Businessnow Looking to buy a home in Burnaby? This AI assistant can help

AbhinayaNatesh anatesh@burnabynow com

Little did Otavio Padovani know when he bought his first property in Burnaby’s Metrotown area five years ago that he’d be working with artificial in- telligence (AI) for his second.

But with advancing technology and the rollout of AI tools like ChatGPT, the game has changed altogether and real estate is no exception.

Padovani, coming to British Columbia from Brazil, remembered the first house he purchased in the country; it was an older one-bedroom condo in the Metrotown area he purchased five years ago for $410,000.

Prior to his purchase, all his questions, requirements about neighbourhoods, prices, safety, etc pertaining to his first home in Canada were directed at his Realtor,

Richard Morrison.

But in the past five years, much has changed

Housing prices have skyrocketed, more developments are springing up in the area, and Padovani himself, on the hunt for his second home, is now directing the questions he once directed at the Realtor to the new AI-powered tool, PropertyIQ, developed by Morrison and his team.

For Padovani, switching to AI in the initial stages helped him cut down on the reliance he had on his Realtor, he said in an interview with the NOW whether it’s comparing prices, finding out about the neighbourhood or details about the property, driving informed decisions

It is like chatting with a Realtor, but not exactly.

Morrison, who operates out of Burnaby andVancouver, said the motivation to develop the tool was to make it more accessible for homebuyers and sellers

The free, accessible tool was developed by his team using existing multiple listings service (MLS) data that their website has been harvesting over the past five years, he said, to pro- vide a comprehensive analysis for homebuyers and sellers

“It gives insightful intelligence about each property,” Morrison said. “For instance, if you’re looking for a two-bedroom condo in the Metrotown area and you (narrow down) on that condo, you can ask (the tool) questions like what’s the history of this building?What are five non-obvious insights that you can derive from this property? (The tool) will then go and and study all of these data points and come back with five insights about the property”

But while AI is changing the real estate game, the tool cannot replace Realtors just yet, he said

That’s a sentiment Padovani agrees with

“It’s a nice assistant-like tool. It doesn’t replace an agent, because they still have to negotiate the price of the property a robot cannot do that,” Morrison said “You still need someone to show you the property physically. Someone that knows the ins and outs of the legalities ”

You can try out the PropertyIQ AI online at www. strawhomes com