As the buzz around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking the tech world by storm, data-driven industries like real estate are poised for disruption and growth driven by AI and new technologies.  AI is poised to help all sides in real estate transactions by making for a more streamlined process, filtering through large data swaths to showcase valuable information for a particular individual, and helping property owners, investors, and potential buyers better predict property values.

For property managers and landlords, AI could be used to predict maintenance needs and costs, potentially even scheduling the required maintenance across a large portfolio of properties.  AI could also be used to control energy costs by setting heating and cooling to eco-mode or turning off appliances automatically when tenants are not at the residence.  Smart-home features like Ring doorbells and Wi-Fi security cameras can also help alert property owners to any potential issues.

For investors looking for new properties, AI can help analyze a multitude of data points that affect property values including recent and historical sales, crime stats, new business registrations, and property tax rates.  Instead of doing manual comparisons between properties based on metrics such as price/sq foot as has been the standard in real estate, AI-driven property valuation and pricing systems use large amounts of data and complex algorithms driven by machine learning.  Although AI could give data-driven projections, investors need to be wary that there may be other factors that could determine property values that only humans would be able to distinguish like buzz around another nearby city due to rumors about a new professional sports league or a bad reputation for a local elected official.  Another use for investors is enhanced financial modeling for future cash flows and property values which can be refined using demographic trends and large data sets of existing industry-wide information.

When home buyers are searching for properties online, AI can take feedback from the website visits and actions to aggregate interest in the properties and characteristics of home-buyers thereby giving real estate agents a better opportunity to personalize the home-buying experience.  Virtual property tours can be developed using AI to allow buyers to rule out properties before they even set foot inside, saving the time of agents and decreasing buyer search fatigue stemming from too many in-person tours.  Technologically advanced mortgage companies like Rocket Mortgage can use AI to deliver near-instant results for mortgage seekers, removing a potential slowdown and hindrance in the home-buying process.