15 Marketing Use Cases for AI in Real Estate

The real estate industry has historically lagged in embracing new technologies; however, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize the sector.

Zillow’s Journey Mapping illustrates the emotional rollercoaster renters experience throughout their apartment search, from initial excitement to eventual relief, often tarnished by stress and frustration. The disjointed tech in the real estate industry exacerbates these emotions, leaving customers overwhelmed and exhausted.

From Zillow Rentals “Today’s Renter Journey”

By embracing AI, we can do better. Our customers deserve better.

The time is now.

A recent report by McKinsey & Company shares that in their experience working with residential operators, those who create memorable brand experiences using data and technology, including generative AI, experience a premium of up to 15%.

Additionally, a second report shows that in their work with AI, real estate companies enjoy NOI gains of more than 10% by creating efficiencies, superior decision-making, and enhanced customer experience.

Getting caught up in the hype and excitement of future possibilities is easy. Daily, we hear about tools emerging that can handle the most tedious tasks and free up time to tackle the most rewarding parts of our roles. 

We are still in the early days of AI adoption in the real estate industry.

My research indicates that while there is much discussion about AI's potential benefits, concrete case studies, and practical applications are scarce.

This doesn't mean companies aren't utilizing AI—examples throughout this article demonstrate that they are. However, the lack of widespread, data-backed examples presents a unique opportunity for your company to explore AI's potential and gain a competitive edge.

Before diving in, it’s essential to understand where to start and how to avoid common pitfalls.

Current AI Marketing Use Cases in Real Estate

1. AI Chatbots 

AI-powered chatbots enable property managers to provide 24/7 personalized interactions through chatbots and email campaigns backed by large language models (LLMs). This ensures that prospective renters receive timely and relevant information at every stage of their decision-making process. 

Today’s renter expects almost immediate responses, yet CRM provider Knock shared that the average response time for the multifamily industry is around 39 hours!

With AI chatbots, communication with prospective residents is available around the clock, significantly increasing the likelihood of converting leads into leases. Remember, many renters are at work while your office is open and are actively apartment hunting when your office is closed.

Using Respage Chatbot by Respage nationwide property management company Legacy Partners saw impressive results in just one month with a 50% lead-to-tour conversion.

During the first month with the Respage Chatbot, 301 prospects engaged after hours, which might have been missed otherwise, and the chatbot saved the onsite team 83 hours of work.

2. Lead Nurturing

Leveraging advanced AI tools for lead nurturing can significantly enhance your communication with prospective renters, guiding them seamlessly through the decision-making process. These AI-driven systems ensure continuous engagement, providing immediate and accurate responses to inquiries, carrying on meaningful conversations, and persistently following up with prospects. This approach not only increases the likelihood of conversion but also ensures that leads are nurtured efficiently until they are ready to take action, such as scheduling a tour or applying for an apartment.

Once a prospect reaches this stage, the lead is then handed over to a human team member. This transition allows your team to focus on high-value activities that drive occupancy and maximize revenue, thereby boosting overall productivity.

For example, PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant Solution has proven to be highly effective.

In a case study with Unified Residential, the company experienced a remarkable increase in website traffic conversion, from 2% to 6.26%, and improved its lead-to-tour conversion rate by 67%, from 50% to 83.49%. Over a 60-day period, their leasing agents saved 162 hours of work, allowing them to concentrate on higher-impact activities.

3. AI For Deliquenceny Follow-up

Automating the follow-up process for late payments can improve collection rates and reduce the administrative burden on property managers.

Tools like Elise AI can schedule reminders and send personalized rent collection messages to residents.

This ensures that delinquent payments are addressed promptly and professionally, improving cash flow and resident relationships while freeing your human team for more impactful tasks and engaging with residents.

Elise AI has seen delinquency reductions as high as 52% per quarter when companies use their platform.

4. Custom GPTs for Brands

At Scully Company, my team and I manage marketing and leasing for over 40 unique brands across the Northeast and Florida. Each property boasts its own unique personality and distinctive features that attract residents to choose it as their home.

