In this episode, Scott and Melinda Jennison explore how artificial intelligence and PropTech are reshaping the property industry. After attending the recent REBAA conference, they share firsthand insights into how technology is already being used, sometimes effectively, and sometimes dangerously.
They break down where tech can help streamline due diligence and improve efficiency, and where it falls short, especially when it comes to emotion, street-level expertise, and local market nuance.
Whether you’re a buyer navigating Brisbane’s fast-paced market or just curious about AI’s growing role in real estate, this episode will help you separate smart tech use from risky shortcuts.
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Transcript
0:02: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Brisbane Property Podcast with Scott and Melinda Jannison, and, technology.
0:09: It’s an interesting one, how it’s sort of come about these days, so rapidly, how, how things have changed, and we’ve got AI and all those types of things.
0:17: so today we’re going to talk about how,, those are useful or, or how they’re not useful in different areas in property.
0:25: Absolutely.
0:26: We call it Prop Tech.
0:27: That’s the technology that’s been advancing through the property sector, and it’s been extremely rapid in the last 4 or 5 years, especially off the back of COVID as, you know, more and more technologies become available.
0:39: Also the introduction of AI chat.
0:41: GBT, the knowledge sources that we now have, through our computers, we really want to unpack when can we rely on AI, when should we rely on AI?
0:53: And more importantly, when is human interaction still a necessary step in the process, especially when it comes to selecting Agrade property.
1:02: So that is the focus of today’s episode.
1:04: It’s gonna be quite interesting.
1:05: And, a lot of this came off the back of, our team recently attending the, Real Estate Buyers’ Agents Association of Australia conference.
1:13: It was in Melbourne.
1:14: There were 2 days jam-packed with, guest speakers, and 2 of those guest speakers were industry experts in Prop Tech and AI for the property sector.
1:23: , so we’re gonna unpack some of their insights and, and share them with you in terms of what’s actually happening in this space right now.
1:30: And as a consumer, what you need to be aware of.
1:32: Oh, I think one, probably one of the biggest things I noticed, especially from the conference, saving time is, is probably the big, the big thing that I think, AI can be useful for.
1:45: one thing it will never, never, ever take away is, is that service and that human connection.
1:51: And the emotion side of it, but it can definitely compact your time a little bit and save a little bit of time.
1:57: Hopefully, to allow you to have more time to do that interaction and that service that we, you just can’t replace that human service.
2:06: That said, I think that there’s more and more companies entering the industry, especially in the buyer’s agent space, space, that are relying more and more on technology and taking away that human element.
2:17: So we’re going to unpack, you know, what technology is available as the first step.
2:22: And some of the insights, you know, are really mind blowing.
2:25: Let’s just say, of course, with advancements in AI and Prop Tech, we’re now seeing robots or artificial intelligence, do a lot of the process of vetting properties, matching properties to clients, property reports, including due diligence reports on properties, even pricing properties.
2:46: And we’ve had a level of, automated valuation tools available to us that they are.
2:53: Advancing, as technology improves.
2:57: AI can also help with proposals, with understanding the client through, reviewing their LinkedIn profile and identifying their personality to be able to create reports that are specifically tailored for an individual who might be inquiring about your service.
3:12: I mean, this is mind blowing, but we saw it being demonstrated to us at the Real Estate Buyers’ Agents Association of Australia conference.
3:20: I’m going to use the acronym.
3:21: Rebar from now on, because it’s easier, to say.
3:25: We also saw AI produced websites within minutes, not days.
3:30: We saw AI produced podcast episodes, from PDF documents that were available.
3:37: And we also, experienced firsthand AI phone calls, that is, artificial intelligence, robots making phone calls to us, to inquire.
3:50: About services or inquire about properties, or in fact, to share information about properties.
3:55: So this is the space of Prop tech that we’re going to be investigating today, and we’re going to talk about where does it have its advantages, where do we see, it being useful for and where are the risks and where do we feel that the human interaction is still absolutely critical in the process.
4:11: I will jump on one which I thought was quite amazing and one of the at the at the conference, one of the speakers got up and actually talked about.
4:20: , introducing is going to be a 21 or 25 year old, new sales agent, I think it was coming into the market, and he, he created this, spiel all through AI and then a video, and it was actually a video of him walking along the street talking about this property.
4:36: , he paused it and he said, OK, now we’ll start again, and it changed to Spanish and then it changed to Mandarin, and then it so it went through all of these different languages, and it was complete AI.
4:49: It was quite amazing to see.
4:51: And this was all done literally straight away, like he literally created all of this work, and produced this straight away, and it was quite mind blowing just to see something like that happen.
