How AI can help you buy a place

By Graeme Salt

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is supposed to revolutionise many things – but will it help you buy a place?

Many experts talk about AI having a huge impact on professional activities – particularly with the more junior ranks.  The sorts of roles often mentioned include activities like book-keeping and para-planners.

But could it have an impact on the process of purchasing a property?  Typically, AI is seen as being applicable to professional activities that are:

1. repetitive
2. low-risk

So, let’s look at some of the professions involved in purchasing a property – to see if they could be replaced by AI.

Mortgage Broker – find the right loan is way more complicated than people realise: what sort of employment contract are they on; how much savings do they have; is the property Strata or Company Title; what’s their Super position?

Result: it’s hard to see AI having an immediate impact.

Conveyancer/lawyer – some activities (such as Title searches) are fairly standardised.  But, given that we are talking about people’s homes here, the implications of incorrectly settling someone’s house are huge.

Result: it’s hard to see any State governments allowing anything perceived to be unsafe tinkering with people’s homes.

Real Estate Agent – organising weekly Open Homes is repetitive and risk-free.  But, physically opening a house and ensuring it is correctly presented cannot be done by AI.   Plus, who can see AI negotiating with a possible purchaser? That said, some of the simple enquiries – such as request for price guides – are being automated.

Result: difficult to see AI having a huge impact

Buyer’s Agent – Buyer’s Agents are becoming increasingly important in the purchase process.  If someone is geographically open-minded about where they want to buy, AI could be a beneficial research tool.  But, just as above, when it comes to negotiating with a real estate agent, it’s hard to see AI having an impact.

Result: difficult to see AI having a huge impact

Conclusion

It’s hard to see AI having an impact on property purchases apart from at the basic, repetitive tasks.

That said, below is an example of where a clever client of mine was looking to buy a place.  He was looking to buy a unit and realised that he needed understand how well the Strata was run.

For many, ordering a Strata report does not really help as it takes a fair bit of grey matter to understand what is going on!  So, my client got ChatGPT to ‘interogate’ the strata report – using deliberately naïve questions.  Here were some of the results.

Past issues like water leaks and balcony fascia damage have mostly been fixed, but two tricky water ingress spots remain.

Big repaint scheduled for 2027 (already budgeted for)

Bottom Line

The complex is well run and financially strong for big project, but the shortfall in the day-to-day fund means you should expect higher levies or a one-off payment soon.

Based on this analysis, the client was able to determine what that property was worth to him and therefore, how much he was prepared to pay for it.

Graeme Salt is an award-winning mortgage broker. For a no-obligations consultation on your home loan needs, please contact him on 02 9922 5055.