This robot is a better real-estate agent than its human counterpart

By Editorial Team Last updated Feb 16, 2017

So, can a robot find you a better home than an experienced human real-estate broker? It appears so.

Over the course of three days, a robot competed head-to-head with three highly experienced Denver real estate brokers to see who could recommend homes a buyer most preferred. The results of this challenge showed that, the buyer consistently ranked the robot suggested homes as their first-choice favorites all three days.

According to QValue, a technology company that works hand-in-hand with RealMARKABLE, a real-estate brokerage in Denver that uses intelligent, cutting edge tools like computer algorithms to help the public select homes, there’s a growing interest in home search and technology proven by more than 123 million unique visitors per month to the top fifteen U.S. real estate web portals.

The home search algorithm that was tested here may offer them an automatic means for finding homes they love.

Inman News conducted the contest at the end of April and just revealed the results.

Each day started with the buyer identifying a sample home they truly liked. It was the job of the broker and robot to each suggest homes they hoped would be as intriguing to the buyer as the sample home. The broker and the robot returned three homes to the buyer daily, which were then rank ordered, for very personal reasons which they did not have to explain.

The results:

Day 1

Favorite home came from the robot.
Second most favorite home came from the robot.

Day 2

Favorite home came from the robot.
Third most favorite home came from the robot.

Day 3

Favorite home came from the robot.
Second most favorite home came from both the robot and the broker.

“The algorithm’s recommendations consistently placed two homes within the top three buyer choices each day, and placed as the buyer’s #1 favorite home every time all three days,” said Creed Smith, QValue Company Representative. “This tells me the algorithm can indeed suggest homes based on emotionally triggering qualities buyers desire (qualitative criteria), and has moved far away from primitive current strategies used by all other websites, portals, and including all broker MLSs, which search by quantitative measures such as price range and bedroom counts”