AI For Real Estate: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Brokers Run Better Businesses
Whether you’re a seasoned real estate broker or starting out solo, you’re a very busy person.
Juggling tasks like supervising real estate agents, training, operational management, and compliance is significantly time-consuming.
Having the right tools in place is essential if you want to manage all your duties and run a successful real estate business.
One of the best tools real estate professionals can use to run better brokerages is artificial intelligence (AI).
In fact, 75% of brokerages are already using AI technology, and 80% of brokers report that their agents are using AI tools, too.
If you want your brokerage to thrive and gain the upper hand in the real estate industry, you’ve got to investigate AI-powered tools.
In this article, we’ll unpack how brokers can use AI in real estate to build a better business and see sustainable success.
Why Brokers Should Use AI in Their Businesses
AI is a collective term for machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These machines can learn from data, make decisions, recognize patterns, understand language, and solve complex problems.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way real estate companies do business. In fact, some believe that AI might completely replace real estate agents entirely in the future.
While we don’t believe AI will ever replace a real estate agent—or any professional in the industry—the fact is AI tools can revolutionize the way your team handles real estate tasks.
According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), there are several reasons why brokers should use AI in their real estate businesses. Perhaps the two most noteworthy applications of AI for brokers include:
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics uses historical data and advanced algorithms to forecast trends and make predictions that can help your business. According to the NAR, predictive analysis tools can help you analyze real estate market conditions, evaluate property values, and identify opportunities for new business.
This helps brokers make more informed decisions, mitigate risks, and optimize business strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
An AI tool like Offrs helps generate real estate leads. However, it can also help you predict the property market in the next year, for example. This can assist brokers in making decisions about recruitment activities.
For instance, if you see that the residential real estate market is heading for another downturn, you may want to pause hiring new agents for a few months.
Generative AI
Another application that can benefit the real estate landscape and brokers especially is generative AI.
Saleswise is an example of a generative AI tool. It can save you time by generating professional and attractive property listings. Simply input the home features, and Offrs uses AI to craft engaging descriptions for your listings and marketing materials.
The Benefits of Using AI in Your Real Estate Firm
There are many advantages of using AI within your brokerage, here we list a few:
✅ Improved efficiency
Artificial intelligence tools can automate time-consuming routine tasks. This frees up brokers to focus on more complex and high-value activities, such as growing your brokerage or developing your business strategy.
✅ Enhanced data analysis
AI tools can analyze large datasets to identify patterns and trends. For example, they can predict property values and assess risks. This information can help brokers make better, data-driven decisions.
✅ Reduced overhead costs
If your brokerage is scaling quickly, you might find that you’re having to hire more staff, resulting in higher overheads.
While you will always need human expertise to run your business, AI can help automate simple but resource-intensive tasks. This means fewer staff can handle a greater amount of work. This can save you from having to hire so many new employees, ultimately reducing your overheads.
How Brokers Can Use AI in Their Real Estate Business
You may be wondering what types of AI tools you could integrate into your brokerage. Here are just some of the ways AI can be brought into your business to improve your operations:
📌 Customer relationship management (CRM)
You need to provide your clients with the best possible experience, as this is the backbone of your brokerage. A customer relationship management (CRM) system can help you ensure a great experience.
However, traditional CRMs often have limited capabilities. Traditional CRMs rely on agents and admins to keep client information updated or know when the right time is to contact a lead.
An AI-enhanced CRM can prompt agents to contact prospects when they are most likely to be interested—like after someone has viewed your property listing. It also automates routine tasks like updating client information, lead scoring, and responding to customer inquiries.
💡 An AI CRM like LionDesk can help you understand customer feedback in real-time so you know whether your clients are satisfied. It does this by analyzing your inbound and outbound interactions with clients and their responses to your communications. It can also handle client queries with automatic responses and schedule viewings based on your availability.
📌 Market analytics and data insights
It can be challenging for brokers to keep their fingers on the pulse of the real estate market and know what to expect in the coming months and years. But without this knowledge, how will you provide your clients with the best advice and stay ahead of the competition?
Thanks to predictive analysis, you can determine vital market trends that inform investment advice, listing prices, and marketing strategies. Knowing this information will also put you one step ahead of other brokerages.
💡 HouseCanary is an AI tool that helps you price properties using valuation models. It analyzes market trends, sales, and property features to determine the optimal price for a listing. It does this by analyzing large sets of historical data to provide you with insights into current and future market conditions.
💡 Through their CoreConnect tool, Cherre collects and indexes real estate data from thousands of sources. In doing this, it provides real estate analytics and insights that can help brokers make better investment and management decisions.
Source: Cherre
📌 Lead generation
Generating leads is a huge part of running a real estate business. However, it is one of the most challenging tasks to handle. Following up with leads quickly enough and identifying the most promising prospects is difficult to do on your own.
AI algorithms can help you identify high-quality leads by analyzing user behavior on websites, social media, and other digital platforms. This helps brokers focus their efforts on the best prospects rather than wasting resources on chasing leads that aren’t ready for your services.
