Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it is popularly known, is an often-used term these days. You must have seen AI being mentioned across walks of life, right from social media to education to job search and, of course, in business across sectors. In fact, it is also misused sometimes to make a simplistic situation sound larger than life. Hence, here are some nuggets on how this beauty of technology really works and its potential for the real estate industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the in-thing in real estate. It is not just growing but also tipped to dominate the future of this sector. Right from how products and services are sold to how consumers decide, AI in real estate is governing all of this and more. A report indicated AI in global real estate to grow 10 times between 2017 and 2024. And sitting right in the middle of this time period in a post-pandemic era, we can already see instances of AI in the home buying and renting arena.

Let us try to understand the concept of AI in a simple manner

You want to move to a new locality, and apart from checking the available homes, you scan across variables such as amenities, connectivity, pricing, security, etc. Basis this scan you either decide to purchase or not. Similarly, other customers of different profiles scan the same locality. AI as technology tries to learn from the decisions of all profiles and also analyse their scanning behaviour. Thus, after a threshold number of cases, an AI engine will be able to recommend the right parameters that will help a certain type of consumer’s decision. And for the seller, it will recommend what to prioritise in the listing and what to exclude. At scale, an efficient AI engine automates this entire decision-making and enables near-perfect outcomes for both the buyer as well as the seller. Therefore, what began as a tech layer to an existing property and its online listing, eventually becomes the backbone of the business while significantly improving the user experience.

Above is just one instance out of nearly hundreds of possibilities across the real estate value chain where AI plays a role.

Globally, the real estate industry has shown that it is adapting to technology and is gradually moving towards a data-driven strategy. For instance, in the US, property platforms such as Realtor and Trulia are able to customise a listing based on the most important parameters in that area. They also map real-time local weather data, time of sunshine, which parts of the house will receive sunlight, and so on to make the user feel present at the apartment while merely scanning on their laptop screen.

Furthermore, Airbnb reportedly has predictive data on which type of users will book a certain property, at what price, and at what time of the year. Look at it this way – this intelligence allows them to list relevant properties, dictates their pricing model, and gives them clarity on what features to talk about in their marketing campaigns. Real estate in India may seem to lag this AI revolution that is already happening in the west. However, we are closing in, and we can already see a slew of AI-based applications in the Indian real estate ecosystem.

Ingress of AI in real estate

First up is our government’s initiative of digitising land records across India. While today it may seem like a data collection and record-keeping exercise but at scale, this will be a unique collection of land ownership, price movement, and transaction data across every nook and corner of the country. Imagine a technology company trying to facilitate land transactions in the future, having access to this intelligence and thus being able to predict pricing and risk to a potential buyer.

Similarly, there are prop-tech companies that base historical data on tenants and landlords and predict the type of customer who will be interested in a certain property. This makes their buyer-seller match process efficient, allowing them to convert better.

Some of you may have already witnessed how virtual reality is being used to visit a property or a sample flat from the comfort of your home. In this case, the idea is to give you an at-location feel with a mix of visuals and accurate data. While today this is making your home selection journey better, tomorrow, this wealth of data will enable the platform to virtually manage your end-to-end home buying journey.

AI has made ingress in home loans as well – AI engines, after checking a few data points of the customer can assess the credit risk and offer personalised home loan products.

Despite the above multiple instances, AI in Indian real estate is still in its nascence. I see prop-tech companies moving towards newer offerings such as property price prediction, property/land valuation, AI-based chatbots who can have a personalised conversation basis the user’s requirement, and so on. Thus, AI mixed with machine learning and big data is bound to revolutionise real estate as we know. What we are witnessing today is merely a trailer. Very soon, we will see full-fledged AI applications across the real estate value chain.

While there is no predicting where the technology may lead us in the future, one thing is certain that this technology is a positive change for the consumer. It brings along a new era of efficiency and accuracy, something which we all value before investing in our dream home.