“We always knew that a search can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin senior vice president of product and design. “But with conversational search, we can sift through many more haystacks, with much more detailed information about the type of needle each user is looking for. For years we relied on search filters to define searches, but people share more about their preferences when it’s conversational.”
According to Redfin, early testing shows that users of the new system view nearly twice as many listings as users of standard search tools.
They were also 47% more likely to request home tours or other services.
“When you’re buying a house, the options can be overwhelming,” says Abhishek Singh, a home buyer who tested this feature. “It felt like my personal concierge, uncovering better options in neighborhoods I hadn’t considered and showing me houses I wouldn’t have found using the map boundaries I normally set for myself.”
Redfin’s conversational home search is scheduled for iOS in December, while Android availability is scheduled for next year.
Wider search net
During testing, Redfin found that users tended to search larger areas while offering more detailed home preferences.
A test user looking for a $300,000 home in or near Baltimore County with specific features was asked to adjust filters after no results appeared.
When the user chose to ‘try a broader search’ and ‘relax about the number of bedrooms’, new listings were found.
“Our goal was to build a search experience that’s like talking to a real estate agent who has seen every listing in town and who knows what customers really want through dozens of late-night conversations,” said Dos Santos. “The difference is that conversational search is available 24/7, can scan every listing on Redfin in the US and respond when a buyer says, ‘show me more listings like this, but with an extra bedroom.'”
The technology is built with Sierra – an AI platform co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor.
The launch adds to Redfin’s lineup of AI-based tools, including the Redfin Estimate for real-time home values, Ask Redfin for market insights, and Buying Power, a feature that helps buyers understand affordability.
Agent lead quality
Dos Santos said the new system can help Redfin agents better understand what customers want before an initial meeting.
“As part of this, we learn a lot more about our customers and… [can] create much richer experiences for them,” he says. “Customers are telling us much more about what they’re looking for in their next home than we would get with traditional filters, and that will inherently help us better serve them across the funnel, whether that’s with an agent or with a mortgage banker with Rocket.”
Avoid discrimination in searches
To address potential misuse of conversational AI, Dos Santos says Redfin has built safeguards to ensure compliance with Fair Housing laws.
“At Redfin, we take Fair Housing guidelines very seriously,” he said. “When we launched Ask Redfin, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to ensure AI follows the guidelines we set for it – and we’ve put the same care into this conversational search here.
“There are some questions that we will not answer, no matter how hard the customer tries [ask]. We’ve put it through a lot of testing, a lot of rigorous measures to make sure we’re doing all the things that we think are important for the housing sector as a whole at this time.”
Future integration, privacy
Dos Santos said conversational search could eventually connect to other Redfin services like the Redfin Estimate, Ask Redfin and Buying Power.
“There are a lot of conversations happening about how this conversational interface can help other parts of Redfin’s overall experience,” he said. “(Redfin Estimate) seems like a really good use case for being able to talk about your estimate and what’s going on with purchasing power. We’re really working now to bring a lot more data into our conversation service so that it can become even richer – and to be able to help you have different types of conversations.”
Dos Santos said privacy and data management were also central to the design of conversation search, adding that user conversations can be deleted from the tool’s history.
“We have several controls in place to ensure user information is used appropriately,” he said. “I don’t want to get into the details of it, but it’s very important to us, especially because a lot of the AI products haven’t done very well.”
Looking ahead
When asked about the next step in conversational AI that will sweep the real estate industry, Dos Santos said it’s a projection that’s becoming increasingly difficult to pin down.
“Predicting where technology is going, I think, has become very difficult,” he said. “I expect the use of conversational interfaces to become much more common across a variety of industries and technologies. It’s just a very natural way to interact with the product.”
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