Real estate companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve agent productivity, which they believe will be even more necessary due to changes to their commission structure — mainly on the buyer’s side.
But despite these tech advancements, they don’t see a scenario in which “robots” will soon take buyers and sellers through the homeownership journey.
Alisande Heriyanto, vice president of product and tech support at The Corcoran Group, which focuses on the luxury home market, said on stage during HousingWire‘s AI Summit in Dallas on Tuesday that the company is adopting AI in its product ecosystem to bring more efficiency to real estate agents.
Corcoran offers a tool that writes listing descriptions, which saves a significant amount of time, gets properties into the market faster and makes more of an impression on sellers. According to Heriyanto, it’s not just about “filling it with flowery language, but it’s also from an SEO perspective on Google.”
“This is just the beginning,” Heriyanto said. “The way that we’re approaching AI is really about productivity, taking away that administrative busyness that these agents have to do and giving time back to them.”
Chris Cox, chief technology and digital officer at Keller Williams, said the brokerage’s mantra is to put “data that we have to work to make our agents more successful.” He mentioned that the company recently launched a tool called Heatseeker that helps franchisees and market leaders recruit and retain agents.
“It’s based on AI-powered predictive mode that looks at the likelihood of attrition within our agent base, which helps our market center leaders recruit productive agents, which is core to our business,” Cox said.
In June, the company launched a real estate assistantt, KWIQ, that is powered by generative AI. Currently, KW has been focused on using AI “for things around agent segmentation, figuring out at a micro level what makes certain agents more successful and how to best support them,” Cox said.
Supporting real estate agents in becoming more productive is even more relevant in the context of changes to the commission structure. According to the recent National Association of Realtors (NAR) nationwide settlement of multiple commission lawsuits, the trade group and any companies that opt into the settlement are barred from establishing rules that allow a seller’s agent to set compensation for a buyer’s agent.
In addition, fields that display broker compensation on multiple listing services (MLSs) must be eliminated, and there is a blanket ban on the requirement that agents subscribe to MLSs to be able to offer or accept compensation for their work. The settlement agreement also mandates that MLS participants working with buyers enter into a written buyer-broker agreement.
Heriyanto believes that real estate agents now have to really “focus on guiding their customers and be able to navigate all these different other nuances within a real estate transaction,” which will still be a “humongous human interaction.” Meanwhile, AI will help them to be smarter and faster by leveraging the paperwork, listing pitches and other tasks.
“At the end of the day, I want agents to take me through this journey. I don’t want a robot or an AI tool to take this journey,” Heriyanto said.
Cox agreed, saying that AI and data will allow real estate agents to better comply with their fiduciary duties to clients.
