Resi Firms Roll Out New AI Tech

After ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, residential real estate firms rushed to roll out their own artificial intelligence-powered tools, betting on the promise that the new technology would revolutionize the industry.

Turns out, total transformation is a longer road than anticipated.

Two years after OpenAI introduced its revolutionary chatbot, some of the industry’s loftiest aspirations for the technology are coming back down to Earth —- at least in the short-term, said Kael Goodman, the co-founder and CEO of the data analytics firm Marketproof.

Though Goodman contends generative AI is still poised to upend the way agents and firms do business, its most advanced capabilities haven’t yet materialized. The technology is still prone to inaccuracies, and while improvements are continuously being made, they’re gradual.

As the initial hype has mellowed out, residential firms have instead turned to scaling existing tools and building on technology already in play.

“Next year, more advanced tools will be possible,” said Goodman, adding that for now, Marketproof is focused on “leveraging AI for what it’s really good at, which is absorbing information you already have and synthesizing it.”

Last month, Marketproof launched its Marketing Center, a new suite of AI tools backed by its trove of data on new developments in the city. The suite allows users to generate market reports, social media posts, newsletters and postcards, including options to add a brand logo and customize the theme. Users can also adjust date ranges, locations such as neighborhoods or borough and property type.

As the buzz over AI permeated real estate, industry pundits like Mike DelPrete predicted that firms such as Marketproof and Zillow would have an advantage in the race to build the technology, thanks to a robust back-end of data that could pick up where AI’s limits left off.

“It’s not about the chatbot,” the strategist said in a video posted to his YouTube channel last year. “It’s about the power the chatbot, or ChatGPT, can have on top of a really big dataset.”

Within the industry, AI has had the largest impact on media and content creation, particularly for listings, Jeff Allen, the president of floor plan creator, CubiCasa, said on a May panel hosted by the National Association of Realtors.

“You can now generate a floor plan from a smartphone, virtually stage photos with AI and create virtual tours with much less effort,” Allen said. “It’s getting easier, more affordable and more accessible for agents to raise the bar.”

Marketproof’s rollout comes more than a year after the launch of its AI assistant, which generates listing descriptions. At the time, the firm teased a forthcoming slate of AI-powered tools it planned to introduce as the technology evolved.

Marketproof’s latest additions join AI rollouts from some of the residential sector’s largest firms. Earlier this year, Redfin introduced its own AI virtual assistant, called Ask Redfin, the firm announced in a press release.

The tool, beta launched in March, is designed to answer questions from users about a prospective home, such as the walkability of the neighborhood. It also connects potential home buyers with agents if questions surpass the scope of the tool.

In September, Zillow announced it was expanding its AI-powered search function, which allows users to search for listings by describing attributes of their desired home, instead of adding a series of filters, according to a press release. The function’s new capabilities include allowing home buyers to search by commute time, affordability and nearby schools, among other descriptors.