The customer army strikes back with the ‘pro’ in their pocket
Have you been watching the surprise television hit of the summer, the BBC comedy Ann Droid?
Three years ago, a sitcom built around artificial intelligence would probably have felt like science fiction. Weirdly, today it almost feels… normal.
Perhaps that’s because we’ve all, quietly and without fuss, crossed an important threshold.
For the past couple of years, I’ve probably bored regular readers rigid by banging on about AI. Not because I thought it would replace estate agents, but because I believed it would become as commonplace as email or smartphones.
Well, I hate to say, ‘I told you so’ but Letting Agent Today this week carried what I think is a genuinely important story. Letting agents are reporting increasingly sophisticated AI-generated complaints from tenants: letters quoting legislation; referencing regulations; citing legal principles. Sometimes they are impressively accurate and sometimes confidently wrong.
Either way, we’ve entered a new era.
The real AI revolution isn’t that property professionals are using artificial intelligence – it’s that consumers are, too.
Buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants now arrive believing they have a professional adviser sitting in their pocket. Whether they actually do is another matter entirely, but what they certainly have is a tool that empowers them to ask serious questions, challenge assumptions and arrive at the conversation far better prepared than they would have done only a few years ago. In effect, the consumer has become more professional.
The days of clients arriving empty-handed – or perhaps sometimes even empty-headed – are disappearing remarkably quickly. And that’s no bad thing.
And it’s not just the property business. Patients arrive at the GP having consulted AI. Clients challenge solicitors with AI-generated questions. Financial advisers are increasingly discussing investment strategies already explored with a chatbot. Estate agency and lettings aren’t unique. They’re simply among the first professions to see what happens when millions of consumers suddenly gain access to a remarkably capable research assistant.
Notice I didn’t say expert. Knowledge and judgement are not the same thing.
For years, professionals enjoyed a significant information advantage. Today, information has become almost free. What remains valuable is knowing which information matters, which doesn’t, and how to apply it to a real person, a real property and a real situation.
I would argue that is exactly where the best agents have always been.
Not as keepers of information but as interpreters of it.
Artificial intelligence can tell me the average asking price in a postcode. It can summarise legislation. It can draft a letter or explain the conveyancing process.
What it can’t do is tell me why Number 42 sold in four days while Number 38 has been sitting on the market since Easter.
It doesn’t know that the primary school has just changed its catchment area.
It doesn’t know that buyers always pay a premium for the south-facing gardens on one side of the village.
It doesn’t know that one street consistently outperforms another because local families have been waiting years to move there.
That’s where local knowledge still wins as our columnist, Phil Spencer pointed out so eloquently in yesterday’s EAT.
It’s also why I was fascinated by another set of industry data this week. Property data experts Sprift’s latest analysis showed just how different regional markets have become. Scotland is behaving very differently from London. Yorkshire differently from the South East. The North East differently again.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the UK there isn’t one housing market – there are dozens.
AI can explain the national picture, but a good agent explains your market. That’s why I don’t see AI as a threat to good agents – quite the opposite.
The question is no longer whether the industry should embrace artificial intelligence.
The public already has. The real question is whether the industry is ready for customers who already use it. Because once everyone has access to the same information, the advantage belongs to those with the best judgement.
For generations, knowledge was power but today, knowledge is free.
Judgement has become the scarce commodity, and I suspect that’s very good news indeed for the professionals prepared to embrace the future rather than fear it.
The national market may make the headlines, but local expertise still makes the sales.
Until next time,
N.
Leave a comment