To enhance our marketing efforts, we leverage ChatGPT to create content that truly resonates with our customers. By training a GPT on specific details about each community, such as messaging, personas, and psychographic interests, we can craft compelling campaigns and content tailored to what makes each brand unique and appealing to our target audience.

Free accounts can benefit from GPT’s in the GPT store. Try the Copywriter GPT - Marketing, Branding, Ads to create on-brand content for your audience.

5. AI Images and Video Generation

AI image-generation tools like Midjourney and Dall-E can convert an idea into reality. Using text prompts, you can create a scene to show prospective or current residents what a future space will look like. As AI video tools enter the scene, these visualizations will become even more dynamic, allowing you to create short lifestyle videos, neighborhood walkthroughs, and more.

The linked neighborhood walkthrough is an example of what you can create in less than two minutes with one simple prompt sentence using Runway. My prompt was:

You can use a paid account to make longer videos or several short scenes that connect to create a longer lifestyle video.

With tools like Archivinci, you can use drawings or text prompts to bring a sketch or simply a vision to life, visualize remodeling ideas, and even test various color palettes for a space.

6. Overcoming Language Barriers

Recent Open AI and Google demos showed their new voice-to-voice capabilities, which are equipped with sophisticated natural language processing to facilitate two-way conversations. 

While translation tools already exist, this technology smoothly translates conversations between people who speak different languages in real-time, allowing seamless communication and even real-time interruptions, as shown in this demo.

Picture an English-speaking maintenance technician entering a French-speaking household with a dishwasher issue. ChatGPT 4o’s translation capabilities will allow them to have a fluid and thorough conversation about the problem, quickly giving the maintenance technician the necessary information. 

7. Predictive Analytics

AI provides actionable insights that help property managers make informed decisions. 

There is no shortage of data aggregation tools in multifamily; however, these tools still require manual analysis.

Marketing teams often must analyze countless dashboards and reports, a manual and time-consuming process. AI tools like Remarkably can automate this burden, prescribing steps to optimize returns and improve the health of campaigns, similar to how a doctor prescribes treatments for better health outcomes.

8. AI Copilot

AI chatbots, which traditionally engage prospective residents, are beginning to offer innovative solutions for resident platforms, transforming how we interact and manage our communities.

AI chatbots like STAN can assist residents with booking amenities, troubleshooting issues, and responding instantly to common questions. By handling routine inquiries, appointment scheduling, and room booking, AI allows staff to focus on more complex tasks and provide better service.

In the near future, I expect chatbots to integrate with property management systems, enabling them to understand each prospect or resident's unique renter journey. These chatbots will then be capable of coaching employees on handling each specific communication or interaction to achieve the optimum outcome.

9. Enhanced Search and Evaluation

AI-powered natural language search options like Sunny.com allow potential renters to describe their ideal apartment in their own words. This makes the search process more intuitive and efficient, leading to higher satisfaction rates, more qualified prospective renters, and higher conversions. Renters can search for properties using phrases like “two-bedroom furnished apartment in New York City with lots of natural light” and have their perfect apartment delivered to them.

10. Geo-Targeting and Heat Maps

Companies like location intelligence provider Placer.ai analyze geographic data to understand where potential renters are searching from and moving to. This helps in better-targeted marketing efforts and efficient resource allocation. For example, AI can identify trends in migration patterns, allowing property managers to adjust their marketing strategies and investment decisions accordingly.

AI Marketing in Real Estate: Near-Future Use Cases

11. Predictive Maintenance

AI can identify patterns and forecast when equipment will likely fail by analyzing data from various sensors and maintenance logs. This allows property managers to perform proactive maintenance, reducing downtime and avoiding costly emergency repairs.

For example, if data showed that a particular brand of dishwasher has a part that historically fails at 15 months, the platform could alert the maintenance team to check that part at the 13—or 14-month mark, reducing potential damage to your asset and enhancing customer satisfaction.

12. Personalized Resident Experiences

AI can gather and analyze data about residents' preferences, habits, and interests, enabling property managers to offer tailored experiences. Understanding resident preferences can help plan community events, provide personalized services, and improve overall satisfaction.

This data-driven approach is similar to how websites use cookies to enhance user experience but with the potential for even deeper personalization.

