AI in Real Estate: The Beginning of Disruption

23rd August 2018

Today, more industries than ever before see integration and implementation of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as a path to improve process efficiency, provide superior customer service and eke out an edge over competition. As AI starts mirroring the human-brain more and more, its ability to self-learn and adapt to customer patterns by analyzing historical data, makes it a necessary ally for industries like Real Estate, where customer service is a key differentiation factor.

A 2016 research conducted by Tractica forecasted that global revenue from AI is poised to grow from $643.7 million in 2016 to $36.8 billion by 2025. The AI umbrella of technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning, computer vision, machine reasoning, and strong AI are bound to have a profoundly transformative effect on all markets around the world. Much like how computers and the Internet disrupted legacy practices and changed how business was conducted, almost all industry leaders believe that this gamut of technologies spawned from AI will transform how business is done in the coming decades. In fact, AI will soon become mainstream, and a necessity rather than a nice-to-have. An IDC FutureScape report from 2017 predicted that over the next couple of years nearly every enterprise will become a ‘digital native’ instead of tech disruptions being contained simply as ‘projects’ or ‘initiatives’.

AI creates a seamless chain between consumer needs, the property market and the real estate agent

Real estate, on the other hand, is an old industry that sees slow proliferation of change and has managed to stay largely unaffected by many of the tech disruptions that have changed how other industries operate from the ground up. Not much has changed in the last 50 years when it comes to real estate, other than players in the industry using smartphones and other basic internet-based tools.

Consumers, however, are ready for change and an evolved real estate industry whether realtors want it or not. Home buyers and renters are cutting out the middle-men and are using the internet as their major means to discover property (Source: National Association of Realtors). Does this spell doom for the real-estate agent? Not really.

The use of AI in the real estate space can reduce operational costs, improve efficiency, reduce resource wastage, safeguard the industry from cyber threats, and improve customer service. Before AI’s proliferation, real estate agents had to slowly and painfully sort through data to identify trends and opportunities using a combination of gut-instinct and number-crunching. AI tech makes this process simple, effective and efficient. By delegating the number crunching and pattern recognition to the AI brain, real estate agents can leverage AI to bring multiple, relevant sources of data together and use that to unearth trends. Companies that can leverage these insights and simplify the purchasing process and give more power to the consumers (AI or no AI) have the potential to massively disrupt the real estate industry.

The beginning of this disruption is already here with real estate tech start-ups raising more than $1.8 billion in the first half of 2016. In line with this changing consumer landscape, Levtech’s Property 365 provides you a 360° solution for the real estate industry. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 serving as its base technology, Property 365 comes equipped with geographically localised (the program is customised based on your business region) features to manage sales, leads, rental, marketing and facility management. It helps build a customer-centric approach, streamline property sales, marketing, and approach the post-sales process effectively.

 Current AI Use Cases in Real Estate

Here are some major areas where AI is currently being used to transform the real estate industry.

• Property Management – To say property management is a challenge is an understatement. Property managers must find tenants, keep units occupied, keep tenants satisfied, maintain infrastructure and machinery, find vendors, and act as the bridge between property owners and tenants. All these individual processes are ripe for streamlining and transformation through AI. Property 365 helps property managers find new tenants, cost-efficient vendors, and make pro-active recommendations for property maintenance and management tasks all with advanced machine learning.
• Lead Generation and Data Analytics – The advent of the internet and social media gave businesses a treasure trove of consumer and industry data. Sifting through all this raw data and providing a means for actionable insights is where AI comes in. Using AI systems, algorithms and big data analysis, real estate agents and companies can target with amazing accuracy, consumers who are most likely to go through with a sale and increase their chances of success. AI is also used to learn from consumer behaviour and search patterns and enable agents to make better property recommendations. Real estate investors can use AI to set and monitor income and growth goals and have AI monitor it and adjust to help them reach their goals efficiently. Property 365 ensures that data processing of your sales and the after-sales service is handled with minimum effort, rather than directly going into the nitty-gritty (which occupies a great deal of time).
• Chatbots – Chatbots are one of the obvious examples of AI use that can help real estate agents focus on more important things when it comes to customer service. They can delegate answering the most common questions that don’t change from customer to customer, to the virtual assistant.
• Intelligent Search – Now that more and more people are searching for their new homes online, having the search function of the website become intelligent is very important. With AI, businesses can have the search bar be able to process natural language and generate more leads. Consumers can find better and more sophisticated matches with many layers of actionable information.

Conclusion

Since AI is still in its infancy, the full extent of its uses in the real estate business are still to be seen. It is apparent that instead of replacing the real estate agent it will become an augmentation that helps make the agent more efficient. To know more about how you can use AI to transform your business, write to us at  marketing@levtechconsulting.com.