How REA Group is using AI to change the way you buy a home
REA Group is transforming property transactions with artificial intelligence tools that help buyers visualise renovations and navigate the purchasing process.
REA Group is ushering in a revolution in the way Australians buy, sell and rent property as it brings artificial intelligence to the sector.
Three decades after its realestate.com.au revolutionised the Australian home market by putting property listings online, it is now equipping buyers with tools to help them choose the right property, envisage how it could look with a renovation and more easily complete all the steps to buy a home.
“With the rise of the internet, we’ve done a great job of digitising that online campaign, but so much of the property journey is still opaque or not digitised or invisible, both to the seller and to the buyer,” says REA Group Chief Product and Audience Officer, Jonathan Swift.
“And this is where technology can really help remove a lot of those barriers to entry, so to better understand from day one what my real affordability could be, taking my profile and using technology to match with better properties.”
realestate.com.au employs AI to help homebuyers find property. Swift notes that, unlike running shoes, for instance, there’s not a large number of options for buyers to choose from because property is a scarce resource, with only a limited number of properties listed at any one point in time.
The new feature increases buyers’ options, says Swift: “You may want that three-bedroom home that’s five minutes from the beach, but actually, there may be another suburb that can tailor to that need, but you’ve never considered it because you’re not used to it, you’re not across it,” he says.
By understanding a buyer’s needs, AI can help them choose properties that match their needs and can also show them properties that could be renovated to do so.
In fact, buyers can use the technology to see how a house they want to buy would look after a renovation – changing the kitchen layout, painting a wall or putting in new carpet, for instance.
Technology is also making buying easier. Property purchasers can place offers and bid for a property on the realestate.com.au platform.
A home is the most expensive purchase most people will ever make and buyers have been cautious about embracing technology for such an important life event. But Swift says there is more innovation to come, with demand driven by the site’s younger “digital native” users.
Australians typically sell their home and buy a new home once every 11 years, and Swift says the complex process can be assisted by agentic AI.
Agentic AI is an autonomous AI system that can perceive its environment, reason, plan, and take action to achieve goals with minimal human intervention.
Unlike traditional AI that responds to commands, agentic AI has “agency” – the ability to act independently to solve complex, multi-step problems.
In the context of purchasing property, this could mean that AI could book a time for a buyer to inspect a home and give the buyer a list of things to look out for; let the buyer know if they could afford the home; it could request a copy of the contract, scan it for any issues and then send it on to a conveyancer.
“You could imagine an agentic experience getting that consumer ready for auction day so that when they’re there the next Saturday, they’re ready to bid with confidence,” Swift says.
“I think that becomes really interesting, game-changing for that consumer audience.”
In the meantime, realestate.com.au and its team of more than 1000 Australian-based engineers is rolling out a steady stream of innovations to more than 12 million users who visit the site every month.
“Technology is everything we do, whether that’s building our app, our website, AI tooling, our customer tooling,” Swift says.
“It takes a certain type of culture to create that area that’s focused on innovation, that’s focused on agility, of getting product into the hands of our users past feedback cycles, so we can continue to create new value, create new tools and create a great feature that consumers and customers want to use.”
In August, REA Group invested in UK start-up Jitty, which uses AI and natural language search to provide buyers with a more intuitive experience. It uses computer vision to interpret images and floorplans at scale to reveal listings that align with buyer intent, and then lets the buyers get a feel for how the house is to live in.
It has also invested in Brisbane-based 3D visualisation platform IMMERSIV, which builds real-time experiences for off-the-plan properties.
It allows property seekers to explore new developments in a fully immersive 3D environment, and allows them to navigate masterplans, walk through interiors, view live apartment availability and toggle colour schemes.
Relatedly, there is iGUIDE, which REA Group acquired in October. Developed in Canada, iGUIDE is a camera and software platform that uses advanced AI capabilities to identify property features and produce immersive 3D virtual tours, precise floor plans and reliable property measurement data for existing properties. Users can, for instance, see what sort of stove top the kitchen has and what the benchtops are made from.
iGUIDE is a fast way of capturing and displaying a 3D image of a home’s interior on the market and realestate.com.au plans to eventually make it available as an app, so homeowners can do it themselves. It then plans to augment the technology to show users the “what if” they renovated, how would the property look?
REA Group has been investing in AI and machine learning for more than a decade, Swift says.
“We really understand where the technology can go, and our audience and our customers, we want to take them on the journey,” he says.
“We want to make sure we maintain that trust, which is really important in an AI world. We want to be transparent about how we’re using it and ensure that all the way through, the consumer is in control of what’s happening.”