Grace Hill quotes an average resident survey response of 10%—30 %, with 50% or higher considered to be excellent—but what about the rest of your residents? What do they want? AI also gives us the power to hear more from quiet voices.

13. Early Prediction of Lease Renewals

AI can analyze resident behavior and historical data to predict lease renewals. This allows property managers to proactively address potential issues and engage with residents early, improving retention rates. For example, if AI identifies a resident unlikely to renew their lease, managers can reach out to address concerns, increasing the likelihood of renewal.

14. Enhanced Customer Experience

AI-powered apps become a personalized guide for optimizing each individual resident’s day for maximum enjoyment.

Think notifications for HVAC recommendations, smart tech that pairs with AI to create grocery lists, based on what’s in the apartment, sending recipe suggestions at the perfect time of day before a resident leaves their office so they can pick up ingredients on their way home, sending proactive reminders to book spaces for special occasions simultaneously increasing opportunities for ancillary income, or reminders to register for community events the resident would enjoy.

These features will enhance the overall resident experience, creating life satisfaction they can’t imagine living without and making your community sticky.

15. Customer-Driven Design

AI can invite residents to contribute to design choices, feeding their preferences into the system to make informed decisions. We already have virtually staged models. It won’t be long until residents can toggle different furniture or design styles within an image and select their preferred design.

An AI system to capture this information could inform architects, developers, and management companies about what selections to make for renovations or other projects under construction with a similar resident base.

This also opens ancillary revenue opportunities for a company that might want to partner with a furnishing company.

Working in AI Marketing Real Estate? 3 Pitfalls to Avoid

Fair Housing Concerns

LLMs are trained on content created by humans, and unfortunately, we live in a world where bias exists. Before selecting a generative AI tool, you must question the provider on how the tool will uphold fair housing requirements. Implementing oversight mechanisms and regularly reviewing AI outputs is crucial to ensure compliance, fairness, and equity.

In recent news, Zillow has taken an industry-leading step by releasing its open-source Fair Housing Classifier. This tool aims to address the crucial issue of fairness in housing by setting clear boundaries for responsible and unbiased conversations with large language models, such as those used in generative AI tools like chatbots and lead nurture technology. 

If the classifier identifies a conversation that falls outside of compliance, the system developer can intervene. Most notably, the open-source nature of the classifier makes it freely accessible, allowing companies to easily adopt and contribute to its continuous improvement.

AI Hallucinations

AI’s primary goal is to achieve user satisfaction- so much so that if an AI does not know the answer, it will make one up. Human oversight is imperative to verify AI outputs and manage misinformation risks.

Property managers should know AI's limitations and ensure humans review content and critical decisions. You are liable if your AI provides inaccurate information!

In a notable example with Air Canada, the airline’s chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information about bereavement fares. When the customer requested the refund the chatbot described, the airline refused, claiming their chatbot was a separate legal entity and the company was not liable. The case went to court, and the Canadian tribunal found otherwise, requiring the company to reimburse the customer for the difference in fare quoted by the chatbot.

Employees Using AI on Autopilot

Over-reliance on AI without human oversight can lead to issues. Employees should use AI as a tool to enhance their capabilities rather than as a replacement for their judgment and expertise. I am still waiting to get something from AI that does not need adjusting.

You spend so much time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears developing your brand and gaining resident trust.

Don’t let improper tool use steal that away.

Continuous training and development are essential to ensure staff can effectively collaborate with AI systems and leverage their full potential.

Unlocking the Future of Real Estate with AI

AI can revolutionize the real estate industry when appropriately used to increase efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and increase revenue. However, innovation in this space requires significant change management and an investment in a team of professionals to craft the customer experience and develop the tools needed to deliver it.

Working collaboratively with generative AI requires some trial and error.

Think of these tools like a new intern. The more specific directions and follow-up guidance you provide, the better the output.

More importantly, even if the output is not perfect, today is the worst AI will ever be. Recognize the future possibilities, and get acquainted with how to use these tools now.

Companies that see the value in this approach have an opportunity to strike gold, gain an unparalleled competitive advantage, and position themselves as industry leaders.

Remember... 1000 steps start by 1.

And today is the best day to start ;).