Future real estate deals might soon involve robots

The old and traditional ways of buying or selling a house might soon be changing, as soon robots will take over the role of real estate agents. So the next time you go looking for houses, chances are that you will be lead by robots.

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the field, various real estate agencies and startups have started to hire robots to perform the mechanical jobs that their realtors usually do.

Out of many companies, three companies were highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, REX, a brokerage firm in California, Zenplace, property management company in California and a Brooklyn-based startup, VirtualAPT. The former two companies hire robots in order to interface with clients.

REX places a robot called ‘REX’ in seller’s homes for answering queries and gathering data, whereas, Zenplace makes use of robots to assist their human agents communicate distantly with clients. The third company manufactured a robot that makes 3D videos of the real estate property and provides a virtual property tour to the buyers.

Using robots for real estate is comparatively cost effective too. REX charges only a 2% commission, which is below the 5%-6% commission that human agents charge. Similarly, in VirtualAPT, the cost is only 50 cents per square foot, which is quite inexpensive way to give a high quality virtual tour.

At this point, robots are new to the real estate industry and are used to assist the human real estate agents or brokers but in the future, they could probably acquire the real estate business, reported Futurism.