5:02: And just so that any listeners can understand who it was that was presenting this information, it was Seth Watts.
5:07: He’s an AI guru.
5:08: He Has really, excelled in artificial intelligence, and in, in the space of half an hour, he demonstrated so many tools to the conference attendees that, that really are showing us the direction that our industry is heading.
5:22: And there are some businesses already using a lot of these tools, and, you know, they’re getting, you know, some, some good results, but I guess the question is how long will the consumer, want to be partnering with artificial intelligence, and when is the human connection going to be important during the real estate transaction?
5:42: I, I find it, I maybe I’m a little bit old school, but even when I pick up the phone sometimes and I make an inquiry somewhere and I’m If I’ve gotta push numbers, I start to get frustrated and then I’m not talking to someone I get even more frustrated and I just want to talk to someone, so maybe I’m a bit old school, but look I think there’s a, there is a place for it, and I think it does have a lot of advantages when itches well.
6:02: , the phone call ones and things like that, I probably struggle a little bit with, because I do like to talk to people and get the right answers.
6:08: And look, I think at the end of the day, you know, talking to a robot, if you can tell that it’s artificial intelligence, it might be quite frustrating, for you.
6:18: For some people that that may be the case.
6:19: For others, perhaps not.
6:21: but where is the line between when you can tell you’re talking to artificial intelligence and when, when are you talking to a human?
6:28: And I think that that’s That that line is becoming more blurred as artificial intelligence continues to improve and advance in terms in terms of the way it’s being delivered.
6:37: So with some of these tools, where can they actually help buyers or buyers agents?
6:43: Yeah, I do think that there’s a place for AI and prop tech in the buyer’s agent space.
6:48: And in fact, our business uses, a lot of this tech to, I guess, condense our own time.
6:55: Basically, it is in relation to, fast tracking some of the property due diligence that, we do.
7:03: that said, if it is a property of interest, we’ll always fact check with the source to ensure that the AI generated reports, or the condensed reports are accurate because sometimes there’s not that accuracy.
7:17: It might be pulling from an old data source, it might actually be, a report that’s Pulling from flood maps from Queensland, not local council flood maps.
7:25: you can see some of the nuances in how certain reports are created, and it’s important as buyer’s agents that we know the source, so we can go and check and verify.
7:35: And that’s certainly what we would do on any properties that we’re interested in purchasing for clients to ensure that the AI is accurate, because one thing that AI, does sometimes is it hallucinates or it It doesn’t actually produce information that’s 100% accurate, and that becomes the risk factor for any buyer relying solely on AI produced reports.
7:59: that said, it can condense time and, if, if AI reports are showing that there’s flood risk or, or zoning risk or development risk, it’s easy then to verify just the area of concern through fact checking with the source, to rule a property out and, and Move on with the search.
8:15: So that does speed up that process.
8:18: I think it also can, or where, where it is advantageous is that it layers, the service.
8:27: So it provides a tool that, enables you to free up your time, to use that time to service clients.
8:35: And what I mean by that is, I don’t think that AI will ever replace the relationships that exist.
8:40: In a real estate transaction, of course, when representing buyers, there’s an enormous amount of trust building that must take place in actually developing a relationship with that person so that they genuinely trust the advice that you’re providing.
8:55: As well as that, there’s a relationship that you’re building with the selling agent, and I don’t think that AI will ever replace that relationship because human beings rely on relationships for interaction.
9:06: And I think that the more people think that AI is going to overtake the relationship part of the transaction, I think that’s where the, the argument is a little flawed.
9:15: Yeah, I don’t think you can be too lazy.
9:17: I think you’ve got to check things.
9:18: It’s not a complete solution for everything.
9:20: but as you say, it can, it can tighten things up in time.
9:23: You do have to check them interesting when you said there, Melinda, about, how I can check things like flood mapping and things like that.
9:29: , it’s just been updated in, in Brisbane, the flood mapping it’s being updated.
9:34: So again, these are things you need to make sure you do cross-check to make sure it is actually accurate accurate, without sending them off to a client as well.
9:42: Absolutely.
9:43: where can it go wrong?
9:44: And this is, this is probably an area that I’d like to dig a little bit deeper into, because I think Prop Tech can actually give some buyers a false sense of, confidence at times, and I want to be able to give specific examples of when this happens.
9:58: So, First of all, I will say, algorithms, they can’t walk through a home.
10:02: A robot can’t walk through a home.
10:04: No form of AI can provide the, emotional response or emotional experience that tech can provide by walking through a home.
10:15: And I know when we’re representing home buyers, for example, we can Find a property that ticks all of the boxes, but if it doesn’t feel right, it’s not gonna be a good match for the client.
