Chart Westcott, Co-Founder & COO, on AI in Real Estate

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of technological systems that perform tasks that normally would require human intelligence. Such systems can include visual perception, translation, data recording, speech recognition and more.

This type of intelligence is seeing explosive growth as investors, businesses and innovators are realizing the advantages of this advanced technology. So what does this mean for the real estate industry? Let’s take a quick look at some of the significant ways AI is making an impact on the real estate industry.

Property Valuation
Currently, property valuations are usually determined by either certified professional appraisers or by using the sales comparison approach which uses market data from home sales trends in the area to estimate the value of a property. The artificial intelligence system has the ability to calculate the property value based on several property characteristics such as distance, size, age, terrace, state of repair, surroundings, interior, annexes, and selling price. This algorithm provides a much more accurate value than just looking at the selling price of surrounding homes.

Marketing Campaigns
Most real estate professionals send out marketing campaigns through email or traditional mailings. These often include new property alerts and newsletters. With the advancements of AI in the future, you will eventually be able to send personalized and targeted content to potential clients based not only on their interests or location, but also to those who are soon to be married, have a baby or retire through data analysis.

Real Estate Portals
Today, we have portals such as Zillow to give consumers a platform to search for homes based on price, number of rooms and square footage. In the future, consumers will fill out personalized profiles that will quickly and easily match them with those properties that best fit their wants and needs with higher quality listings.

Property Management
Artificial intelligence is only just beginning to take off in the real estate industry. With the rise of tenants shopping for rentals, comes the increase demand for property management services. AI technology will soon provide virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri as well as the use of voice prompts for answering consumer questions and other tasks without residents even having to leave their home. A few other smart technological improvements we will see in the future for the real estate industry include the planning of a property’s layout, advanced security features, improved energy efficiency in a home, virtual maintenance improvements and more.
Artificial Intelligence is constantly changing different industries with advancements in technology. It will continue to update real estate, making it easier for potential buyers to acquire property and sellers to sell their properties to the right buyers.

Chart Westcott is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ikarian Capital, LLC, a long/short equity biotech focused hedge fund that launched in January 2016. Chart graduated from Vanderbilt University with a BA in History and from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, where he concentrated on corporate transactions and tax law. This article was originally published at ChartWestcott.comon March 11, 2019.