Association of Realtors agreed to a $418M settlement that quietly upended how Americans buy homes. The seller no longer pays the buyer's agent commission as a baked-in part of the listing — buyers now negotiate that fee directly, often out of pocket. For a typical $500,000 US home, that's roughly $12,500–$15,000 a buyer suddenly has to think about explicitly.
Most buyers don't know what their buyer's agent actually does for that money. The honest answer is eight things: comp pricing, scheduling tours, drafting offers, reviewing contracts, negotiating, coordinating inspections, coordinating closings, and emotional support. Five of those eight can be done better by software in 2026 than by a typical agent. The other three are real human services — but they cost a few hundred dollars each, not 2.5–3% of the house.
Twellie was built for the buyer who wants to do the math themselves. We don't replace the inspector, the real-estate attorney, or the lender — we replace the part of the agent's job that's genuinely better as software.
What the report actually contains
- AVM (Automated Valuation Model) — a multi-model ensemble (linear, hedonic, gradient-boosted, vision-augmented) trained on public-records data and recent comparable sales, returning a value plus a confidence band. Median absolute error roughly 7%, comparable to Zestimate.
- Comparable sales — typically 50–200 candidates pulled, ranked by a 14-attribute similarity score, top 8 shown with line-item adjustments (bed/bath/sqft/condition/location/time-of-sale).
- Photo condition grade — every listing photo scanned with a multi-model vision pipeline (Claude Sonnet 4 + Gemini 2.5 Flash) for 12 condition signals (kitchen age, flooring, paint, windows, exterior cladding, roof tells, foundation cracks, water-staining, sagging, deferred maintenance). Output: a per-room grade and a comp-adjusted dollar impact.
- True cost of ownership — fixed (P&I, taxes, insurance, HOA), variable (utilities, maintenance, repairs), one-time (closing, moving, immediate repairs), and silent (opportunity cost on the down payment) — with a 5-year projection by category.
- Negotiation strategy — translates the AVM band, the comp adjustments, the photo grade, and the days-on-market history into a specific offer/counter/walk-away range with scripted language.
- Closing workspace — checklist, wire-fraud check, document verifier, and the math on closing-day funds-to-close.
Who writes the content
Every guide on this site is written and reviewed by Twellie Research, our in-house team of buyer-side analysts, data scientists, and former real estate professionals. The team's combined experience covers AVM modeling, USPAP appraisal practice, mortgage underwriting, and consumer real estate journalism. No guide is published before at least one team member with first-hand transactional experience signs off on it. See our editorial policy for the full standards.
What we don't do
We don't write USPAP-compliant appraisals — those require a licensed appraiser, and lenders require one for mortgage funding. Twellie's AVM number is for your offer decision, not for the loan.
We don't replace a home inspection. Listing photos can show roughly 30–50% of what an inspector finds — paint, flooring, roof tells, exterior cladding, deferred maintenance. They cannot show HVAC age, plumbing, electrical condition, hidden mold, or termite damage. Always pay a licensed inspector before closing.
We don't give legal advice. Real estate contracts are state-law documents. In the 22 attorney-required closing states (and we recommend it everywhere over $250k), pay $300–$800 for a real-estate attorney to review the contract before signing.
We don't sell your data. We're not an agent referral network, we don't earn commission on transactions, and we don't share your address searches with mortgage brokers, lenders, or anyone else. See our privacy policy for the full disclosure.
How we make money
One way: $50 per property report. There's no subscription, no upsell, no commission, no kickback. We have zero financial interest in whether you buy any specific home — which is why our negotiation section can honestly tell you to walk away when the math doesn't work. See pricing for the full breakdown including the Enterprise tier for high-volume users.
Methodology and accuracy
The technical details of how the AVM works, how we benchmark accuracy, and where the model is meaningfully less accurate (rural homes, atypical architecture, post-renovation properties, distressed sales) are documented at our methodology page. We publish the math so you can verify it.
Our standards
- Honest accuracy reporting. We publish our median absolute error, our coverage, and the scenarios where we're less accurate than a licensed appraiser. We don't claim "94% accurate" without saying what the band is.
- Vendor-neutral comparisons. Our comparison pages (Zestimate, Redfin Estimate, HouseCanary, Quantarium, Opendoor) say honestly when a competing tool is the better fit. See our own honest review.
- No affiliate links. We don't recommend products to earn commission. When we cite a tool, it's because we think it's the right tool for the job.
- Cited sources. Every accuracy benchmark, every dollar range, every regulatory claim links back to USPAP, FFIEC, NAR, CFPB, Fannie Mae Selling Guide, FHFA, or a peer-reviewed methodology disclosure from the cited vendor.
Where to start
If you're at the "is Twellie even worth it?" stage, read our honest review of ourselves. If you want to see what the report actually looks like, browse the sample report. If you're closer to making an offer, the most-used guide is how to make an offer on a house.
Get in touch
Press, partnerships, accuracy feedback, or just a question we haven't answered yet — email hello@twellie.com. For security disclosures, use the contact in /.well-known/security.txt.