10:26: And there’s no AI that’s going to encapsulate the feeling that a home can give.
10:31: And what is important to understand for anyone out there that’s thinking, yeah, but you don’t have to worry about me.
10:36: I’m an investor and I’m therefore not worried about the feelings that a home buyer might have.
10:41: Remember that across Australia, the majority of property buyers are home buyers, they make up about 65% of all property buyers across, the nation.
10:51: And the majority of those buyers do buy with emotion, because that is the reality of buying a home.
10:56: It’s very unlikely that they’re purely using a calculator to come to a decision about where to live or what to pay for that particular property.
11:04: So it’s critical that the human element and the human emotions that come with buying a home are considered, especially when you’re relying on some tech in the background to help guide you in terms of, that property.
11:17: Classic example, if you’re looking online at any, you know, automated.
11:22: , price estimates for a property, we often find that they’re grossly inaccurate, and the reason for that is that a lot of them.
11:32: are not yet detecting the quality of the property or differences in floor plans or, you know, changes to development impacts nearby, whereas, you know, if you’re just purely looking at land size and property size without considering quality, it can be grossly inaccurate, and an unrenovated property can be overestimated and a completely renovated property can be underestimated.
11:56: in terms of value.
11:57: So these are just some examples of some of the nuances, associated with relying purely on PropCheck and, and not or prop tech, sorry, and not actually, overlaying that with some human, knowledge and, and human IQ.
12:10: I, I think it’s interesting when you talk about the, the human side of it and even when you touched on homebuyers being emotional and they need to see it and feel it and make it.
12:19: All nice and investors not so much.
12:22: They still, there still is that level, because even if you’re buying an investment property, you want it to be desirable.
12:28: You want people to actually want to live in there.
12:30: So again, it does have that little bit of that feely sort of side of it as well, it has to have that a little bit.
12:37: , and, and you never know what’s gonna happen in the future.
12:39: You buy an investment property and if, if circumstances change and you have to sell that property, you want it to be desirable.
12:45: You want it that, hey, maybe a home buyer might come in and buy it off you, and they might even pay more than an investor, so you’ll actually make more money out of it, so.
12:52: There is that level of it, or of that that feely sort of, however you want to put it, as opposed to that, you know, non-emotion side of it.
13:00: So you still have to have that element and AI just can’t do that.
13:04: That takes a human to walk through, to look at the property, to feel it, to understand how it flows, where it is, the local streets, understanding what that’s like, what’s in the local area, just understanding livability of.
13:17: A property is something that, AI just can’t do.
13:20: And I think also, as a brand, our buyers’ advocacy service at Streamline Property Buyers would never rely on, AI telephone calls to agents or to our clients.
13:31: that just does not align with the service levels that we set for ourselves.
13:36: Yes, you might be able to make a higher volume of calls to get information that might be relevant.
13:41: To you.
13:42: However, it completely eliminates the relationship part of the process.
13:46: And in real estate, I strongly believe that success is determined to some extent by the relationships that you build, especially in your local area.
13:56: And without those relationships, then that flow of new opportunities starts to dry out.
14:02: Without the relationships, the, the leads and the, the, the people that are wanting to buy, they No longer inquire.
14:07: With the relationships, you don’t see agents calling with the new, off-market opportunity that they might have coming.
14:14: So this is where there’s a big difference between, you know, tech matching through AI platforms and, and building relationships with people.
14:22: I think that’s also important, and I know, I know it happens everywhere, but you’ve got your borderless buyer’s agents that buy everywhere.
14:29: look, I, I was talking to someone the other day and One thing they actually said to me was, has, you know, being your niche market and understanding your local market, that is just so, so important.
14:41: If you know the streets, you know the area, and you know it inside out, and you know all of the agents, and you’ve got all the contacts, and you’ve got the trades to help, and you’ve got the property managers, there’s so many different things that are involved in it.
14:53: I, I think that’s where people rely on some of these tech side of things to buy anywhere and everywhere, as opposed to just, Knowing their actual market and being a specialist in your local area.
15:06: Yeah, and I’d like to just sort of highlight one example, for example, that, The of an incident where a buyer who had engaged a borderless buyer’s agent, purchased a property.
15:16: This one was actually not in Brisbane.
15:18: It was in a regional area.
15:21: and this is something that was a complaint sent into RIBA.
15:23: For those that don’t know, I am the president of the Real Estate Buyers’ Agents Association of Australia.
15:28: So, you know, I’m a huge advocate for industry best practice and ensuring that consumers are protected, when they are represented by buyer’s agents.
