THERE’s no doubt that the new wave of artificial intelligence is reshaping the landscape and offering new and radical ways of operating business. And while many business sectors in Australia may have got on board with successful implementation of AI strategies and are on the way to leveraging it to strategic advantage, there are some sectors still lagging.
AI adoption in property is up, but not everyone is on board. This was the sentiment from the recent Yardi/Property Council of Australia technology survey which found that around a third of Australia’s real estate professionals believe AI will have a ‘revolutionary impact’ on the industry. A third of survey respondents, however, had not implemented AI and an additional 28 per cent were uncertain about their next course of action.
Enter Wavie, a real estate platform which aims to revolutionise the property sales sector by allowing sellers to sell their properties without the associated high agent fees. The company is aiming to buck the trend in the Australian real estate sector, by taking things a step further with an AI agent.
However, although AI is at the core of Wavie’s business model, founder of Wavie, Andy Dunn is adamant that the technology will not necessarily totally get rid of agents, nor is that necessarily a good thing.
Started up in April this year with three permanent staff, Wavie is aiming to empower sellers to do their own home selling by giving them the tools to do it with, says Dunn.
Still in the early testing stages, the company is building an AI agent that will assist with customer enquires and negotiations regarding listings.
“She’s called Jess and sounds like a typical Aussie girl,” he says. “She can ask questions and will soon be able to speak to them on the phone, answering their questions, taking all their details and simultaneously relaying all this back to the vendor as required,” says Dunn.
Dunn says Wavie is initially targeting itself towards the mums and dads end of the market who may be selling for around the million-dollar mark and want to save a few thousand on fees.
“We’re using AI to streamline and improve the process for clients as much as we can as the technology continues to evolve,” he says.
With limited numbers of Aussie real estate businesses out there currently (and successfully) using AI, Dunn maintains a cautious approach to implementation but believes AI will eventually take a widespread hold.
“The thing is a lot of real estate agents’ time is traditionally taken up with phone calls and admin and this is what AI is especially good at covering.
“We are building our own technology which incorporates different components including AI voice using large language models like ChatGPT, meaning the AI learns from the data that we input into it.
“We have a lot of data from all the properties in our CRM systems and our AI is linked to this so that people can call and ask about any details of properties and get the information they need immediately.
“We’re basically a digital agent, just not in person, but currently just seeing if the model can work.”
Dunn is circumspect about the Australian demise of UK business Purple Bricks, a fellow real estate market disrupter which aimed to combine end-to-end customer facing technology with agents and a fixed-fee structure, rather than a commission, to make property buying and selling more efficient. The business closed in Australia in 2019 but is still operating in the UK.
“Purple Bricks in Australia was just based on human agents who were subcontractors to the business, and that model didn’t really work in this market,” says Dunn.
“This time, with Wavie, we’re for the first time in the real estate business, using AI to enhance the overall process and we’re confident we’re going to get it right. It’s certainly not yet a perfect model which explains why we still have a lot of human interaction in the backend of the business.
“Admittedly, we’re not yet able to turn AI on, leave it and let it go, but we see no problem in getting to this stage. It just needs that human touch right now until the AI can be just as good if not better than a human, and then we’re seeing if we can get it to the stage of a full-on real estate agent.”
He says perfecting the platform and the education around it is more challenging than perfecting the AI itself.
“It’s about educating sellers that there is a different way of doing things, if you want to. The challenges with this are not really about the AI - this can be gradually built and can be adapted for evolving needs.
“Its more about changing people’s mindsets about the business model and overcoming the general distrust in real estate agents. But if we can make a slight difference and help people do it for themselves, then that will be a bonus.
“There are lots of property technology out there with AI automations to create your own listing descriptions and AI chat bots. But nobody is doing a voice model such as this.”
Visit: www.app.wavie.com.au