REA Group partners with OpenAI to launch AI tool for property valuations

REA Group has partnered with ChatGPT maker OpenAI to launch RealAssist, an AI tool designed to help homeowners understand property valuations through conversational language.

REA Group chief product and audience officer Jonathan Swift.

REA Group has locked in a partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, leveraging its trove of real estate data to create new artificial-intelligence tools to demystify property valuations and help people find their dream homes.

The new product – RealAssist – is designed to fend off competition from global tech giants and their AI platforms, which are encroaching on the turf of more traditional classified sites and search engines, including Google.

REA’s AI strategy aims to arm millions of homeowners with personalised, data-backed insights to make property valuations more transparent.

RealAssist allows realestate.com.au members to ask questions in conversational-style lan­guage about their property’s valuation, generated from REA’s realEstimate feature.

REA Group chief product and audience officer Jonathan Swift said RealAssist had been developed using tools from OpenAI, which had opened an office in Sydney. He said the product was one of eight “AI-prime features” on realestate.com.au that allowed people to search for properties in the same way that they spoke.

He said people could even ask for suggestions about what would enhance their realEstimate valuation.

Homeowners may also be prompted to update their property attributes – an action taken on more than 140,000 homes in the past 12 months.

“Australians are obsessed with property but it’s often an emotional and complex journey,” Mr Swift said.

“RealAssist aims to demystify property valuation, helping homeowners build their knowledge and empowering them to take the next step.”

Coinciding with the launch of RealAssist, REA Group is expanding its natural language AI search feature to all property seekers following a successful 12-month pilot. The expansion allows users to type complex, spoken-word queries such as, “show me homes with a pool and a double garage in Kew”.

Mr Swift said while the initial expectation was for common search templates, the reality was starkly different. “Just about every query is unique,” Mr Swift said. “[A query] would be like ‘I want a three-bedroom house. It’s federation style that’s five minutes walk from this cafe’.

“Natural Language search is great at answering some of those, but as we continue that development, this is where we think, can we do a better job of understanding what drives your lifestyle preferences, where you’re at financially?”

REA’s AI strategy is to provide homeowners with personalised, data-backed insights to make property valuations more transparent.

This finding suggests that a purely filter-based search system is insufficient for meeting the complex, lifestyle-driven criteria of modern property seekers, ­cementing the need for advanced natural language processing.

When discussing the emerging threat of large generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Mr Swift said REA’s most distinct competitive advantage was its unique, proprietary data.

The company leverages a massive data set, including details from the one in three Australian homes tracked by their owners on the site (equating to 4.7 million properties), high-volume consumer feedback on valuations, and data from recent acquisitions such as 3D mapping company iGUIDE.

This proprietary information is used to train and ground the AI models and stay ahead of the tech titans – even if it means using their own tools.

“We’ve got all those unique data sets that are not available to any third-party AIs. They sit within our walls,” Mr Swift said, adding that the challenge was creating “the best property experience”. He said: “We’ve got to have the best property experience and best representation and best data sets, bringing to life the best way of discovering and helping you move through the journey.”

Mr Swift said the tool, by providing data-backed answers, not only empowered consumers but also enhanced the relationship between homeowners and real estate agents.

He said that a more informed consumer would engage in a “two-way informed connection” with agents, ultimately leading to better and more realistic expectations for a sales campaign.

Despite the rapid adoption of AI technology, Mr Swift said REA Group was taking a measured approach, particularly with the more complex “agentic AI” capabilities, which would result in the platform acting semi-autonomously on behalf of consumers.

This cautious stance stems from general consumer sentiment. “Aussies have quite a low trust of AI. So we need to take them on the journey,” he said.

He said REA – majority-owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Australian – had introduced “strong guardrails” to ensure “accuracy” and would continue to work with leading technology businesses, including OpenAI, to build on existing capability and power game-changing features.

“Strong early signs of repeat engagement and the uptake of ­actions from consumers using AI-powered features indicate consumers are ready for these experiences that help them find their next home,” he said.

Originally published as REA Group partners with OpenAI to launch AI tool for property valuations