One of the biggest changes, not just to the property industry, is the introduction of chatbots. A chatbot is a technology that communicates with potential customers to gather information and ‘learn’ from the encounter. The benefits of chatbots are that they give the client a feeling that they are talking to a real person, rather than filling in a form, as well as saving money and time for the agents.

So how does this help with property? Well, chatbots offer invaluable support for busy estate agents by asking some initial information on the brokers behalf. Once someone engages with a bot, it can ask what type of property the buyer is looking for, as well as some follow up questions which it cross references with a database in order to suggest some potential properties. After the client has shown a genuine interest, the conversation can be passed on to an agent to take the process further.

This is highly beneficial for both the customers and the agents. From an agents perspective, they no longer have to waste time responding to enquiries that don’t go anywhere. For the customer, they feel like they lose the stress of having to fill in forms and sift through endless pages of property options.

AI has become clever enough now that it is able to match clients to properties based on analytics. Using past searches and preferences, an AI can predict and suggest results that are far quicker and accurate than what an agent can do based on their opinions, guesses and trial and error approach.

On top of that, AI has been developed to have image recognition software which is able to accurately identify and describe images. This again will save hours of human work, as it removes the need to manually trawl through images and tag/label them – instead the AI can do this in a matter of seconds as well as provide extremely meticulous results for users searching for houses. Even when it seems to produce inaccurate results, much like humans, the AI will process and learn from its experiences and failures and use that to create a better subsequent result and interaction.

With countless properties on the market, listings happening every second and huge lumps of money being transferred it is understandable that estate agents feel a great deal of pressure, and it is inevitable that information is not always precise or up to date. Thanks to AI, this is becoming a thing of the past. Being plugged into numerous databases and multiple listing services, the AI can constantly be checking and updating information about properties. In turn, estate agents can save heaps of time by not having to chase up information and allows them to be sure about the legitimacy of the information that they are passing on. The bot is also able to store information about clients that it has interacted with, which has many positive implications for customer service.

Overall, the property industry stands to reap huge benefits from the use of AI: streamlined initial interactions, up to date information and incredibly personalised suggestions. However, it does pose some worrying questions for workers in the industry. We have seen AI replace human jobs in many industries, be it in supermarkets, restaurants, airports etc. Should this be a legitimate concern for estate agents? Probably not. There are intrinsic skills that agents possess that will keep them beyond AI for quite some time - namely the unique knowledge of locations, negotiation skills and personal relationships.