Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Real Estate

Selling a home in the United States can be quite difficult. With fears of a potential housing bubble in our midst, not to mention increasing wage gaps between this nation’s citizenry, trying to sell expensive homes can seem like an impossible task. Which is why, when it comes to real estate company PropertySimple, they’ve developed a creative plan-of-attack that they believe guarantees ultimate success: artificial intelligence (AI)!

According to PropertySimple, “91% of realtors use social media to some extent, but building the team, tools, and strategies to get it right is expensive.” Which is where their AI comes in. By using an AI assistant, the company is able to sift through social media, chat apps, etc. with relative ease and find potential buyers and sellers.

“We use social and behavioral data to create content relevant to local homebuyers and push it to them on multiple platforms. Our system gathers generated interest and creates customized follow up email and retargeting plans for each lead until they are ready to talk to an agent.”

– Adrian Fisher, PropertySimple CEO

Just recently, the company was able to raise $3 million, thanks to real estate and tech. investors. With this money, they plan on rolling out their product across the entire United States. However, in order to get the word out, the company has also launched a web-based TV show titled the “Future of Real Estate.” The show will follow real estate agent Edward Hutchinson as he uses PropertySimple’s AI to beat off the toughest competition within LA’s real estate market. Episode 1 is already up, which you can watch here, with a new episode uploading every Tuesday.

Serious Wonder reached out to PropertySimple to try to get more information on their AI and their new TV show. Below is a copy of our conversation that was edited for clarity.

What can you tell us about PropertySimple’s origin story and why start a TV show?

PropertySimple’s founder Adrian Fisher has spent his career to date innovating at the intersection of property and technology. In 2007 he moved to Argentina and founded Latin America’s first apartment rental payment system, allowing people to pay their rent at ATMs, supermarket cashiers and online, replacing a 100% cash transaction.

After spinning out the rental payment system and talking with real estate agents in the US, Fisher and his team realized that the technology they’d created in Latin America was applicable to the US market. In January 2016, they adapted the technology to the US market and launched in beta shortly thereafter in Arizona and Southern California.

Whilst PropertySimple uses AI to make the home buying experience seamless, Fisher also recognises that buying real-estate is largely an emotional experience. We launched a TV show to create content that connects with people emotionally and it showcases how our customers (real-estate agents) use our technology to beat the competition. We want to let our customers tell the world how good our technology is and a video series is a great way to do that.

In what way are you using artificial intelligence (AI) as a means of helping you produce profitable results in property sales?

Our system uses AI to analyze the agent’s current portfolio and select real estate content perfect for the agent. Our system then creates geo and demographic targeted ad sets for each piece of content which it auto distributes across social media. We also run retargeting campaigns targeting people that our AI believes to be good matches for the property we’ve been pushing for the agent to reinforce the demographic.

Our software finds the leads using a mix of content from the agent’s own social networks and hyper-targeted online advertising. Interested people land on our property portal where they can browse properties and continue their search. Our AI inputs their information into our CRM follow-up system. The follow-up system sends out personalized emails on the agent’s behalf to the potentially interested buyer or seller, allowing the agent to generate and work leads at scale, only involving the agent when a lead replies to an email or requests more info.

Before creating an ad, our AI analyzes the property and neighborhood and then creates a desired demographic. We then use our technology to create an audience and generate the ad. A real person on our ad team will then tweak generated demographics for special cases. For example, a rental next to a university, we can adjust the ad to target students of that university in particular. Or for a pricey condo for sale next to a hospital, we can make sure local doctors in the area see the ads in their news feeds.

What is PropertySimple’s vision for both the near and far future in relation to the company’s own work?

Currently for agents, PropertySimple is the 24/7 AI assistant that replaces having to hire a full-time marketing team.

Fisher’s ultimate vision is to help people find their dream house quicker and take the stress out of the home buying experience.

Photo Credit: PropertySimple