Artificial Intelligence Is Coming For The Property Search Business

Property buyers are starting to move from searching portals to asking AI machines. That could change not just how people find homes, but who controls the relationship with the buyer.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is starting to change how people search for property, and it won’t stop at a cleverer search box. The bigger change will come when buyers use AI as their main interface with the property market.

For the last twenty years, buying property online has largely meant searching portals. Choose an area, set a budget, specify bedrooms and other features, then start scrolling. That model is on its way out.

From searching to asking

Property portals in the UK and US are already introducing conversational AI search, whilst Redfin has launched a property-search app inside ChatGPT.

Instead of fiddling with filters, buyers can describe what they actually want: an older house on the Costa Brava, within 90 minutes of Barcelona, walking distance from restaurants, some privacy, happy to renovate, maximum €700,000.

AI can understand those preferences, refine them through conversation and remember them. AI can even help you describe what you actually want. You just start the prompt with ‘Help me define my property requirements for a property search in the Costa Brava’ and your AI assistant will lead you from there.

The next step is obvious: search the market, remove duplicates, spot the same property advertised by different agents at different prices, and rank the results according to what the buyer actually wants.

Spain looks particularly ripe for this because property supply is so fragmented and the same home is often advertised by several agents.

AI could become the new front door

This doesn’t mean property portals will disappear. They have valuable structured data and relationships with estate agents that AI needs, at least for the time being.

But their role could change and diminish in importance.

Rather than starting on ThinkSpain or another portal, buyers will increasingly start with their preferred AI assistant, which will draw on listings and data supplied by portals, estate agents and other sources. The portal survives, but disappears into the plumbing. And property search is only the beginning.

An AI that already understands the buyer and the properties under consideration can help with the rest of the purchase: comparing prices, calculating taxes and costs, explaining documents, keeping track of tasks and preparing questions for agents and professional advisers.

Estate agents and other professionals aren’t going away either, but buyers will arrive better informed and less dependent on them for basic information.

For the last generation, property portals became the digital front door to the housing market. AI now looks increasingly likely to take that position from them, and regalate them to a back-end service. Whatever happens, the industry will be transformed in the next five years, and there will be winners and losers. A bumpy but interesting road lies ahead.