💡 kvCore serves as a virtual assistant. It helps to generate, validate, and route leads, as well as nurture prospects. One way it does this is by helping you automatically generate squeeze pages—website pages that invite leads to offer their contact information in exchange for something valuable like a free download of your latest listings.
You can generate squeeze pages by selecting the type of page you want to create in the kvCore dashboard and entering basic details like property addresses.
Source: kvCOre
📌 Automated virtual assistants
Handling massive amounts of manual administrative tasks each day is a huge time suck for brokers. This time could be better spent on more important tasks like recruitment or lead generation.
An AI virtual assistant can help automate many administrative tasks for brokers.
💡 Take Clockwise, for example. This AI-powered tool means you don’t have to deal with time-consuming back-and-forth emails trying to find suitable times to meet. Instead, it navigates multiple complex schedules to rearrange meetings and quickly suggest the best time for everyone to meet. It does this based on the preferences you set for meetings and automatically reacts to changing calendars.
Source: Clockwise
💡 Spreadsheets can be another administrative task AI can help you with. ExcelForumlaBot allows you to generate complex formulas simply by typing in text instructions. This saves you from having to remember formulas and lets you run efficient spreadsheets across your firm.
Source: FormulaBot
💡 A tool like CheckboxAI can help you streamline admin like document drafting, approvals, and the e-signature process. The tool uses contract term extraction to pull and store key details and obligations from documents. It then creates workflows for approvals, reviews, and collaboration.
It can also help you manage tasks and questions from your team faster by pulling requests from email, Slack, Teams, Jira, and Salesforce into a single platform.
Source: ChecboxAI
📌 Chatbots
It’s impossible for brokers to be available to their clients 24/7 to answer inquiries or provide instant responses. An AI chatbot that is integrated into your website, for example, can answer client questions around the clock without you having to get involved.
For larger brokerages, this helps your agents and TCs focus on more important tasks rather than spending hours responding to clients and prospects.
For brokers who are more involved with client communication, chatbots can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
💡 Tidio is an AI-powered chatbot that engages with potential clients, answers customer questions, and schedules property tours without a human having to intervene. This tool can communicate with your visitors, providing instant responses so leads and clients don’t have to wait for answers.
Source: Tidio
📌 Property listings
Compiling an outstanding property listing requires some serious skill—especially if you have multiple properties to list in a day.
AI can help brokers and agents generate listings faster and potentially make them more engaging.
💡 For example, you can use Canva’s AI-powered design tools to create a stunning listing using rich visuals and professional designs. For example, you can use text to describe the type of image or design asset you’re looking for, and Canva will generate the graphic for you. The platform also has a wide variety of design templates for you to choose from.
This may be a more powerful way to catch a potential buyer’s eye than creating listings yourself. This platform can also help you develop brochures and other marketing materials to promote the property.
Source: Canva
💡 Text-based AI tools can help you write property descriptions that target specific client segments. All you’d need to do is provide some information about the property, and the tool will generate the description in a way that appeals to your target buyers. These tools can also help you proofread your listing descriptions before you publish them to ensure they’re professional.
Styldod’s AI Marketing Hub helps you generate property descriptions, videos, and flyers. All you need to do it search the property by its address, select neighborhood amenities, and enter a few details about the home. The tool then generates an engaging property description.
One way it saves you time is by automatically fetching the nearby amenities, including public and lifestyle attractions when you enter the property address.
Source: Styldod
📌 Virtual tours
Hosting open houses can be expensive and can take up most of the day for many brokers and agents. You have to travel to the property, stage it, and then show it to multiple potential buyers. This is why virtual tours are so effective.
However, many of the tools available to generate virtual tours don’t have the capability to display the finer details of a property.
AI can provide immersive property walkthroughs by providing enhancements like realistic lighting, sound, and interaction, which traditional tools often can’t do.
This can be particularly helpful for attracting buyers who don’t live near the property you’re selling, broadening your target market.
💡 Zillow has an AI-powered 3D Home Tours Generator. The generator allows you to create an interactive floor plan so buyers can fully understand a home layout versus a traditional virtual tour.
The interactive floor plan shows what part of the home each photo depicts and gives potential buyers more detail to determine if the property features are what they’re looking for. You can use your smartphone to capture images of the property using an app, and the tool will create an interactive floor plan for you.
The tool also uses AI to select the features and visuals you’ve provided that buyers would find most attractive based on their preferences. This ensures that, when they view your virtual tour, they see what they’d like most without you having to intervene.
Source: Zillow
📌 Property recommendations
Trying to match buyers with potential homes is a demanding task that requires a lot of experience and insight to get right. Also, if you’re working with multiple clients at once, the matching process can become time-consuming.
AI can analyze your past transactions and client preferences to recommend properties that best meet the needs of your buyers. This allows you to provide clients with a personalized approach to improve their satisfaction and get you referrals.
💡 CoreLogic’s OneHome platform uses AI to match potential buyers with the right home based on their preferences and market data. Agents can invite potential buyers to the invitation-only platform to view properties based on what they know about their client’s lifestyle preferences.
The tool bases its property recommendations on listings that suit clients’ needs best and allows them to book viewings with agents directly on the platform.
