The Best AI for Real Estate Agents and Investors

In this article, I will share something with you that will give you an orientation regarding AI for real estate agents and investors. 

As you may well know, this business isn’t always a walk in the park. 

It’s often more like navigating a dense jungle, machete in hand, trying to cut through the undergrowth of time-consuming tasks and endless responsibilities.

The list goes on, from juggling heaps of data entries to coordinating meetings, conducting research and analysis, handling communications, and marketing. 

It’s like being a ringmaster in a never-ending circus…

And if you are a real estate investor, it’s a different, yet equally busy, circus. 

You’ve got property management, market research, those pesky unexpected emergencies, and even admin tasks. 

Therefore today, I will dive deep into the world of AI and figure out how to turn it into your trusted ally with all those time-eating tasks. 

I will explore if and which tasks these digital “magicians” can take off your plate and how to choose the best one for you.

We’ll journey together through the four most time-consuming tasks for real estate agents, identify the most time-eating tasks for real estate investors, and then, we’re going to establish the seven golden criteria to find the best AI solution. 

Because we all deserve a machete that cuts just right at the end of the day, don’t we?

The 4 Most Time-Consuming Tasks of Real Estate Agents

Before we get into the various criteria to order different AI solutions for real estate agents and later investors to determine which is the best, we must determine in which areas they could benefit from it.

And one is saving time in typical tasks.

I discussed the most time-consuming tasks of real estate agents in my article about ChatGPT use cases for real estate agents.

The same criteria to order them apply here.

It’s all about productivity and efficiency, hence how much time an AI solution may save you in the most time-consuming “realtor tasks.”

In the above article, I mentioned the following “time-eaters”…

• Data entry and management (e.g., CRMs, property listings, contracts, etc.)
• Scheduling and coordination (e.g., meetings, inspections, appraisals, open houses, closings, etc.)
• Research and analysis (e.g., market analysis reports, market research, the study of the latest trends and regulations)
• Communication and marketing (e.g., email replies, phone calls, texts, updating websites and social media)

When I ran my international referral real estate agency, the prior four tasks were pretty balanced regarding time consumption, but still, all were pretty time-consuming.

I would have loved to just pick one time-consuming task for this article. Unfortunately, it all depends on where you are regarding the sales cycle.

So I will treat them as equally time-consuming.

To sum it up, ideally, AI solutions would cover you efficiently, at least in one of the above time-consuming tasks. Hence, you get value out of it.

There are other criteria to determine the best AI, but more about them later.

Now, let’s look at real estate investors’ “time-eating” tasks.

Which “Time-Eating” Tasks Do Real Estate Investors Have to Deal With? 

Determining the most time-consuming tasks of real estate investors is tricky.

Why?

Well, there is a variety of investment styles. 

There are only two: passive and active real estate investing. But each has different subgroups.

When I wrote about real estate investor leads, I covered them.

There are seven types of active real estate investors:

• Fixer and flippers
• Wholesalers
• Wholesaling lease options
• House hacking
• Live-in then rent
• Living in while fixing and flipping
• BRRR: Buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat

And then there are three passive real estate investing styles or strategies, such as the following:

• Short or long-term buy and hold
• Property tax lien investment
• Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

As you may imagine, the most time-consuming tasks for a wholesaler will significantly differ from a buy-and-hold investor.

The first one will have similar time-consuming tasks to a real estate agent, whereas the buy-and-hold investor’s “time-eater” likely shift toward managing tenants.

To avoid complicating this, I will focus on the traditional real estate investor, the buy-and-hold investor’s “time-eaters.”

I analyzed three sources (1,2,3) mentioning the time-consuming tasks and made a borderline pathetic statistic (not even close to being representative) of those mentioned most often. 

Ordered according to most often mentioned to least often, these are the most common time-eaters for traditional real estate investors:

• Property management (maintenance and repairs, screening tenants, showings)
• Research (new marketing collateral, property scouting, entering new markets, legal information)
• Daily errands and emergencies
• Admin tasks (bookkeeping, payroll, etc.)
• Job postings
• Marketing ( writing website content, social media management, website design, PPC ads, etc.) 

