What artificial intelligence means for homebuyers, real estate market

Brick-and-mortar real estate may seem like the only tangible thing left in an increasingly virtual world, but it too is being taken over by artificial intelligence.

Some of the biggest names in the business, such as Compass, Zillow and LoanSnap, are now employing AI to help find buyers the perfect mortgage and the perfect home. And for real estate agents, it may already be a game-changer.

Most real estate data is public, from land records to title documents, purchase price and even mortgage liens. The trouble was it was an onerous process to go to local offices and obtain all the information. Not anymore. Computer algorithms can now go through millions of documents in seconds, looking through property values, debt levels, home renovations, and even some of a homeowner’s personal information.

At LoanSnap, a San Francisco-based mortgage lender, AI is used in various steps of the mortgage process, from finding the perfect loan type for a borrower to finding the right investor for the loan.

First the borrower’s financial information is put in. Then the system “takes all that information, forecasts it out into the future and looks at thousands and thousands and thousands of options,” said Karl Jacob, CEO of LoanSnap. “That’s different ways of paying off debt, different loan options, and this is one of the first times AI has been turned into something that helps consumers versus harms consumers.”

And for refinances, he said, “We’re building a financial model for someone, and showing them exactly how much money they’re losing on a monthly and yearly basis, and then showing them how they could potentially fix that issue and save money in the future. Again, in seconds.”

Jacob admits that pretty much every company now claims to use AI in some respect but said not all are really applying it to its full potential.

“Ninety-five percent of it is rhetoric, right? It’s a popular term. People glom on to things like that and say, ‘Oh yeah, we use AI too.’ AI is actually machines thinking and/or looking at possibilities that would not have been looked at before,” he added.

So AI can be helpful for borrowers, but it also seems like the holy grail for real estate agents hunting for listings in today’s ultra-competitive housing market. The supply of homes for sale has hit several record lows since the start of the pandemic, when buyer demand suddenly took off. Agents are desperate to find new listings, and AI is providing a new entrance.

“The traditional agent would go knock on the doors of a lot of homes. Now AI helps you find the homes that are most likely to sell in the next 12 months, and it does so by triangulating all the data associated with the home, like when the home last sold, how long the owner has occupied the home, what rate the home sells at in that particular area,” said Joseph Sirosh, chief technology officer at Compass, a real estate brokerage.

AI “triangulates all of that information to predict which home is likely to come for sale, so the agent can now…