AI & Real Estate: Part 3
Find out exactly how AI will revolutionize the home-buying process in the years ahead.
So Far…
We’ve covered fundamental AI concepts, dove into the basics of machine learning and neural networks, seen how these translate into PropTech, and also covered how Estated is using it all to our advantage.
In Part 3, we’ll brush up on some more concepts and look ahead to where AI will take PropTech in the next several years.
Machine Learning (Revisited)
With the sheer volume and breadth of documentation surrounding real estate due diligence continuing to grow rapidly, it is becoming increasingly important to lean on sophisticated systems to pull only the essential information.
While professionals and investors in real estate are constantly pained by manual processes and the long journeys of paperwork, the answer lies in technological processes like machine learning to automate and simplify the tasks at hand.
Assistive technologies for real estate professional will allow for swiftly assimilated knowledge, and will instantly drive insights from a mass of data and documents.
The Problem With Transactions
Currently, real estate transactions are dependant on a detailed and thorough due diligence process. This process can be rushed and corners are often cut due to organizations competing and rushing for the most lucrative deals. The real challenge inside real estate transactions exists inside the sheer size of the transactions as they continue to increase due to regulatory and compliance requirements.
The volume and different kinds of documents accumulate and only add to the issue at hand, and the paper trail steepens when considering the lifespan of a property. Tax issues, structural impact, surrounding zoning, and legacy liabilities are only a few of the auxiliary factors that need to be considered and accounted for in transactions today.
To make due diligence even more difficult, documents that move around in this process have a level of difficulty just to access them. Everything from environmental and sustainability compliance to seller’s litigation and financial records are stored on different platforms and digital storage services, or they require the scanning and uploading of physical documents.
The Solution: Virtual Data Rooms
The physical data rooms of yesterday that required hours of organization and an extremely manual sharing and editing process. Today, virtual data rooms or VDRs offer the service of sharing documents in parallel with multiple parties at the click of a button.
Currently, VDRs allow parties to view, edit and manage documents related to a real estate transaction with diligence and ease. The newest frontier for VDRs exists with supplemental machine learning processes that assist real estate professionals in turning a massive amount of documents and data into real-time insights and essential information.
This new take on VDRs will allow for real estate professionals to search and filter information in data rooms, picking out the pieces they need and sharing only specific points when needed. For cross-border transactions, VDRs can also translate across various languages in real-time.
Certain services such as Ansarada offer unconventional AI processes in VDRs, such as interactive deal assistants and deal efficiency calculators. Ansarada also uses AI to monitor bidder/buyer behaviour. Bidder actions are tracked to track interest on a given property, while bidder search terms are also tagged and used to predict issues in advance.
The bottom line is, new-gen VDRs are more than just due diligence tools — they can effectively manage a property’s entire life cycle while also acting as a centralized repository for all transaction documents, allowing for easy and immediate access.
What about Chatbots?
One of the first uses of artificial intelligence in PropTech was the introduction of Chatbots. In their current iteration, Chatbots are transforming the entire real estate industry with a range of companies including brokerages and real estate crowdfunding platforms incorporating chatbots into their sites and applications.
Chatbots save companies from the costs of hiring and managing customer service teams and optimize time spent answering questions by allowing a virtual assistant to answer common questions.
Services such as ApartmentOcean and Automabots currently stand as good examples of the contemporary AI chatbot. Both companies sell to realtors with websites as opposed to going direct to buyers. There are a large percentage of brokers who feel that chatbots are just as annoying to potential clients as most CRMs, and don’t want to compromise the organic nature of those interactions.
Zenplace is a company fighting a different battle with chatbot technology in the PropTech space, and their doing it by utilizing Amazon Echo to develop a chatbot that allows for renters to communicate with the AI in place of a property manager. It lets renters pay rent, make service requests and make any other relevant demands.
Replacing Agents?!
The rise of technologies like blockchain, VR, big data and AI are disrupting and automating many of the jobs of yesteryear. With some industries shaping up to be rendered completely obsolete, real estate falls in a different group entirely. The industry will still exist and thrive, but instead be enhanced with assistive and predictive tech.
A realtor’s current workflow sees them spending chunks of time doing manual tasks such as entering data, paperwork, organizing documents, and crunching numbers. These more mundane and manual aspects are what can be solved by the works of AI and disrupted with similar technological advances .
Bottom line is, the industry will continue to thrive, but will be drastically different and easier for agents and investors alike. The future of real estate is comprised of smarter insights, faster workflows, virtual documentation, and the most state of the art assistive technologies.
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