The real estate industry is undergoing tremendous shifts, all thanks to technological developments that help make the property buying and selling process a lot smoother for real estate agents and property buyers and sellers. One such technological development is artificial intelligence (AI).
If you are in the property industry and you still haven’t started using it, now is definitely a good time to do so. If you are wondering how to approach AI for real estate agents and are looking for the right AI tools to help your real estate agency franchise business thrive, this post is for you.
Below, we cover everything you need to know about artificial intelligence in real estate to help you take your business to greater levels of efficiency and productivity. Let’s take a closer look.
What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
The concept of artificial intelligence may seem to come out of some sci-fi movie. However, it’s been around for decades and has recently come to the fore as a prominent technological tool that can help with a variety of tasks.
In short, artificial intelligence is training machines with large volumes of data, using algorithms to teach them how to “think” and then applying their speed, efficiency and capabilities to help us make more informed decisions in a fraction of the time.
These technological “helpers” can help in a variety of industries and sectors, among which is the real estate industry.
How is AI impacting the real estate industry?
If you thought that AI and real estate are not compatible, think again. This burgeoning industry — defined by its dynamic nature, multiple touchpoints, vast databases, client relationships, marketing and more — is being impacted by AI in many ways.
From simple tasks such as generating an email to a client to social media posts, generative AI is great for creating content that real estate agents can use. However, that’s not where its capabilities end.
For example, AI’s ability to process vast quantities of data also means that estate agents can process real estate data much faster, while being empowered to make informed, real-time decisions that can give them a competitive edge.
There are a number of other ways in which AI can help real estate agents, including with visualisations, listings descriptions, customer service, database maintenance, market data and a myriad of others.
(In fact, we offer some real-world examples of how estate agents can use AI in real estate in more detail below. So, keep reading to see how you can implement AI to help streamline your real estate efforts.)
What are the benefits of implementing AI in your estate agency business?
Estate agents that are quick to adopt AI in their daily work are likely to enjoy more streamlined operations. However, there are many other benefits of AI in real estate, among which include the following:
- Improving the home search experience for clients
- Automating tasks
- Saving time and speeding up certain repetitive and manual processes
- Facilitating more effective property searches
- Streamlining the property valuation process
- Improving customer service and experience
- Implementing smarter property management
- Creating more efficient transaction processes
- Offering detailed and timely market insights
- Streamlining estate agents’ decision-making processes
- Offering predictive analytics for smarter investments
- And much more
What are the potential negatives of implementing AI in real estate?
The real estate industry, just like many others, should always exercise caution when implementing AI in its operations because just like many technological tools, AI isn’t perfect. At least not yet. As such, a few potential drawback of implementing AI in real estate include:
- Inaccurate or low-quality data can yield inaccurate results
- Biases in the AI’s training could manifest themselves in the AI’s output
- It can be costly to implement and maintain
- Depending on the AI tool in question, it may require a steep learning curve to use it
- It can make inaccurate predictions
- There may be resistance to its adoption
What form of AI is most commonly used in real estate?
There are many different types of artificial intelligence that can be used in real estate. From smart home management, predictive analytics and automated property valuations.
However, in the day-to-day grind of running a real estate agency franchise, the most common AI used is possibly generative AI in real estate.
This type of AI can help generate leads, create and polish marketing materials, generate content ideas, help you respond to prospects faster via emails and much more.
How to use AI in your real estate agency (Examples)
Wondering how to use AI for real estate marketing and other essential real estate functions? Below, we set out a few examples of some critical real estate tasks that AI can help you with. Let’s take a closer look.
- Market updates: Do you need to provide clients and prospective clients with market updates? You can easily use generative AI to help you do this. Remember that the key aspect of getting quality output is ensuring you feed the AI with quality input or a quality prompt. Make sure you indicate whose perspective the text should be written from, who the intended target audience is, what message you want to convey, the length of the text and the tone of voice to be used. After this, depending on your AI tool, click the “generate” button and you’ll have the result in seconds.
- Emails: Writing repetitive emails to different clients over and over again can be time consuming and mundane. However, it’s an essential in your job as a real estate agent. With generative AI for real estate, you can simply feed the tool with the right prompt and watch as it generates the email result for you in seconds. Whether it’s a thank-you note or any other type of official email, AI can help. However, mind that as a caveat, never take everything the AI generates as a given. Always run an eye over the content and add your human touch to the text to ensure it is error- and bias-free.
- Property descriptions: Another excellent example of how AI can help in real estate is generating property descriptions. Make sure you feed the AI with all the necessary information about the property so that it can create the right description in the most creative way. Now, tasks that would normally take estate agents several hours to complete take mere seconds, if fed the right type of data.
- Social media posts: An important aspect of any estate agent’s work is marketing themselves, their services and their portfolio of properties. Social media platforms are commonly used for this purpose. AI shines here, too, as you can feed it the right information to create social media posts that are aligned with your brand for months ahead, saving you considerable amounts of time.
- Other examples of AI in real estate: Apart from the examples mentioned above, you can also use AI for real estate leads. Other critical areas where AI can streamline property management and estate agent duties include:
- To help you with your listing presentations
- To carry out market analysis and property valuations
- Property management and home automation
- Virtual customer assistance
- Home visualisations
- Risk assessments
- And many others
Conclusion
Working in the property industry is a lucrative opportunity that is not to be missed. However, you don’t have to do it alone. With the extensive and comprehensive support of an established franchise brand in the estate agency industry, you’ll always feel supported when running your property business while enjoying generous commissions.
If this is a route you’re considering taking, it may be worth considering becoming a franchisee with the Belvoir Franchise Group. To find out more about us, our use of automation and AI and how you can become your own boss in a lucrative industry, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Our friendly and helpful team is a few clicks or a mere phone call away and we are ready to answer your questions and help you embark on your journey. Contact us today!
If you enjoyed reading this article you might also like: What Do Estate Agents Do? A Typical Day in the Life of an Estate Agent in the UK, Franchise Profitability: How Long Does it Take for a Franchise to Become Profitable? and How to Increase Customer Retention as a Franchisee
