MAL PRo BV AN YEU ANY UMAR CAE. AI Tool From Fannie Mae Sheds Light on Housing Market Platform is meant to help small businesses easily geta picture of data relevant to their industries ne Fane Mae platform, ec the Exenange, nas been PHOTO:GARY CAMERON/REUTE! By Job Murawskd Aug 6.2019530am 1 ‘Mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae has rolled out a platform powered by artificial intelligence that lets small businesses and other users easily analyze housing and other economic data. The free tool, called the Exchange, has been in beta testing since October and was unveiled to the public in June. It has more than 800 users. When fully loaded with data, it will be able to translate conversational search queries, such as “How many homes priced between $100,000 and $150,000 are available in this market?" into code, The tool will then search for relevant data and select a presentation format, such as a chart orheat map. ‘The Exchange consolidates data on housing, the economy and consumer sentiment. The idea is to make analyzing housing data, including number crunching that until recently had to be done by specialists, accessible to smaller companies that often lack deep technical expertise. Early users aren't limited to the housing industry. They include a waste-management company anda freight-service firm hungry for housing data that can shed light on their own markets, said Tracy Stephan, Fannie Mae's vice president of enterprise innovation, Most of the data on the Exchange had already been available from Fannie Mae and other sources, but until now it hadn't been consolidated and standardized. The raw data can also be downloaded into another database without conversion into graphics.The platform uses technology from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ThoughtSpot Inc.,a software company that has ‘worked with Fannie Mae for several years. In October, the Exchange was offered to select users for testing, ‘which is set to run through this fal. ‘The platform includes information such as Fannie Mae's monthly consumer-sentiment index and government economic indicators such as unemployment rates. “Think of this as Google for numbers,” said ThoughtSpot co-founder and Executive Chairman Ajeet Singh. “onthe surface we looklike a search engine; underneath, we crunch numbers.” Kari Parekh, director of capital markets at real-estate-services firm Colliers International Group Ine. who advises clients that invest in manufactured housing communities and RV parks, said the Exchange is easy to use, “Anyone can get on and understand what's going on, get smart, and make their own investments, which is the beauty of the platform,” she said, ‘Ms, Parek said that she learned about the platform at a manufactured housing conference this year and that she has offered Fannie Mae suggestions on how to make it more useful. She anticipates the addition of data on manufactured-housing loans, defaults and foreclosures, That could help her advise investors that buy packaged loans, she said. Torahiim Bayaan, chief economist at Chattanooga, Tenn.-based FreightWaves Inc, an information and data service for the trucking and freight industry, started using the Exchange a few months ago. Mr. Bayan said ‘he uses it monthly to search for insights into Fannie Mae's consumer-sentiment index. FreightWaves incorporates the index, which tracks public attitudes about the homebuying market, into its, service to provide market insights to companies that move appliances, furniture and other goods. “It becomes a pretty powerful forward-looking indicator,” he said, Weiteto John Murawskiatohn.urawsii@wsicom