There’s something of a misunderstanding in the UK property industry that agents are luddites, clinging to fax machines and Rolodexes, but quite the opposite is true. Sales and letting agents like nothing more than finding new efficiencies – whether through careful outsourcing, digital signatures or virtual tours, begging the question, Are you embracing AI?
Now, a new piece of research indicates that property is ready for a greater integration of AI. The teams at Vouch and Goodlord surveyed over 400 letting agents and found almost half were optimistic about the adoption of AI tools across the industry. In addition, 70% said they thought lettings professionals were open to the adoption of new technology, while 60% believed that the lettings industry should use technology more to improve the customer experience.
Elsewhere, analysis by Landmark Information Group found 94% of estate agents surveyed believe that by 2028, admin tasks will be largely automated, allowing them to concentrate on generating revenue.
Examples of property-related AI
The full depth and breadth of AI is developing every day but here are some of its applications in the property sector:
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology
This is the process of extracting text that appears on an image, such as a scanned bank statement and hand-written fields on an application form. OCR will convert the image text into a text document that can be edited, searched and added to.
Digital identity document validation technology (IDVT)
Already promoted by the Government, IDVT software with built-in fraud detection allows landlords and letting agents to validate global identity documents, such as passports, ID cards and driving licences, in seconds so they meet Right to Rent obligations. The details can also be extracted into a PDF or spreadsheet.
Open Banking
This allows for a quicker and more transparent snapshot of someone’s finances using a one-time access authorisation. Tenants and homebuyers can use Open Banking to electronically share financial records dating back 12 months with an agent, so the professionals can check a source of deposit fund or confirm an income as part of affordability checks. This leads to speedier decisions and quicker referencing.
Chatbots
Chatbots exist for both home movers and industry professionals. Although their use is in no way replacing humans, they are helpful out of hours and when people can’t speak on the telephone. As well as answering questions, chatbots are capable of booking viewings and valuations, and can even send out property alerts. On the business-to-business side, Reapit has recently launched Fi – designed to instantly answer questions fielded by its users. Soon, progress in natural language processing (NLP) will allow chatbots to engage in more conversational, meaningful dialogue.
Property description tools
Reapit has recently launched an AI-powered property description tool that automatically generates property descriptions. The base copy is thought to save agents approximately 10 minutes per property description, although the text is customisable. This joins Street.co.uk’s AI offering – a custom feature that creates agent-specific content, including property descriptions, emails and photo enhancements.
ChatGPT
ONP Group, which incorporates O’Neill Patient Solicitors, Grindeys and Cavendish Legal Group, has recently integrated with ChatGPT to automate document analysis in the conveyancing and remortgage process. Necessary information will be extracted automatically, resulting in a significant reduction in time that will allow conveyancers to deliver a more personalised service to clients. Search Acumen, the data provider for conveyancers, is also trialling the integration of ChatGPT into its existing data-led portal for lawyers.
Data analysis
One of the biggest advantages of AI is being able to handle, and then analyse, huge volumes of current and historical data looking for patterns and behavioural trends. The results help agents target their services and understand their customers’ needs. For example, mining data held in an agent’s CRM system can predict the people most likely to move home soon or switch estate agents. Spectre AI and TwentyEA’s Forecast tool are already yielding AI-generated instructions for agents – all possible through tracking, data algorithms and machine learning.
Property valuations
The number crunching of big data by AI is now behind some of the most accurate property valuations and market insights. PriceHubble is one of the market-leading suppliers, with its Property Analyser tool providing detailed analysis, year-on-year price comparisons, historic value trends and average price per sqm. Its valuations can be wrapped up in a white labelled report with persuasive market insights.
While there are already smaller conversations happening in relation to the specific uses of AI in agency, the bigger conversation is whether proptech will replace humans. The general consensus is no. AI is designed to liberate professionals of repetitive admin tasks so they can spend more time delivering exceptional customer service and generating revenue. AI is also there to reduce the margin for error when checking documents and analysing datasets in a way humans can’t.
We’ve seen this reported time and time again and there is some truth in the phrase ‘AI won’t replace agents but agents who don’t use AI will be replaced’. Where do you stand on the matter?
“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”
Even more importantly when it comes to assessing properly, machine learning, now referred to as AI, has been continuealy shown to not just repeat the biases in its training data, but to significantly exaggerate them.
Given how significantly and explicitly race has been used to determine and guide so much property and neighborhood development in the training data, I do not look forward to seeing a system that is not only more racist than a post war city council choosing where to build new moterways but which is sold and treated as infallible by the humans operating and litigating it.
Given the deaths and disaster created by the Horizon Post Office Scandel, I also very much do not look forward to the widespread adoption of software which is inherently and provablly far less accurate, reliable, and auditable than the Horizon software. At least that could only ruin your life if you were a Postmaster and not just any member of the general public who isn’t rich enough to have your affairs handled by a human.
But hey, on the bright side, if Horizon set UK legal precedent than any person or property agent is fully and unequivocally legally liable for the output of any software they use, after the first few are found guilty for things the procedural text generator they used wrote people might decide its not worth the risk.
For all the talk of regulating AI, I think the only meaningful regulation is very simple: hold the people implementing it accountable.
You want to use AI instead of a real certified professional? Go nuts. Let it write your legal contracts, file your taxes, diagnose your patients. But be prepared to get sued into oblivion when it makes a mistake that real professionals spend years of expensive training learning to avoid. Let the insurance industry do the risk assessment and see how unviable it is to replace human experts when there’s human accountability.
Exactly all of this.