Here are some creative ways AI is transforming the real estate industry, from chatbots to virtual assistants, and how it might benefit you.
It might take a lot of work to manage a rainmaker real estate team. To help qualify her leads, Christina Griffin, the head of the 50-agent team known as the Griffin Group, which is connected to Keller Williams New Tampa, resorted to an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.
The chatbot, a piece of software that mimics human communication, reacts when one of the roughly 1,000 leads Griffin creates each month initially connects with her team’s platform. The chatbot’s ability to interact with leads as though they were speaking with a human is made possible by artificial intelligence (AI), which makes them eligible for Griffin and her team. HelloAlex, a real estate tech marketing company, developed the chatbot. It is so advanced that it can learn from the customer’s responses to determine precisely what the user is inquiring about and how to best address it.
Although the term artificial intelligence (AI) is often used in the real estate industry, many professionals find it unclear. This is because AI is typically a part of a tech solution but not the entire thing because a large portion of its functionality operates in the background. All Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, for instance, assist agents in keeping track of and organizing contacts inside their databases. However, AI-powered CRMs offer more capabilities, such the capacity to analyze large amounts of data, including tax records, social media data, website and email response patterns, and more, to determine which contacts might be best prepared to proceed and why.
Here are some examples of how AI is affecting the daily goods used by real estate professionals.
- For Engagement With Leads
How they Operate: Artificial intelligence-driven lead engagement chatbots continuously hone and enhance their answers to user queries. For instance, HelloAlex retrains its AI system every 24 hours. To ascertain which intricate combination of these factors boosts lead engagement and, eventually, conversions, the AI evaluates a variety of factors, including conversation style and flow, the questions the chatbot poses, the pace and nature of responses, whether a lead uses formal or informal language, and more.
Ben Bressington, the founder and CEO of HelloAlex, says, “This automated, intelligent follow-up tracks with how consumers engage with real estate today.” Customers receive thoughtful answers whenever they want them.
The Benefit: Well-trained chatbots have the potential to increase lead quality and conversion rates over time. For instance, the system instantly replies by email and text message when HelloAlex interacts with a large number of Griffin’s online prospects. As a real person would, it qualifies the leads by asking them questions about their price range, whether their contact information is correct, and how prepared they are to purchase or sell.
The leads that the algorithm indicates are warm or hot are then followed up on by Griffin’s team. Additionally, she and her agents have the ability to monitor discussions from a backend dashboard and interrupt any conversation at any moment. Cooler leads are sent to an automated marketing campaign by the system.
- As Virtual Helpers
How They Work: By using artificial intelligence (AI), these technologies are able to understand how real estate agents behave and, by using their historical performance, predict duties like setting up showings, monitoring the status of a transaction, and alerting clients when documents may require their attention.
Additionally, some of these systems seek to extract insights from the massive volumes of data generated by brokers and agents. For instance, KW Labs, the software development section of Keller Williams, aims to enable its voice-activated virtual assistant Kelle to make recommendations to agents on how to draft winning offers based on price point, neighborhood sales trends, and other variables. The big franchisor has a lot of real-time data since it observes a lot of transactions, which it can utilize to give agents using Kelle insights. In the end, it can recommend escrow sums and propose contingencies that will raise the possibility that an offer will be accepted.
There are other major real estate firms that are placing bets on AI besides Keller Williams. Realogy and OJO Labs inked a deal last year to supply the AI-powered virtual assistant that its hundreds of thousands of associated agents can now use.
The Benefit: Finding insights for agents and relieving them of repetitive work are two major advantages of an AI-powered virtual assistant. As an assistant learns about an agent’s preferences, workflow, and conversational style, the program adjusts to better suit their preferences and automate more of their tasks.
- As Astute CRMs
How they Operate: Predictive analytics is being used by a growing variety of smart CRMs and solutions that integrate with pre-existing CRMs to evaluate the vast amounts of data agents gather about contacts in order to identify leads who might be likely to make a purchase or sale in the near future. These systems monitor email response history, changes in family or financial circumstances, user website usage, and more.
