Artificial Intelligence
AI Enables Personalized Property Intelligence for Investors By Steve Gaenzler Historic inflation, a doubling of mortgage rates, and general uncertainty about the direction of the real estate market have made investors cautious about the future and concerned about risk in their portfolios. The U.S. housing market is experiencing something between a normalization and a correction. After skyrocketing in 2021 and early 2022, home price growth slowed significantly between June and September, according to homegenius Home Price Index (HPI) data released by homegenius Real Estate. But while the slowdown has been broad based, it has not been evenly distributed. Shifts in home prices vary significantly by market—with the West and Southwest seeing the biggest slowdowns in appreciation and San Francisco becoming the first major metro to register falling home prices. Geographic differences make accurate valuations a challenge at a pivotal moment when investors need maximum clarity. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) can help solve the trickiest puzzles. Recent AI innovations in valuation technology now make it possible to generate highly personalized intelligence on properties and gain an analytical edge in fast-moving markets. Introducing Computer Vision Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that uses advanced machine learning to teach computers to interpret and understand the visual world. This technology has already been used for many things like autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, and medical image analysis. Computer vision is being applied to more and more use cases across different industries every day, including the real estate valuation process. By drawing on billions of digital images from cameras and videos and processing them through deep learning models, computers can be taught to accurately identify and classify the attributes and condition of a property and evaluate it against comparables in any geographic area. This type of AI attempts to mimic the abilities of an appraiser to see a property and assess its value, except AI can be faster, smarter, and may mitigate inherent human bias. Computer vision technology and AI-enabled pricing tools have a range of applications across the real estate ecosystem. For investors, it may help fine-tune investment strategies, increase return on investment (ROI) for portfolios, and make investment decisions based on personalized property intelligence: These applications work together for real estate investors and may help to mitigate risk, increase accuracy, and speed up the analytical process. As the U.S. real estate market enters a period of uncertainty and turbulence, technologies that deliver personalized property intelligence at a macro and micro level will be increasingly valuable. Intelligent valuation solutions powered by AI image recognition and computer vision technology like homegeniusIQ from homegenius Real Estate are transforming the real estate industry and making it easier for investors to navigate the challenging market. It is all about getting the right data in hand at the right time so you have the ability to maximize the value of your portfolio and maintain a stable risk management posture. Whether deteriorating economic conditions in the near-term will be enough to overtake the underlying longer-term secular trends driving the run-up remains to be seen. But while they are waiting for a clear trend to emerge, now is a good time for investors to take stock of their portfolios and make decisions based on the most accurate analytics available.
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