Roelof Opperman, principle with the Fifth Wall venture capital firm that invests in real estate tech, says that the entire ecosystem of real estate is changing as technology changes the industry.
Most of us, I’m sure, are already familiar and “living with” Amazon’s Echo and Alexa at home. Now, with the new updated voice activated software Agent NEO, Alexa can be here, there and everywhere with your clients and in your listings.
Alexa, armed with Agent NEO, is particularly helpful to agents working in active markets. The Echo with Agent NEO and Alexa enables you as that agent to be in two places at the same time. Simply leave the Echo in any part of the house (the front door to greet the client, upstairs, the kitchen, wherever) and the client asks Alexa questions about the house and get answers from Alexa without your having to be there.
Your client can ask Alexa about your listing’s average electrical bill, heating and cooling costs, property taxes, pool costs, age of kitchen appliances, public transit options, etc. and” she” will answer those questions. Alexa gets all of that information via Agent NEO from MLS and Zillow listings. If Alexa gets it wrong or doesn’t understand the question, that wrong answer will be transposed into a text, logged in to Agent NEO to be answered correctly and you as the agent will be notified in real time so you can respond to the client in real time
Agent NEO comes with a step-by-step how-to-use video plus a one-page summary of how to use the Echo. The client uses the Echo, “talks” to Alexa and leaves everything in place when finished as a resource for the next client to use.
Agents can also ask Alexa for documents such as seller disclosure forms with a link to a PDF to be emailed or texted later.
This new Agent NEO update to the Echo for Alexa and you to use costs $14.99/month.
Other telepresence robots, Zenplace and REX, are also showing up in offices, apartments and homes. Those applications schedule and execute tours of the site. Potential clients are sent lockbox codes to their phones to access the property and a remote unit or bot is standing inside the property to give the prospect a home tour that’s controlled by the agent whose face appears on the tablet screen.
Juwai.com, a Chinese international real estate website, is partnering with Singou Tech of Macao to roll out a line of Mandarin speaking robots called “Butler 1.” Currently in “pilot project stage” to collect data on the phrases and questions that clients use and ask, Carrie Law, CEO of Juwai.com, says that Butler 1 will be used in real estate offices to provide support for Mandarin speakers.
Within the next 30 days, the first batch of Butler 1 robots are being shipped to international property industry events and offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Canada and the United States. Clearly, Butler 1 will soon be speaking in various languages, not only Mandarin, if all goes as planned. Not yet so clearly, Butler 1 could level the playing field for bilingual and monolingual agents.
