Proponents of artificial intelligence contend its continued development will usher in a new era of human achievement. By freeing people from repetitive, rote tasks that machines are better suited to handle, human beings are freed to do what they do best: endeavors involving abstract thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, charm, wit, and imagination. Why waste a worker’s time on completing forms or calculations a machine can handle when he or she could be developing client relationships or creating a new business model?
This line of thought is especially true in real estate. Because of the vast amount of data involved in categorizing, selecting, and pricing properties, artificial intelligence promises to offer the capacity to put this data to use in a way human beings never could. Imagine the power of a search engine like Google compared to manually searching card catalogs at a library. Google vastly speeds up the research process. AI applied to real estate offers similar benefits. These AI applications free real estate professionals from time-consuming rote tasks and free them to do what they do best: analyzing the values of properties, negotiating, building client bases, and closing deals that are largely based on human emotion.
AI is already in use in real estate in a big way, and the trend promises to accelerate. Here are some of the ways that AI works in real estate:
Maximizing lead potential
Leads are gold to real estate agents and brokers. Without solid leads, agents are doomed to struggle. Every lead, therefore, must be worked to its maximum potential. AI provides agents and brokers with tools that allow them to mine data that assist them in converting leads to sales.
AI tools help agents match potential buyers with properties that particularly suit their preferences and, more importantly, that they are able and likely to actually purchase, explains Matt Murphy, CEO of Chime. In addition, AI integrates lead data to provide insights into how to best approach and close particular prospects. Armed with this information, agents and brokers have a leg up when it comes time to sell the deal.
Automating communications
Every real estate salesperson and broker knows that success depends upon revenue from closed deals. The best research and customer service in the business cannot keep an agency in business if sales flag. Sales are the lifeblood and non-revenue producing activities, though necessary, always take resources away from sales.
A trap agents can fall into is neglecting some customers while they are busy closing others. It’s true that a deal today takes precedence over a deal tomorrow, but long-term results suffer if other customers are not being advanced through the sales pipeline. AI automates communication on behalf of the agent, allowing the process to move forward with all customers all the time. Customer service work, the bane of many real estate closers, can also be automated using administrative robots and chatbots, allowing closers to stay engaged in closing.
Some of those baneful tasks include managing closing documents and record keeping. AI robots can handle the rote paperwork and automatically import records into a CRM system. This not only saves time, but it creates CRM data that can be mined for future business.
Data scientists create AI systems
Reaktor, a Finnish company specializing in AI development, recently created a user-friendly AI system that predicts price trends for Finland real estate. By integrating reams of data on rental and real-estate sales transactions, predictive values can be created using algorithms. Dr. Himburg, the chief data scientist at Reaktor, recently demonstrated the AI capabilities using real-life examples.
The AI tool works by analyzing the prices of various rental and home sales of similar properties. The user simply needs to input variables, such as zip code, property type, number of rooms, number of floors, and condition. Reaktor’s data scientist team created the tool in just a few months.
AI tools offer endless possibilities in saving human labor and increasing the efficiency of tasks like research. In the future, the average person may have many robots employed to handle the routine tasks of daily life, such a laundry, cooking, and driving. Real estate agents, who are notoriously busy seven days a week, may just be able to take a day off once in awhile. With AI humming along at their offices, keeping their sales pipeline in check, and a driverless car freeing them up to work on closing deals during their daily commute, they may also find innovative ways to increase their business activities.
Automation has usually resulted in more jobs, jobs that previously had never been conceived of. Whether the future brings completely new job descriptions or just enhances the efficiency of the current ones, it is certain that every data scientist, such as data and numbers guru Terry Bandy, will be busy mining the numbers to engineer ways that AI can increase efficiencies across all aspects of life, from work to housekeeping.
Examples of innovations that result from AI abound in everyday life. For example, Terry Bandy communicates instantly to thousands of followers the way so many of us do on the Twitter platform, made possible by AI.