11 Ways AI Can Improve the Real Estate Industry

An industry that is currently booming across the United States is real estate. There is an increase in wages and people are increasingly confident about their future. However, there is one little problem with this upward trend in U.S real estate industry: the prices of houses and other properties are on the way up. This is pushing more and more people to rent properties rather than buy them.

Needless to say, this can have a negative impact on the real estate industry in the long run. In fact, some people are predicting that a real estate crash is just around the corner. The good news is that real estate businesses today can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to predict future outcomes. Additionally, they can use AI to find problems before they even occur. Here are 11 ways AI can help you to bring improvements to your real estate business.

1. Improve Real Estate Marketing Content

With AI system, realtors can better analyze the behavioral data related to prospects. This, in turn, allows them to know the customers most likely to respond to their messages. More importantly, it enables them to customize ads to target customers in a preferred way.

By providing them with a wide array of information about prospective customers, AI technology and big data help real estate businesses to reach out to the target audience with better marketing content. With AI algorithms, realtors can better analyze data to bring improvements to multiple aspects of their business including accounting, finance, appraisals, and target marketing. Additionally, the technology allows you to break down information that could affect the sale or purchase of a property.

In 2016, Inman, a new platform for realtors and brokers, conducted an experiment called Broker vs. Bot. The challenge involved pitting realtors against the AI bot Find More Genius to see who would make better recommendations. Unsurprisingly, the AI bot came out on top as it suggested the properties that were picked by the buyer. AI can not only help you in picking better properties to market, but it can also help you to improve the content you use to target prospects. The beneficiaries of this include real estate agents and real estate listing services.

2. Generate Quality Leads

AI allows real estate businesses to gain better insight into the behaviors and preferences of prospective customers. This allows the realtors to strategically reach out to the prospects, which increases their chances of generating quality leads.

The best way to secure a sale in the real estate industry is providing customers with the property they want and desire. To do this successfully, you need to know your clients; this typically involves talking to them, finding their pain points, and understanding exactly what they’re looking for. AI can make this easy by aggregating the data to find out what works best at a particular touchpoint. This allows you to personalize every customer interaction and tailor the messaging and imagery to make it appealing to the customer.

If you are able to personalize each customer interaction with the help of an AI-based algorithm, it won’t take you long to become the go-to realtor for buying properties or making a sale. An example of AI technology designed for lead generation in the real estate industry is kvCore. A CRM platform with AI capabilities, KvCore allows lead nurturing, lead generation, and customer management through a mobile responsive platform. The technology is ideal for real estate agents and real estate listing services.

3. Improve Customer Experience with Chatbots and Interactive Virtual Tours

Thanks to AI technology, virtual property tours are now a reality. Additionally, there are Smart chatbots that improve customer experience by making personalized recommendations to each customer. AI and virtual reality (VR) technologies have made it possible to take prospective buyers on a virtual tour of a property they intend to buy.

This can make the property buying process convenient for both realtors and property buyers. The benefit of this is that buyers are more likely to go ahead with the purchase of the property. A virtual tour service that is currently using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to enhance the property buying experience for both the realtors and buyers is Look around. The technology is unique because it can take you on a virtual tour of many properties including homes, business premises, shopping centers, sports sites, etc.

On the other hand, AI-based chatbots can provide service to customers and prospects 24/7 on your website and social media pages. They can interact with customers on your behalf while the office is closed and you’re fast asleep. The beneficiaries of this technology include real estate agents and real estate listing services

4. Imagine Remodeled Interior before Purchasing a Home

AI and AR-based mobile apps can help see the potential look of the new house based on several design options by pointing a smartphone’s camera towards the old house interior. With augmented reality (AR), people can visualize how a vacant property will look once it’s remodeled or furnished from the inside.

When prospective buyers know what a house will look like after being furnished or remodeled, they are more likely to make an offer for the house which meets or even exceed expectations. This is great news for both the property seller and the realtor brokering the deal. Some popular AI and AR-based mobile apps include Build.com, IKEA Place, and the Houzz app.

An online home improvement store, Build.com allows users of its app to view detailed 3D models of products. A new AR app, IKEA Place allows you to visualize and share how improvements to a property may help to enhance its look and value. Lastly, the Houzz app allows users to go through thousands of high-quality images of redecoration and renovations to get ideas and inspiration for home/property improvements. The people who stand to benefit from this technology are property buyers.

