What is Backhouse?

Backhouse is a real estate platform with an assistant at the center of it. The platform holds your transactions, your contacts, your documents, and your key dates. The assistant does the work inside it.

Every other tool in this business makes you the operator. You open the software, you type the thing, you remember the deadline. Here you delegate, then review what came back.

The assistant

You talk to Backhouse the way you'd talk to an assistant. Text it, email it, send a voice note, or chat in the app. Forward a contract and ask it to pull the dates. Snap a photo of a signed page and it files it to the right transaction. Ask what's due this week and get an answer.

It isn't guessing from a prompt. It has real access to your workspace, so it can read your inbox, update records, prep paperwork, and get the next step ready for your sign-off. The consequential moves stay yours. Nothing sends, signs, or answers an offer without you.

• How the assistant works covers what it can do, the rules it works under, and what it won't do.
• Voice and text covers reaching it by SMS, voice note, or email instead of opening the app.
• Drafts and actions covers reviewing, editing, and approving what it prepares.

The platform underneath

The assistant works on real records, not a chat log. Those records have their own screens, and you can open any of them directly when you'd rather do something by hand.

Transactions. Every purchase, sale, and lease from contract to close, with the dates, terms, documents, and people attached to it.

• Creating a transaction
• Deadlines and milestones
• Documents and files

Listings. Your seller side, from prospect through offers.

• Creating a listing
• Offers and counters

Contacts. Your people, and where they sit in your pipeline.

• Managing contacts
• Importing contacts

There's also a client portal your buyers and sellers can log into, and a compliance view your broker can review a file through. Both run off the same records.

Getting set up

Signing up takes a phone number and a few questions, covered in Create your account. After that, the Get setup panel in the sidebar tracks what's left. Five steps, in any order. Each one hands the assistant something it couldn't do before.

1. Delegate your first task. Ask it for something real rather than testing it with a question. Prep a listing, draft a follow-up, pull the dates out of a contract you just got. See Send your first message.

2. Use Backhouse on the go. Text your assistant from your phone so you can hand off work between showings. Voice notes and photos work too. See Voice and text.

3. Connect your email and calendar. This is the one that changes the most. Connected, Backhouse sees your business in real time. New offers, signed contracts, client replies, key dates get picked up as they land instead of waiting for you to enter them. It can also draft replies and put things on your calendar. See Connect your tools.

4. Set up your form library. Your library starts empty. Pick your state's form packs from Settings > Form Library, then upload the member copies Backhouse can't ship you. A form in your library is one the assistant can prep and pre-fill for a transaction, so you review a filled form instead of starting a blank one. Texas is the only state with a real form pack today. See Form library.

5. Activate MLS data. MLS access is licensed per board and needs your broker of record to sign off, so it's a request rather than a one-click connect. Active boards give the whole workspace listing search, comps, photos, and CMAs. Texas boards only for now. See MLS data.

Steps 4 and 5 are workspace-level, so only owners and admins see them. If you're a member of someone else's workspace, whoever set it up handles those and you inherit the result.

What it costs you

Work the assistant does is metered as AI tasks. AI tasks and usage explains what counts as one, what's included in your plan, and how to cap spending.