“Must have artistic flair” isn’t likely on any job description for a realtor — but might be in the foreseeable future.
Realtor Vadim Vilensky, from Vaughan, Ontario says he uses AI on a regular basis, adding that he relies on the technology for his social media posts and to improve his property visuals.
“Let’s say I need a beautiful sunset, but there is no sunset,” he says. “I will use AI to give it the command that there is going to be a sunset.”
Andrew Klepner, co-founder of Automated Marketer, adds that today, thanks to AI, property photos might be redesigned to appeal more to buyers — and you wouldn’t even know it.
Klepner works with Boca Raton-based realtor Matthew Maschler and said he’s used Photoshop’s new generative fill feature to remove objects from an image and replace them with other elements in one click. For example, cars in driveways might instantly become a picnic table, shrubbery or pavement — or stains on a wall suddenly look freshly painted.
In another exciting arena, he said ChatGPT allows the user to make their own chat bot — a tool he predicts will be a boon to realtors as “everybody’s joining the bandwagon,” he says.
“My bot is based only on real estate. It answers all your real estate questions, and writes your real estate emails, and writes your listing for you, whatever it could be,” Klepner told DX Journal.
“For instance, make believe you were running a real estate agency and you wanted somebody to respond to your customers, help you book appointments. There are bots that do that now. We develop bots that will make appointments for you, actually go back and forth with you in a text message, answer any questions regarding a property … The bot will answer your questions, and continuously try to book an appointment — until you book an appointment.”
A recent video of Klepner’s outlines how ChatGPT can write solicitation letters for buyers, spur a bidding war, and write blogs from scratch with little tweaking.
Virtual reality is changing how people find their homes
Nuno Tavares, also co-founder of Automated Marketer, discussed the advancements in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology with DX Journal. He mentioned Matterport as a tool that allows users to virtually explore properties using VR glasses. The technology extends to changing the interior design to the potential clients’ specifications. According to one report, this method became more pronounced after the pandemic, at a time when people weren’t leaving their homes for viewings.
“It takes home shopping to a whole ‘nother level,” says Tavares. “One of my favourite technologies of all time. Especially house hunting in a different country — I can’t see in the house, but, man, can I come close here”
Someday soon, he adds, the VR will come to the customer, rather than the customer coming to the VR. For example, someone seeing a house on a street with a “for sale” sign will soon be able to don a pair of VR glasses and find out the price in a click of a button — “even go ‘in’ the home, and start exploring the home without leaving the car,” he says. “All that’s on top of the stuff that’s happening.”
A CBC report explained how one realtor does his staging virtually by “showing buyers what a living room or den could look like without all the actual heavy lifting,” while saving on significant cost and time. Additionally, AI can now be used to generate customized property recommendations with automated alerts sent when it’s available for sale.
AI is also being used as a matchmaking tool for clients to find their preferred property in places like New York, California, and Seattle.
AI as a problem solving tool for realtors
Meanwhile, others are using AI to make their own work more efficient.
Toronto realtor Tom Stopnicki says he’s been “playing with AI” for a few months, and recently needed to break down some complex financial solutions to clients that were not familiar with real estate financing. “I used AI to explain and simplify the concepts, and I found it most effective in this area,” he told DX Journal.
These experiences are reflective of the trend, as there’s been a storm of articles in recent months about how AI is changing the real estate industry.
An article in JLL spoke of many ways AI is already being used: price modelling, scheduling for construction, and matchmaking for leasing and investment transactions. Other ways include chatbots to handle tenant queries, summarizing documents, and floorplan and design generation.
Meanwhile, a McKinsey study predicts generative AI could generate $110 to $180 billion or more in value for the real estate industry, reflective from efficiencies in tenant retention, optimized architectural plans, and crafting a negotiations script. Of the latter, AI can transcribe a phone call, analyze the call transcript, and red flag any words that add unintended risk to the negotiation as a learning tool for buyers or sellers.
Appraisals and estimates — once based on neighborhood comparisons and opinion — now benefit from AI-based algorithms, according to The Motley Fool. Zillow, the leading online real estate marketplace, is already using it in their “Zestimates,” by analyzing millions of photos and home values and falling just within a 2.4% margin of error.
The writer noted that investors and agencies hope to use predictive modelling “to get an edge on the competition and buy at the right price.”
Stopnicki says he expects something of an AI “space race,” where people will look for ways to leverage it to edge out competition.
“My working theory is this is going to become more and more a component of my field,” he says. “And I believe that whoever figures this out first will have a significant advantage. I’m hoping this is what gives me my competitive advantage. The potential for time savings is my goal.”
Proceeding with caution
Toronto-based Ophira Sutton, a sales representative from Sutton Group, says her team started using AI to create efficiencies in several areas, such as client database management and content creation.
“AI is a great compliment to the work that we do,” she says. “It saves time, and there are certain tasks that AI can do better and faster than a person.”
Her team has started experimenting with using AI to generate listing descriptions — but the output still needs to be edited by a human who knows the material.
“It is a starting point, because there are nuances that AI cannot pick up on,” she says. “There can be inaccuracies in the information being produced.”
At least for the time being, the young technology still has a bit of learning to do, according to Sutton.
“So much of what we do is in the details, the psychology, personal experiences, human interaction, and art of negotiation, all of which cannot be farmed out,” she says.
As for the future, she expects AI to fill in a lot of tasks — from automated responses for leads to analysis of statistics and market trends.
“The possibilities are endless,” she says.