5. Evaluate Property Value

AI can estimate the value of any property based on its characteristics and the previous home sales made in the area. Thanks to AI, Realtors no longer need to evaluate a property’s value manually. Instead, they have can use solutions such as Data AVM by ATTOM to improve things for themselves and customers.

The technology accurately estimates the market value of a property by using regression analysis to find similar properties in the area that were sold recently. Additionally, the technology can be integrated with other data variables such as custom APIs, marketing lists, match & append, etc. for further evaluation and insights. Beneficiaries include real estate listing services, property sellers, property buyers, and real estate agents.

6. Identify the Best Buyer Match for a Property

AI technology makes it easier to match a buyer with a property. In order words, the technology makes it easier for real estate agents, and property sellers to choose from a large pool of interested buyers. With AI, you can learn about the preferences of buyers to match them with a property that fits. An example of this is PropertyGuru, a real estate site that uses AI to better match buyers and sellers of properties. The beneficiaries of this technology include real estate agents and property sellers.

7. Recommend the Best Property Selling/ Buying Time

An AI-powered system can predict the best time for selling and buying real estate based on several available data points. These systems use machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict the buyer’s behavior. With this information, they are able to recommend the best time to sell or buy a property. An example of this is Deloitte’s Blab tool that goes through more than fifty thousand sources to predict topics that will shape the conversations of consumers up to 70 hours in advance. The beneficiaries of this AI technology include property sellers, property buyers, and real estate agents.

8. Improve Investment Analysis

With AI, real estate investors can better assess their risks. Additionally, the technology can notify them when a deal matches their criteria. Although it is a great way to build wealth fast, real estate investing can be difficult to get started with. The good news is that there are AI-powered real estate tools offered by companies like Skyline that allow you to better assess risks and make sound investment decisions. Skyline represents AI technology that is currently disrupting the real estate industry. The beneficiaries of this are property buyers

9. Help Manage Maintenance and Scheduling

AI can help property managers to streamline the processes, allowing them to negotiate pricing with suppliers, locate affordable vendors, and dynamically make recommendations about tasks related to maintenance and management.

Property management is made incredibly easy by AI’s ability to track and predict when a home’s maintenance systems need replacing. Additionally, AI technology allows you to keep an eye on the trends in specific locations and increase/decrease property or rental rates based on this data.

AI also makes it possible to evaluate factors such as expansion and building automation to understand how they impact your pricing, expenses, and profits. A company that is using AI technology to disrupt property management and bring improvements to it is Zenplace. Award-winning company Zenplace merges the decades of experience of realtors with artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help property managers, property buyers, homeowners, and tenants to streamline processes such as maintenance and scheduling.

10. Streamline Processes and Document Management

Another area where AI technology helps is the processing and management of documents. This includes both paper documentation and data entered into computer systems. Additionally, AI allows you to extract data from unstructured sources, which frees up time to spend on better delivering complicated tasks. Some ways that AI can streamline processes and document management include auto-classification, entity extraction, and finding similar items.

Auto-classification involves the use of AI to classify documents and emails. As you receive the items or documentation, AI analyses the metadata within them to send them to an appropriate file or location. This ensures increasingly accurate classification of items that saves you from the hassle of manually sorting out the documentation related to buyers, sellers, or the market that you receive. On the other hand, AI-based entity extraction can help scan each document and identify important attributes such as the names of people, their geographic location, and contact details.

Finally, AI can quickly deliver a list of options to help you in reviewing a document and finding similar items or data. The people who can benefit the most from the use of AI for streamlining processes and document management include real estate agents, real estate listing services, and lenders.

11. Predict Loan Defaults

AI can make improve risks assessment for realtors by reviewing historical data to predict loan defaults. By predicting loan defaults, AI technology can increase the efficiency of the risk assessment process. This forces borrowers to avoid ventures that are less profitable and instead focus on properties that promise the greatest return. An example of this is ZestFinance, a technology that uses machine learning to get information on prospective borrowers.  Lenders stand to benefit the most from this technology.

Final Word

An industry that has always been exciting and dynamic is the real estate industry. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the industry has another opportunity to grow and become better. Today, realtors have a range of intelligent tools available to them that they can use to help buyers and sellers while maximizing their own earning potential.

At Achievion, we can build AI software and apps that bring improvements to the real estate businesses while reducing the costs needed to keep them going.