How is Artificial Intelligence Helping Homebuyers?

A lot of real estate data about dimensions, previous purchase price, title, and property value are public record. Some home selling and lending services like Compass, Zillow, and LoanSnap claim their artificial intelligence (AI) tools can search through millions of documents in seconds to find the right property for buyers and match the perfect loan type to borrowers.

At LoanSnap, a San Francisco-based mortgage lender, the borrower’s financial information is put in a system that “takes all that information, forecasts it out into the future and looks at thousands and thousands and thousands of options,” said Karl Jacob, CEO of LoanSnap. “That’s different ways of paying off debt, different loan options, and this is one of the first times AI has been turned into something that helps consumers versus harms consumers.”

The mantra of real estate agents, especially in the current market, is list to exist. Compass contends its agents have a 94% higher chance of winning a potential listing they target with AI. 

“The traditional agent would go knock on the doors of a lot of homes. Now AI helps you find the homes that are most likely to sell in the next 12 months, and it does so by triangulating all the data associated with the home, like when the home last sold, how long the owner has occupied the home, what rate the home sells at in that particular area,” said Joseph Sirosh, chief technology officer at Compass, a real estate brokerage.

AI “triangulates all of that information to predict which home is likely to come for sale, so the agent can now approach that homeowner, offer his or her services, and have a much higher probability.”

Zillow recently upgraded its popular home price ″Zestimate,” claiming it now uses neural networks, or machine learning comparable to how the brain works.

“In the case of the Zestimate algorithm, the neural network model correlates home facts, location, housing market trends and home values. As a result of this update, the Zestimate can now react more quickly to dynamic market conditions, providing homeowners with a more accurate estimate [prediction] of a home’s current value,” according to a Zillow release.

Read more