15:36: So, you know, as a brand streamlined property.
15:39: Buyers holds our service levels to the highest standards, but also, I advocate for that across the industry as a whole.
15:46: But some people confuse REBA as the, governing body for buyer’s agents.
15:50: We’re not.
15:50: That would be the Office of Fair Trading in each state.
15:54: we are simply, the, the association group that holds buyer’s agents to account by ensuring those that are members, actually abide by a professional code of conduct and meet minimum standards that the industry should.
16:08: , you know, offered to consumers.
16:11: So, there are examples, unfortunately, too many for this podcast episode where consumers have been burned, where consumers have relied on the advice from buyer’s agents who largely rely on tech and Prop Tech, in fact, they, they rely on numbers-based, purchases.
16:28: They don’t physically inspect properties.
16:30: One specific example was a regional buyer that purchased a property.
16:34: , they purchased that property, it’s settled, and only following settlement did they actually find out from the property manager that was engaged that the property was untenantable.
16:45: They actually could not rent the property in its current condition.
16:49: consequently, they found out that property was never inspected by the buyer’s agent, who was not actually in that regional area, but they were buying from a capital city market into regional markets based on data alone, and they were Relying on property managers to feed back information to them.
17:04: So what happened is that, unfortunately, this buyer had significant financial loss, and they have taken that matter up directly with the buyer’s agent involved and escalated it through the Office of Fair Trading and other, avenues.
17:19: So this is a situation that unfortunately is happening more frequently than I’d like to think within our industry, and it’s because a lot of people are relying Too much on Prop Tech without that human interaction, without that physical inspection, without that, the casting of human eyes over properties to ensure that it meets the standards that, are required for purchase.
17:40: Yes, I, I think there’s too many of those stories and, and it’s what probably gives the industry a bad name as well.
17:46: So definitely, I think that human area is just something you can’t take away.
17:50: I mean, we talk about the emotional bias side of things, and, and again, this is something that, You just can’t take that away, and an AI just can’t do that type of thing when you, when you’re buying property.
18:01: That’s right.
18:01: And I’m also going to sort of add on top of that.
18:04: No AI, filter, if you like, or program is going to be able to identify the local nuances, such as these are the best streets in the suburb, or this street has, a better outlook than that street, or this area’s future infras Structure is superior to this other area.
18:23: Like these gentrification patterns that you see in real time are only picked up retrospectively through data and therefore through the Proptech platforms.
18:33: When you’re seeing it happen in real time, you’re so much ahead of the data.
18:38: And don’t get me wrong, I love data.
18:41: If anyone is a regular podcast listener, you will know that we, we rely on a lot of Data, we rely on a lot of this information to give us, certainty that our recommendations are accurate.
18:54: but we’re more forward thinking and we’re looking at the real-time information that we’re collecting.
19:00: for example, how do you measure, you know, how much demand there is in a market?
19:05: Do you look at days on market to determine that, the, the Activity levels are increasing and therefore days on market are shrinking.
19:16: Is that an indication that we use?
19:17: No.
19:18: We actually turn up on Saturdays to open homes, and we’re actually looking at the number of buyers that are turning up for different product types, and we are so much ahead of the retrospective data that might filter through today’s on market.
19:29: And then there’s a question of the accuracy and reliability of some of the real estate data that does exist.
19:34: And we’ve talked a lot about this on real estate, market update episodes that we run, because even The major data houses have different results on a month to month basis in terms of price movements.
19:45: So, really understanding in a market, what’s happening at a local level provides a level of insight that PropTech and AI, simply, are currently unable to replicate.
19:56: And I think that combining both gives the best results for property buyers in the market.
20:02: I jump on that.
20:03: I know when you said back there about the street by street and those types of things.
20:07: Look, we’ve, Melinda’s.
20:09: lived and breathed Brisbane for all her life.
20:12: so, well, I keep coming back to that local knowledge side of it.
20:16: One thing we do do, even with our buyer’s agency, when, when somebody is either new or in training with us, or if they’re looking in a certain area they’re not sure about, we will say to them, go and drive it.
20:26: Go and actually just drive the streets and just spend a couple of hours just driving up and down the streets, getting to know what it’s like, see what what’s around the place, and know that area so well.
20:38: That you, if someone rang you and said, I want to buy in that suburb, you could go, well, this street’s like this and this street’s like that.
20:44: Alright, you can understand it, and that’s, again, you can look at all the AI, you can go in, go back as basic as you like to Google Maps and look at street views.
20:52: They’re still old.
20:53: They’re still very.
20:55: So you’ve got that’s what I keep coming back to about this local knowledge.
