Look, I’m as fed up as the next guy with every app filled with AI chatbots. I don’t want to discuss coverage options with LLM every time I renew my car insurance. I would rather text a human than a robot to bother FedEx about my missing package. but i to pass Found one scenario where AI is really great: real estate.
I need to confess something: I’m a redfin lookie-lou. A Zillow enthusiast. not because i am In fact Purchasing a new home. With these interest rates? God no. But I’m constantly shopping for a new house — partly out of naivety, and partly because I like to imagine what life might look like in a different arrangement of bedrooms and bathrooms.
What if I uprooted my family and moved to Iowa, to the late 1800s farmhouse where my father grew up? What if we moved to an island in Puget Sound that had iffy ferry service but beautiful views of the water? I can spend hours on a real estate listing website imagining all the ways we can downsize, expand, and create side-by-side sizes – with a little neighbor spying in the mix. You better believe I’m looking inside the house down the street when I see a for sale sign in the yard.
It was on one such occasion recently when I opened the Redfin website and saw an unfamiliar prompt when I tapped the search bar: an option to search listings with AI. I didn’t see it before because it turned out so a relatively new additionWhich hasn’t even come to a mobile app yet – you’ll only find it using a desktop or mobile browser. It’s pretty straightforward: tell the robot what you’re looking for using natural language, and it will come up with some listings matching your criteria.
I prepared some initial prompts and got off to a promising – if slightly disappointing – start. How many single family homes can I find in the Seattle area that have two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, in a walkable neighborhood close to public transportation? many! How many were $500,000 or less? Two, both were sold as is! I decided to step away from reality and move on.
The Redfin AI search has some expected guardrails: If you ask it to find a house likely to be haunted, or a house in the Los Angeles area that looks like Pee-wee’s Playhouse, it will politely refuse. It either can’t or won’t search an entire country in one query – I guess my quest to find a house with a Polynesian-themed indoor pool and bar continues.
But it works great when you limit your searches to a single city. And there is a real benefit to incorporating a larger language model. Searching for “tiki bar” will also return results that describe a tropical theme, even if the exact search terms do not appear in the list. If you’re seeing a trend here, it might be because the sun sets around 3:12 pm these days. I make no apologies.
I discovered this through AI search My dream home is real and it’s in Bloomfield Hills, MichiganFor just $3 million – the price of the bus Three Charming Craftsman home in Seattle! The interior has been a little Mar-a-Lago-ified, but that curved brick exterior? Sunken living room? This is all.
AI search tool comes closer to reality exactly the kind of thing i was looking for When I asked about modern-style homes in the Cincinnati area with natural wood siding, plus a coat of vibrant blue paint. and a Luxuriously Updated Mid-Century Ranch House Who owns a wooded ravine for less than $500,000? Seattle – as much as I love it – never could.
With natural language search, you don’t have to spend hours tinkering with filters and keywords.
Despite all the questionable-at-best ways to apply AI to things these days, I find AI search on a real estate website really useful. I realized that over my many years of searches – both when I was actively looking to buy a home and as a leisure activity – I’ve become really good at navigating things like Zillow and Redfin. I assure you, it’s a skill that comes with extremely limited benefits, and I probably could have spent that time doing something more useful, like reading an awesome book, but here I am. With natural language search, you don’t have to spend hours tinkering with filters and keywords like I do; AI does all the administrative stuff for you.
However, this doesn’t seem to be a universal experience for AI-assisted search. the verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel does a lot of window-shopping at Cars.com and reports that its AI search sucks. Redfin’s search doesn’t always get it right – for example, we have different ideas about the definition of “fully updated.” But overall, it makes sorting through the sea of ​​listings much easier.
And importantly, AI is not promising to buy the house for you, handle the paperwork, and send you the keys, although I’m sure the top people at Redfin are working on it. There are human agents who do it all, and when we’re talking about purchases worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don’t see that changing any time soon.
But sifting through listings is a menial task? AI can help in this. And if you’re a real estate buff like me, this is a serious pro – for better or worse.
