Artificial Intelligence in the Real Estate Industry

Virtually Rendered with Virtual Staging AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a new concept, but recent developments in related tech have led to rapid developments. These developments make generative AI more accessible and valuable for people in almost every field.

Real estate is one industry that’s seen the positive impacts of AI. So far, it’s played a role in automated property valuation, streamlining real estate processes, amplifying marketing efforts, and more.

It takes work off realtors’ plates, giving them more time to focus on the hands-on efforts that grow their business, such as networking, client relations, and similar initiatives. It also simplifies the buying process for those who are in the market for a new home.

A recent study predicts that AI could generate anywhere from $110 billion to $180 billion in growth for the real estate industry. Real estate professionals are wise to jump on the AI train so they can share in this growth.

Improving Efficiency for Agents

One of the most basic ways that AI helps realtors is with generative AI. Generative AI is just what it sounds like. A tool used to create something. The most accessible tools in this category are those for text and image generation.

Generative AI is also great for gathering data and analytics, which can help streamline your practices and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Later in this article, we’ll dive deep into some different generative AI types you can use to enhance efficiency in sales and marketing.

Enhancing the Buyer Experience

As a realtor, you should appreciate how AI enhances the buyer experience. AI enables prospective buyers to view homes virtually.

Virtually staged renderings of homes, 3D renderings, and virtual tours allow buyers to see many properties without having to travel to each one. Of course, this doesn’t replace in-person visits, but it makes it easy to narrow down which properties they’re most interested in before traveling to see them.

Turn an empty room into a room worth visiting in seconds with Virtual Staging AI.

Virtually Rendered with Virtual Staging AI

This technology is extremely valuable for buyers relocating to a new town or city with limited time to find a home.

Why? It allows them to knock out much of their search before traveling to their new city to finalize their home choice. In some instances, it may remove the need for travel altogether.

Streamlining the buying experience is convenient and shows your clients you’re mindful of their time. Small things like this go a long way.

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Artificial Intelligence for Lead Generation

Lead generation is an essential aspect of success in the real estate industry. In addition to having a solid list of leads when selling specific properties, it’s helpful to have a loyal clientele who comes to you whenever they need to buy, sell, or rent a home.

With that, effectively generating and fostering leads can help you grow your real estate business. Luckily, AI can help you do just that. Here are a few different ways you can leverage AI for lead generation.

Identifying Potential Buyers

With the input of specific criteria, AI can help identify potential buyers in the market. For example, some tools help you to better understand purchasing behavior based on criteria such as demographics and geographic location.

Prioritizing market research in this fashion will help you better understand your audience on both sides of the sale. It’s a great solution to find the right clients to sell more homes.

Some of the best AI market research tools for real estate include:

• Browse AI
• Quantilope
• Pecan

Lead Scoring

AI can also be useful for scoring leads. If you’re unfamiliar, lead scoring is a process of determining the value of your incoming leads. It helps you decide which leads are worth investing time and resources into and which aren’t.

For some realtors, lead scoring may involve assigning a point value to leads to determine their value.

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You can automate this process with the help of AI-powered lead-scoring software.

For others, this process simply tracks the “heat” of leads on a cold, warm, and hot scale. On this scale:

• Cold: The lead has never contacted you or your brokerage.
• Warm: The lead has had some interaction with you or your brokerage.
• Hot: The lead has expressed interest in your services or property.

Both of these approaches help to determine the level of effort you should invest in the lead and the type of effort that’s most appropriate.

Artificial Intelligence and the Market Trends

In addition to better understanding your target audience, AI can help you track, assess, and even predict market trends. This insight is invaluable for realtors, especially when pricing properties and helping clients make purchasing decisions.

Let’s take a look at how this works.

Analyzing Property Values Correctly pricing a home is crucial for a quick and effective sale. It helps to attract the right buyer and ensure that things move swiftly with their mortgage company. Luckily, AI can help you assess properties to help you find the optimal price.

This process is truly impressive. AI can analyze property values and comps quickly and accurately. How? It uses algorithms to assess:

• Historical sales data
• Property attributes
• Market trends

Of course, you can crunch these numbers manually, but AI makes it happen much more quickly and effectively.

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To take this a step further, you can also use AI to price rental properties. This technology can assess and optimize property management by analyzing energy usage, occupancy patterns, debt levels, and maintenance needs.

Predictive Analytics

It’s impossible to predict the future with 100% certainty, but with the support of AI, you can make reasonably accurate assessments.

Predictive analytics is a process that analyzes facts and data to anticipate future outcomes. AI uses machine learning to make assumptions about the future based on a holistic view of different historical data points. This helps you make data-driven decisions for your real estate business.

