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Independent brokerage giant Howard Hanna and real estate software company ListAssist announced Monday that they have teamed up on a new “natural language” search tool.
The artificial intelligence-based tool, called ListAssist HomeSearch, is now live on Howard Hanna’s website. In a statement, the companies explain that it allows users to simply type in what they want in a home and the technology will then pull up matching listings. Example queries in the statement include a “spacious kitchen with natural light” or a “big backyard with a pool in a quiet neighborhood.”
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In a live demonstration for Inman, ListAssist founder and CEO Chris McGoldrick showed how a user might conduct a search by asking for “family-friendly listings in Cleveland, near the home of the Cleveland Cavaliers.” The search managed to pull up a number of matching homes, which it displayed on a map. McGoldrick said the benefit of such a search is that ListAssist’s technology is able to better match consumers with appropriate listings — and also that Howard Hanna gets better leads and data reporting because leads are now attached to deeper insights into what people actually want.
Chris McGoldrick
“A traditional lead will just be, ‘Jim is interested in 5 Smith Street,'” McGoldrick said as an example. “We now have all this additional information. And we see a lot of ongoing refinement to searches as well, so a lot of people are doing multiple searches in a quick period and will be adjusting things like price parameters, maybe getting more specific with any range of things.”
McGoldrick added that the reports Howard Hanna will get from the tool represent “first-party data for them, and this is really data around searching for a home that nobody’s ever had before because this just hasn’t been a way that people could search for properties.”
He went on to say that his company’s technology draws on a variety of sources to identify and pull up listings for consumers. Those sources include listing descriptions and MLS data, as well as ListAssist’s own computer vision technology. That tech can scan images of properties to identify features — say, marble countertops — that consumers might specifically include in their queries. The tool also draws on school-related data and information about local areas consumers might be interested in.
ListAssist additionally has a number of “levers” it can use on the backend to continually refine the search results consumers see, McGoldrick noted.
The partnership between ListAssist and Howard Hanna comes at a time of increasing interest in deploying artificial intelligence in home search settings. In early September, for example, Zillow announced the arrival of its own natural language search tool, which the company billed as a way for consumers to ditch traditional filters in favor of everyday language.
Not long after, California multiple listing service MetroList debuted a voice-based search tool.
The proliferation of such tools represents a more nuanced approach to AI compared to what was happening a couple of years ago, when many people were simply engaging directly with bots such as ChatGPT or image generators such as Midjourney. Smarter search tools, on the other hand, position AI as something that exists in the background of an existing site, hopefully making it better or more useful to users.
Howard “Hoby” Hanna III
Howard Hanna and ListAssist hope their new partnership will do just that. In their statement, they said that the “new tool is designed to help potential homebuyers refine their search to only the most relevant properties, thereby streamlining the decision-making process.”
“Howard Hanna is committed to innovation that enhances the client experience,” Howard Hanna CEO Hoby Hanna said in the statement. “ListAssist HomeSearch is a game-changer for our clients and our agents. It allows our customers to find their perfect home faster and with less effort, while enabling our agents to better serve their clients with highly targeted listings.”
