Zillow is improving its AI search tool to eliminate the tedious filtering of locations and other elements. Now you can simply ask for a place within driving distance of a location and Zillow will handle the rest for you.
The enhanced AI tools, available on Zillow’s mobile app, rely on informal language instead of dropdowns and other menus. The idea is that you don’t have to specify affordability, proximity to schools, travel time and the like. You can just explain what you want, as if you were talking to a human.
For example, Zillow described how you could ask for “houses within 30 minutes of Millennium Park,” “3-bedroom homes near Roosevelt High School,” or “apartments near Denver Union Station” for properties within a certain distance of your office, a good school, or a park you like. The goal is to make it more intuitive to find your ideal home. It’s a linguistic upgrade from Zillow’s current AI features, which currently perform tasks like estimating a home’s value and sharing AI-powered Showcase listings that provide tours of a home.
“From streamlining the home search process to personalizing the user experience, Zillow is applying AI in practical ways to help people find homes,” said Zillow senior vice president of AI Josh Weisberg. “Search is one of the foundations of our platform, and we’re constantly improving it to make it easier for users to find homes that meet their unique needs.”
AI Real Estate
As AI becomes more integrated into platforms like Zillow, the process of searching for a home could become less painful. Even if the idea that buying a home would be easy seems more like a hallucination than anything AI has ever produced.
Zillow’s AI will also use the conversations and requests people make to further train it. Zillow claims that as more people use the platform, the AI will become better at locating the places people actually want to buy or rent.
It remains to be seen whether real estate agents will view Zillow’s AI upgrade as a win because it could shorten the home search process, or as a problem because it could undermine the relationships they’re trying to build with potential home buyers.
“The rise of AI in real estate signals a broader shift in how people will search for homes in the future,” Weisberg said. AI could ultimately make the home-hunting process more personalized and efficient. But don’t expect it to do anything with your down payment.