Some popular predictive analytics tools for real estate include:

• SmartZip
• TopHat
• Livv.ai
• Offrs

Artificial Intelligence for Marketing

As we’ve touched upon, one of the most significant use cases of AI in real estate is for marketing. We’ve seen a massive surge in the use of generative AI for virtual staging, 3D modeling, virtual tours, and property descriptions.

Here’s how AI works to support each of these types of marketing efforts.

Virtual Staging

Virtually Rendered with Virtual Staging AI

Virtual staging is a game-changing concept for realtors. Virtual staging AI enables realtors to upload a photo of an empty room (or a cluttered one), indicate stylistic preferences, and generate a beautifully staged rendering of the room in seconds.

The perks of virtual staging with AI are that it’s incredibly time-efficient and cost-effective. Each room can be virtually staged for just a few dollars in a matter of minutes. This cost and turnaround time are impossible with traditional staging or virtual staging with a graphic designer.

Another benefit of virtual staging is quickly revising the renderings to match a different style. This perk is great for those who want to showcase the versatility of a room and appeal to prospective buyers with different preferences.

For instance, here’s a bedroom staged with farmhouse design preference.

Virtually Rendered with Virtual Staging AI

On the other hand, here’s the same bedroom staged with a luxury design preference.

Virtually Rendered with Virtual Staging AI

The best part? It took less than 30 seconds to create each variation.

Virtual Staging AI is an excellent tool for realtors who want to test this technology for free. Simply go to the Virtual Staging AI home page and upload a picture to get a free rendering in seconds.

This risk-free staging AI only requires users to pay if they want to customize the style of a rendering or download without a watermark.

3D Modeling

3D modeling is another product of generative AI that allows realtors to offer virtual tours to prospective buyers. Typically, users can navigate 3D models online as if they were walking through the space in real life. These renderings also provide a bird’s eye view to make it easy to see the property’s floor plan.

While 2D images are great for conveying the home’s aesthetic, 3D models make it possible for buyers to get a feel for the layout of a property before visiting in person. That way, potential buyers can narrow down the list of homes they’d like to see in person.

This technology has been very valuable for the real estate industry, mainly due to its potential for increasing market reach. It makes it possible to appeal to buyers who live out of town, which is undoubtedly a plus.

Some top tools available for creating 3D virtual home tours include:

• Zillow’s 3D Home Tours Generator.
• Matterport

Virtual Tours

Realtors can also use tools like Zillow’s 3D Home Tours Generator and Matterport to create and facilitate virtual tours of properties.

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These tours can be made more lifelike with the support of virtual assistants and chatbots. By making these resources available to interested buyers, you can respond accurately to people’s questions and enhance the user experience.

Another plus to hosting online tours with the support of a virtual assistant or chatbot is that you can automatically provide property recommendations and present market insights to customers. This is great if you have other listings that may better fit the client.

AI for Content and Descriptions

Since the rise of ChatGPT, more people are inclined to lean into AI for writing. Machine learning and generative AI have been particularly helpful for writing listing descriptions and other property-related content.

While ChatGPT has quickly become a household name, it isn’t the optimal AI tool for creating content. GrammarlyGO, the AI writer that comes with Grammarly Premium, is a tried-and-true AI writer great for creating and editing content.

What’s nice about this technology is that it uses context matching in your document to ensure a seamlessly branded experience.

Some other popular AI writers include:

• Writesonic
• Jasper.ai
• Copy.ai
• Writer

Although AI is powerful for spinning together bodies of text, it lacks a human touch.

Communicating with prospective clients requires using language that resonates with them. We recommend using AI to write a first draft of your content and edit it to ensure it aligns with your brand.

The Ethics of AI in Real Estate

With the rapid growth of AI, many people are concerned with the ethics of AI in different industries. There are many takes on this. Many people are embracing the evolution that comes with AI, while others are more resistant.

As these conversations arise, it’s important to remember that AI is designed to help humans streamline tasks and operate more effectively. It isn’t meant to replace human capacity completely, but it does make it possible to take a do-it-yourself approach in some situations so you don’t have to hire a specialist.

It’s up to you to determine how much or how little you use this technology for your property-selling efforts. Only you can decide what you’re most comfortable with.

How Will You Use AI to Streamline Your Real Estate Business?

We’ve already seen AI as a force for the transformation of the market, improved productivity, and customer service, and we’re only at the beginning. This technology could likely continue to evolve and play more prominent roles in the industry.

Whether you’re looking to streamline your marketing or improve the buyer’s journey, artificial intelligence may be the solution you need for leveling up your real estate business.

Ready to test AI for virtual staging? Go to Virtual Staging AI’s home page and upload an image of a room to try it for free.