So here again, if you are a real estate investor, AI solutions should help you efficiently at least in one of these “time-eater” tasks so you get value out of it. 

But whether they can help you generally and efficiently in these tasks is not the only criterion to earn the batch of “best.”

This leads me to the next section…

7 Criteria to Determine the Best AI for Real Estate Agents and Investors

One thing is AI tools or solutions attacking the time-consuming task in the first place. But if you want to get a bit more granular, you better consider additional criteria to vet AI solutions.

1) Ease of Use

The best AI tools should have a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge. 

As an investor or agent, you should be able to understand and use the tool without spending excessive time learning how to operate it.

2) Integration Capabilities

The tool should be able to integrate seamlessly with existing software and systems.

For example, you should be able to integrate essential third-party software with AI-powered CRM software or property management systems.

3) Scalability

You don’t want to find yourself in a “heart-attack” triggering situation where your real estate business grows, and suddenly, you have to find a new AI solution because it can’t scale with you.

It should be able to adapt and continue to meet your needs. 

Scalability ensures that the AI tool remains useful over time, providing long-term value to the user.

4) Data Security

If you are a property manager using an AI-powered solution, you don’t want your tenants’ self-driving cars going AWOL suddenly because of a data breach you were unaware of. 

So given the sensitive nature of data used in real estate, the AI tool should adhere to the highest security standards to protect user data.

5) Customizability

The ability to customize the AI tool to your specific business needs is important. 

For example, a tool may need to be tailored to handle the unique requirements of a certain property type or market area.

6) Cost Effectiveness

A potential AI solution shouldn’t break the bank, either.

Suppose you get a negative return on investment out of them because of high monthly costs. In that case, it’s not an economically sound solution. 

So this is another criterion I will consider in my analysis of existing AI solutions for real estate agents and investors.

7) User Reviews  

Reviews from other users (e.g., real estate agents and investors) can provide invaluable insights into the performance of potential AI solutions. 

Analyzing AI Solutions for Real Estate Agents and Investors

So I will analyze the AI solutions by applying the following 1+7 criteria in one of my favorite decision tools: a decision matrix.

To recap, these are the 1+7 criteria:

• Number of time-consuming tasks covered
• Scalability
• Data security
• Customizability
• User reviews

And here comes the decision matrix table…

Conclusion: It’s (Still) Like a Jungle Where You Need to Bring a Machete

As you can see in the above table, I didn’t further analyze AI solutions, not covering at least one of the time-consuming tasks mentioned earlier for real estate investors and agents.

The user reviews are averages I gathered from various user review portals.

What you may also observe is that there is no one AI solution covering all the time-consuming tasks.

In one part, this was to be expected because some of these tasks require physical presence and would need actual AI-powered robots replacing real estate agents (e.g., daily errands or going to showings), and we are not there quite yet.

Regarding the remaining tasks, no single AI solution covers all the above “time-eaters” for real estate agents and investors.

Also, I had to omit the criterion “ease of use” and “cost” since, to most, I could not get access to additional information.

However, one solution tailored to real estate investors and brokers covered three time-consuming task areas: communication and marketing, research and analysis, and property management.

It also checked the additional criterion boxes.

So from the large jungle of different AI solutions on the market, I would label VTS.com as the best.

Nevertheless, the situation is still a bit like a jungle because to cover most of the time-consuming tasks, you must find the proper combination of AI solutions for your individual real estate use cases and then puzzle them together so they won’t produce extra work. 

Hence, they provide you with the core benefit of AI: more efficiency (time-savings).

This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.

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Tobias Schnellbacher

Tobias is an internet entrepreneur with a passion for digital marketing and copywriting, particularly in the real estate sector. He also likes cats and fitness. For nine years, he operated an international online referral real estate agency serving U.S., Canadian, and German sellers and buyers, which resulted in multiple seven-figure property sales.Learn more

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