The Benefit: Access to insights and enhanced efficiency are the two main advantages of a smart CRM using AI technology. An AI-powered lead scoring tool, for instance, might reveal potential leads that agents might not otherwise pursue. Additionally, the CRM can record the conversation in the contact database if agents are interacting with new leads automatically through an AI chatbot.
CRM for real estate An AI chatbot that will interact with and qualify incoming leads is presently being developed by LionDesk. Based on discussions with the leads, the program will automatically update contact records in the LionDesk database. In early 2017, Contactually, another real estate CRM, teamed up with First.io, a predictive analytics company, to integrate AI into their platform. (See below for more about First.io).
Regarding Predictive Marketing
How They Work: AI real estate solutions for predictive marketing go one step further by predicting which homeowners in an area are most likely to buy or sell in the near future by analyzing data outside of an agent’s CRM. The tools highlight homeowners who are likely to sell before their neighbors by analyzing data on homeowners in certain neighborhoods, including changes in family size, length of time in the home, recent increases in home value, and many other characteristics.
The Advantages: Comprehensive analysis of an agent’s interactions is made possible by predictive platforms like First.io, which would be challenging for a human to perform. Consider Brandon Doyle, who leads a Maple Grove, Minnesota, real estate team of five agents. Doyle used to gather statistics on the communities he farmed himself. Then, in early 2017, he introduced First.io. “I immediately noticed that they were more accurate,” Doyle says. To choose which contacts to call next, he presently makes use of the company’s contact-ranking service. On multiple occasions, it leads him to call contacts who are actually about to transact.
AI And Automated Valuation Models
Another field with several AI uses is automated valuation models.
Companies like HouseCanary and Zillow Group employ AI to improve the accuracy of property value estimations by examining historical sales and hyperlocal market data. For instance, the AI may examine a home’s age, size, interior condition, previous price, and more complex, nuanced information like market microtrends on a block-by-block basis.
Computer vision is another AI function used by Zillow’s Zestimate. To evaluate a home’s fit and finish, Zillow’s AI examines pixels in listing photographs. Zillow claims that the Zestimate is now 15% more accurate thanks to these AI-assisted evaluations.
How To Determine Whether An AI-Powered Real Estate Tool?
Consider these questions to determine whether a tech tool is appropriate for your company:
Does it correctly read or interpret audio or video that contains information that can be useful? If so, AI might be included in the tool.
Does the dialogue feel natural if a tool speaks to you or a customer? If the response is negative, the tool may not be employing AI or may not have received adequate or sufficient training.
Does the instrument have a computer program that optimizes a response by analyzing large volumes of data? Does it improve with time? The tool most likely makes use of AI if the responses are yes, especially to the last question.
Is the system capable of more than just task automation? An AI system can perform more than simply basic A-to-B activities, even if task automation is a common AI characteristic. It will often find new and quicker ways to do a task.
AI’s Future
According to Dr. Jen Golbeck, a researcher at the University of Maryland who focuses on the relationship between AI and social media, despite its enormous potential, AI has not yet gained widespread adoption. “The majority of consumer AI technology is still in the research stage,” she states.
This also applies to AI tools for real estate. Many are still in the early stages of development or use. Additionally, AI programs need enough training data from real-world interactions, which takes time. However, it is obvious that they could have a significant impact on the real estate sector.
However, Chad Curry, managing director of NAR’s Center for Realtor Technology, believes there’s no reason to believe that these potent tools will take the place of actual, live Realtors.
He notes that artificial intelligence has been developed for more than 60 years. According to him, it will improve the customer experience, speed up information access and agent reaction times, and reduce some of the agents’ repetitious duties. However, it won’t take their position.
Curry claims that AI’s “ability to help brokers and agents uncover new efficiencies and new markets” is its true power. To put it briefly, to gain fresh perspectives.
Without a doubt, AI will be incorporated into more technologies to improve all that agents perform, from marketing and transaction management to lead generation and conversion. Real estate agents will be able to concentrate more on client service, be more effective, and market more pertinently.
The accuracy of AI technologies will also increase with time, further solidifying the technology’s impact on the sector.