The real estate industry, historically reluctant to adopt new technologies, is embracing artificial intelligence in many forms, from improving visuals and customer engagement to summarizing strata documentation and improving workflow work of real estate agents.

Current applications of AI in real estate include refining real estate renderings, communicating with potential buyers and sellers, streamlining transactions and regulatory compliance, analyzing complex documents, increasing the administrative productivity and forecasting future enrollment.

The main objectives are to save time, reduce costs, eliminate human errors, identify new business opportunities and boost sales. But AI also brings its own challenges to human decision-making, raising ethical questions about accuracy and the need for appropriate checks and balances.

Experts say this is just the beginning and that AI will soon be able to achieve more ambitious goals, such as optimizing housing policy and urban planning to take decisions more quickly. make good decisions and have a positive impact on communities. AI could even play a major role in combating the shortage of affordable housing.

“If we’re actually able to use this technology to solve some of the smaller problems that we have in the industry, then what is its role in being able to solve some of these bigger challenges when we think about development and the infrastructure that arise from it? goes around? said James Innis, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Sutton Group.

“These are significant issues that pose real hurdles from a real estate perspective, particularly here in Vancouver. »

Early applications include virtual staging, chatbots and data analytics

AI can generate or enhance the visual media that accompanies pre-sales marketing.

“At the most basic level, AI has dramatically improved the realism and quality of renders when brought to the final high resolution,” said Dan Hashemi, CEO of LNG Studios.

“AI is just adding that little finishing touch to the plants, the ground, the building materials, or even converting 3D people into 2D people and having that hyper-realism.”

He also said the technology allows his team to explore different angles, times of day and “concepts around how we want to tell the story of the image, before our artists even get started.”

Another early application is the use of chatbots to interact with the public. These bots can make appointments, schedule visits, and follow up with past clients.

“It doesn’t really feel like a robotic experience because of advances in AI,” Hashemi said. “It always feels like you’re talking to someone who understands your needs and is able to really guide you. »

Other local companies focus on data analysis. For example, The Real View uses technology to quickly scan stratification documents for potential condo and townhome buyers. These documents may include board meeting minutes, financial and insurance documents, bylaws, and structural engineer reports.

“Especially in Vancouver, it’s a very hot real estate market from time to time,” said director and co-founder Andrew Armstrong. “If you’re looking for housing on Sunday and you need to receive your offer by Tuesday, that package of documents is in some cases 1,800 pages long. This doesn’t really give you time to look at everything yourself and fully understand.

The Real View, which has around 500 real estate agent clients as well as a national partnership with Sutton Group, uses RAG (or retrieval augmented generation) to analyze strata document packages. It takes about 15 minutes to produce a comprehensive report on key aspects of the building, ranging from its financial health to its pet policies.

Using optical AI, the company can analyze these documents, even if the PDF quality is poor. Because there is no standard format for Strata document packages, and because The Real View’s technology was trained for 18 months over several thousand iterations, it can reduce human error.

“The human error aspect is that most people look for information in specific places,” Armstrong said. “If they don’t find it, they assume it doesn’t exist, while we look at every page of every document for every answer.”

Another local startup is Saige, which aims to increase real estate agent registrations using AI. The company has a proprietary algorithm that identifies homes suitable for listing, whose owners can then be targeted through direct mail and other outreach.

“In a neighborhood, which houses are likely to be listed, say, in the next six to nine months? » declared founder Mehdi Aghaei. “We limit (a real estate agent’s) searches to homes likely to be listed, rather than all available homes.”

Saige looks at approximately 200 different characteristics of homes for sale and incorporates that data into its model to predict similar homes that might come up for sale in the near future. The company launched in 2023 and has around 60 real estate agent teams using its platform.

AI can help with AML compliance and closures

Sutton Group’s Innis said his brokerage would soon deploy AI tools for regulatory compliance and deal-making.

In compliance, AI can be used to facilitate anti-money laundering (AML) disclosure mandated by Fintrac, the federal government’s financial intelligence unit. Fintrac requires real estate agents to complete and submit a set of KYC-related, or know-your-client, forms to their brokerage, which can then be audited by the agency. Currently, there is a limited set of tools, but AI will soon provide a collection mechanism that will simplify the process.

“Everyone wants to be compliant, so how can we make that easier?” » said Innis. “You have created a dataset of individuals and transactions. You can then start using AI models directly on top of it, looking for particular trades, asking questions, analyzing things from a managing broker’s perspective, all with the aim of mitigating your risks. .

Real estate closings can also benefit from AI, he said.

“He can go through the paperwork and say, ‘This wasn’t done correctly, here’s what you need to do.’ » You can ask questions like: “How can I manage this, how can I fill that, what am I missing?” He ensures this back and forth which is a role generally fulfilled by the managing broker. They are busy people.

AI has limits and carries ethical implications

Experts say AI has constraints like any other emerging technology. For example, members of the public can potentially be misled by artificial images of real estate, an issue that some local real estate boards are addressing to protect consumers.

There are also risks in drawing prescriptive suggestions or conclusions from AI. One should be wary of using AI to make value judgments, said The Real View’s Armstrong. For example, AI may not be able to draw appropriate conclusions regarding the financial health of a strata.

“If it’s a mega-tower in Brentwood, for example, $400,000 is probably not enough money to have a contingency reserve fund,” he said. “Putting your stamp on it like, ‘Yeah, that’s a lot’ because you’re just basing it on general information, that’s where you can get yourself into trouble.”

AI also needs human oversight and spot checks to avoid indiscriminate dependence on imperfect technologies. This is especially true when an AI model receives incomplete or outdated inputs.

For example, AI can be used to speed up obtaining municipal permits. But if the city does not have an official community plan or updated zoning bylaw, or if it does not have updated infrastructure plans, these deficits will limit a city’s ability to capitalize leveraged AI and chatbots to provide candidate-specific feedback at the site level.

AI “has gotten me a lot of the way because I’m able to have some probability of success,” said Tegan Smith, CEO of Channel Consulting. “I can say that’s probably right, and then I can go check.” But you really need to have the expertise to know what to ask and what to check. I think critical thinking and human involvement will continue to be important.

Eventually, AI could be used on a macro scale, said Sutton Group’s Innis.

“What if you started asking an AI model: ‘What do you think the housing goal for Vancouver should be?’ Or: “Should we do development?” » Or: “What should the limit be for solid wood?” »

“That’s my big aspiration for AI,” he said, “but now we have to go through some difficult miles with some of these little parts.”

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@JamiMakan