Source: CoreLogic
📌 Marketing content
Regardless of the size of your brokerage, you must generate marketing material for your business to attract new clients. However, if you aren’t a marketing and design aficionado, it can be hard to generate marketing content.
Generative AI tools can help you write and develop social media posts, email newsletters, and paid adverts to improve your online presence. All you need to do is input some information about your offering, and AI will generate copy that sells your business for you.
AI can also help you generate visually appealing content around the properties you’re selling, like enhanced photographs and designs.
💡 In addition to the features we mentioned earlier, Styldod’s AI Marketing Hub helps you create social media posts, emails, and many other types of marketing content using AI. All you have to do is tell the tool what you’d like it to create and provide some basic details. It’ll generate appealing marketing content that you can use to attract new leads and generate brand awareness.
💡 ChatGPT is an AI language model designed for conversational interactions. This AI platform can help you generate property listings, write marketing emails, and even generate blog post ideas.
To use ChatGPT, you would need to enter text prompts to which it generates a response. To generate marketing content, you’d need to tell the tool about your business, your offering, and your target audience by typing this into the chat. You’d also need to tell it the purpose of the marketing content and the platform it’s for. ChatGPT will then generate text and visuals that you can use for your marketing materials.
Source: ChatGPT
How to Integrate AI into Your Brokerage
Now that you know more about AI for real estate brokers, let’s look at the steps you need to take to implement this technology in your brokerage:
➡️ Identify where you could use AI
The first step is identifying which aspects of your brokerage could benefit most from AI technology. Common areas include:
- Customer relationship management
- Lead generation
- Market analysis
- Operations
- Transaction management
➡️ Choose the right AI tools
Next, you need to find the right tools that are the best fit for your brokerage’s needs—we’ll provide you with some top tools to consider later in this article.
Some solutions for a brokerage specifically may be AI-powered:
- Chatbots for customer service
- CRM systems to manage client relationships
- Automation tools for document handling and transaction management
➡️ Invest in infrastructure
To support AI tools, you may need to upgrade hardware and secure high-speed internet access.
You must ensure that you have data security measures in place, which a tech provider can also assist you with.
➡️ Train your staff
Once you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to train your team on how to use your new AI tools effectively.
Your training shouldn’t only cover how to use the software. It should also provide advice on how to interpret AI-generated insights and make data-driven decisions.
| 💡 Top Tip: Implement an AI Solution Gradually An all-new AI-powered brokerage might sound like a great idea, but implementing new technology slowly is often the better route to take. This is especially true if you want your staff to adopt your new tools effectively. Start with pilot projects or specific aspects of your business to test the effectiveness of AI solutions before a full rollout. This also allows you to address any issues on a smaller scale. |
➡️ Monitor and evaluate performance
Once you’ve got your new systems in place, there’s one more crucial step. You need to regularly assess your AI tools to ensure they’re delivering.
Some objectives to measure your new AI tools against could be client satisfaction, agent production, and sales outcomes.
| 💡 Top Tip: Include Your AI Tools in Your Next Tech Audit You should regularly assess the effectiveness of your tech stack to ensure you’re using the right tools. This audit should include any new AI systems you’ve implemented. Check out our full guide on how to perform a real estate technology audit for more insights. |
Mistakes for Brokers to Avoid When Using AI Technology
There are some errors that brokers may make when implementing AI technology into their businesses. Here’s what to avoid:
❌ Neglecting to fact-check
It’s important to remember that AI tools can make mistakes. For example, before you publish anything you’ve generated using ChatGPT, you must fact-check important information.
In fact, a recent study found that 52% of ChatGPT’s answers were incorrect. While ChatGPT is a great tool for brokers who need to generate any form of content, keep in mind that AI isn’t perfect and will sometimes make things up.
❌ Over-relying on AI
While artificial intelligence can play a major role in your brokerage when it comes to efficiency and decision-making, it’s important not to become reliant on it.
There are many aspects of your brokerage where human judgment and skills are still essential, especially when it comes to negotiations and understanding client needs, for example.
❌ Ignoring data privacy concerns
As a brokerage, you handle a large amount of sensitive data. It’s important that any AI tool you implement protects this information and adheres to data privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), for example.
❌ Overlooking scalability
If you’re growing your brokerage, you need to choose tools and systems that will scale with you. Investing in a tool now that won’t suit your needs when your business is larger could be a waste of resources.
You should consider using AI solutions that are scalable, and that will grow with your brokerage without the need for frequent system overhauls.
Invest in the Future of Real Estate with Paperless Pipeline
Brokers need to have the right tools in place if they want to run successful real estate businesses. And systems aren’t just for brokers, they can also help agents, TCs, and admins to do a better job, ultimately benefiting your bottom line.
Transaction management software is one tool your brokerage can’t afford to go without. Your transaction process is crucial to your brokerage, as missing a single step can cause deals to fall through.
Paperless Pipeline is a transaction management tool that streamlines and automates your transaction process so that your brokerage is more efficient, saves on overheads, and remains compliant.
Visit our website to learn more about Paperless Pipeline for brokers and to get a free trial. You’ll see for yourself just how powerful using the right tool can be for your brokerage.