21:00: That it’s gonna kill AI every day of the week.
21:02: I’m, I’m, I’m out to beat it.
21:06: To beat a monster, it’s, it’s growing every day.
21:09: We use it, yes, we do use it and I, I, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna kill it just yet because it is actually pretty amazing and, and what it can do when it’s done really well.
21:18: And through some of our processes and our systems here at Streamline Property Buyers, for example, when people make just make contact to us, how easy it is to get in contact with us.
21:28: And book in and get set up for a discovery call with a human.
21:31: With a human, on a video call, so it’s face to face.
21:34: And I think that’s the difference.
21:35: We use the AI to facilitate, the meetings where we can set aside, time to really engage with people.
21:45: it’s the same with our clients.
21:47: We will use AI to deliver information, and then we will set aside time to really engage about a property through conversation or video calls.
21:55: And I think this is a Point of difference, because, all of the information produced by AI and and automated reports and, that sort of thing, it’s useful to a point, and then you need to overlay that with the human interaction and the expert guidance by, you know, overlaying that local expertise on top.
22:16: Yeah, you can’t, as I say, you need that you need, you use it and you just don’t replace everything with it.
22:21: I think it’s, it is a valuable, valuable tool in certain areas.
22:24: Cross-check it, validate it, refine it, never replace it, and, and utilize it in the right way.
22:30: Yeah, I think that there’s some, a few things buyers should look out for, whether they’re representing themselves and, subscribing to some of the property platforms that are becoming available to consumers or whether they’re being represented by a buyer’s agent.
22:43: I think that there should be healthy skepticism around, relying on automated valuation reports, anything produced by AI or tech.
22:52: Technology to value a property, it must be vetted by a human, and there must be human expertise overlaid with that.
23:00: I think that red flags, such as, being over-reliant on heat maps or ignoring on the ground inspections and on-site inspections, trusting data without understanding what it’s made up of, these things can expose you to significant risk, and it’s important that if you don’t understand it, you ask.
23:21: Get explanation from a human in terms of what does all of this mean and what does this mean for me as a buyer.
23:27: I think also encourage, I would encourage anyone to seek an expert review, even when AI tools are used.
23:35: So, don’t rely purely on what reports are being produced.
23:40: ask for human input to ensure that they are accurate.
23:43: the only, the big thing I probably look at is, is using it to inform you, but not to make a decision.
23:49: I, I think that’s probably the big thing, use, use it for the information to, to probably educate and become informed more from that, but don’t use it entirely to make the decision.
23:59: And here’s a classic example, It’s happened more than once, in people that may inquire about our services, and they will ask Chat GBT, what investment criteria should I use to purchase an investment property in Brisbane?
24:12: And Chat GBT will spit out something that may be completely irrelevant to them, irrelevant to their strategy, irrelevant to their goals.
24:19: And we always know when it’s being produced by Chat GPT, our My job is to educate as to why what Chat GPT tells you is right for you may not actually be right for you, because that, that human knowledge and that ability to, translate knowledge into the personal experience, that’s what becomes critical when it comes to selecting the right investment for an individual.
24:40: And I think Seth summed it up at the.
24:43: AI not ASS is artificial stupidity.
24:46: AI is artificial intelligence.
24:49: And which format are you using?
24:50: That’s the question that I asked.
24:52: Well, hopefully that’s been helpful information and yeah, AI it is here, it’s here to I’m not going to be able to kill it.
24:59: I’ll admit to that now, but yeah, use it, use it wisely.
25:03: Use the human side of things as well, and I think it is, it is a powerful thing and it can actually save some time.
25:09: Absolutely.
25:09: My, my, I guess, final line is to use tech to inform, but not to decide, and, you know, reinforce that message to.
25:19: You all, I’ll, I’ll definitely reinforce that, that, you know, trusted professionals, professionals in a specific market will still deliver the biggest edge, and this is especially the case in a market that moves fast and a market that varies suburb by suburb, and that’s definitely the, the case here in Brisbane.
25:34: OK, thanks very much for listening.
25:36: As usual, I’ll let Melinda wrap it up.
25:38: We’re real people, we’re not AI, so I’ll let Melinda wrap it up again this week, and we’ll talk again next week.
25:43: Thanks again.
25:44: Bye for now.
25:45: Thanks again for joining us on the Brisbane Property Podcast.
25:47: We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, giving you some insights into what’s coming in the world of AI and how Many businesses are already implementing it in the buyer’s agent space.
25:56: If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share with friends and family.
25:58: We would love for you to leave us a review so that others can find this episode and our whole podcast series.
26:04: We hope you have a great week, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.
26:07: Until then, bye for now.