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AI in the property industry – more speed, less quality

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the defining technological megatrend of our time and has long reached the real estate sector. While it has significantly accelerated many processes, this speed often comes at the expense of service quality.

AI speeds up processes but, without deliberate use, reduces quality because trust and true differentiation cannot be automated.

Opportunities of AI – more efficiency and speed

AI automates and therefore speeds up many processes. For example, property management companies use chatbots to answer tenants‘ questions, agents automate the creation of brochures and advertisements, and draughtsmen and architects use AI to optimise their floor plans. The increase in speed is correspondingly high for standardised processes, meaning that a significantly larger amount of data can be processed in the time available.

Risk: Quality

With the much-praised automation of processes, their quality deteriorates. Because what many people don’t realise: AI cannot produce new content, but copies data and passes it on in different versions. This results, for example, in very generalised advertising texts that inadequately describe the strengths of a property. In the case of chatbots used by public authorities, it is also important to scrutinise the extent to which they are a benefit or a nuisance from the customer’s point of view.

Conclusion: Well thought-out use is crucial

However, the property industry remains first and foremost a people’s business. Trust and proximity still influence purchasing decisions and the choice of service provider to a very high degree. AI has not mastered these crucial skills.
The well thought-out use of AI is crucial for companies. While highly automated work steps that are effectively the same every time they are repeated, such as entering data into a mask, result in a valuable efficiency gain, it is important to scrutinise whether the quality of service is not being compromised too much, especially in creative processes. The take-home message is: AI is not an omniscient machine, but a useful tool that helps in certain areas and less so in others.