The data aggregation and workflow automation company Revolution RE received a relatively modest monetary injection of $3 million.

The program aims to list and sell homes within 72 hours. With the partnership, KW agents across the globe will receive 72SOLD training for a referral fee.

The announcement came following Duke Realty's rejection of a $24 billion buyout offer from Prologis in May, which the company rebuffed for being inadequate.

Researchers at the mortgage giant point to four things that drove the meteoric rise in home prices over the past few years. Investors weren't one of them.

Dramatic inflation reading fuels speculation that Federal Reserve policymakers will implement drastic 75-basis point interest rate hike Wednesday.

Real estate agents across the nation share stories of the lessons they’ve learned during their time in the industry. This week: Find out why NYC associate broker Lisa Chajet says there's rarely a trouble-free transaction in real estate.

Hidden costs loom large for buyers in the first year of homeownership, and, surprisingly, that can be even more true with a new build, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.

Homebuyer budgets increased by 0.3 percent annually while prices tallied record gains, according to a new analysis by Redfin released Monday.

Could your brokerage service system use an overhaul? If you want your team to grow, The Agency's Mauricio Umansky says you need to offer the best in tools and technology.

Studies show that the U.S. residential housing market is becoming more diverse. Diversity expert Julia Lashay Israel shares why it is important for team leaders to reevaluate their business models and practices right now.

Technology allows us to take new approaches to old problems, and these approaches are faster, easier, and yield better results. This is as true in the real estate industry as any other – in a realm where buying and selling homes used to require lots of hard work, innovations like the internet, artificial intelligence, and mobile computing have made the process much less strenuous than it was in the past. 

One of the newest technological breakthroughs, both in the real estate sector and beyond, is the use of artificial intelligence. AI has absolutely revolutionized many processes associated with buying and selling homes, and as a result, first-time home buyers are reaping the benefits in a major way. Let’s take a look at how AI potentially affects first-time home buyers for the better.

Faster, Better, Harder, Stronger

Artificial intelligence might bring up ideas of red-eyed talking computers that try to lock you out of your spaceship and sing Daisy Bell, but the Hollywood version of AI and the real-world application of artificial intelligence are very different. In the context of real estate, AI has been used, quite successfully, to speed up processes that real estate agents, and house hunters, were already doing. The research that goes into finding homes for sale and matching buyers with the right mortgage, for example, are all things that realtors have always done – now, with the aid of Artificial intelligence, they’re getting done quicker than ever. 

A real-world example of this is the well-known real estate site, Zillow. Its Zestimate tool uses artificial intelligence in the form of a complex network of algorithms to track and analyze home values and come up with a likely price estimate. In fact, in 2022 alone, Zillow used the Zestimate neural network to evaluate 100 million homes. Thanks to its newest AI upgrade, the network has one of the most accurate prediction models on the market.

Helping Home Buyers 

But Zillow is just one example of how AI can help make the home buying process easier for everyone involved. Just about every large-scale company in the real estate sector is leveraging artificial intelligence for their own needs, and the proliferation of AI means that this directly helps home buyers. First-time home buyers especially benefit from the sheer power and speed that artificial intelligence brings to the house hunting process since the supply of homes for sale in the United States has made it exceedingly difficult to find the perfect starter home.

A 1923 bungalow in Monrovia, a two-bedroom condominium unit in Oakland and a Spanish-style house in San Diego.

TikTok released a new season of its successful “Made for TikTok” talk show which debuted last year with a series led by film director and creator David Ma. 

This year, TikTok creator Shannon Fiedler hosts the show. Made for TikTok aims to help advertisers create TikTok-first strategies to maximize their brand reach and create better TikTok content to engage their audiences. The first episodes are already out and available on the @tiktokforbusiness channel.

As a real estate professional, you may not be yet active on TikTok, which is more of an entertainment channel. But you may want to reconsider your approach and stop ignoring it. 2022: A World Transformed — 6 Mobile Forecasts to Help You Succeed by App Annie suggests that TikTok will surpass 1.5 billion active users globally by 2022. The report also warns:

“TikTok’s global rise could be carving out time away from video streaming providers and attracting significant advertising dollars due to their wide reach and deep user engagement.”

The episodes that have already aired give you valuable advice from content creators who are influential and successful in advertising on TikTok or simply sharing engaging content. 

Ask Brian is a weekly column by Real Estate Expert Brian Kline. If you have questions on real estate investing, DIY, home buying/selling, or other housing inquiries please email your questions to askbrian@realtybiznews.com.

Question from Darrell in MT: Hi Brian, I became a landlord for the first time eight months ago. It’s your typical single-family home on a typical quarter-acre lot. The house is a little over 20 years old. Before I rented it, I spent a month painting all of the walls and ceilings. I also had new carpeting installed. Other than that, the house was in good shape. All of the appliances worked, the furnace was in good shape, and the plumbing and electrical were just fine. The day after I ran a rental advertisement, I got a call from a man that said he was in a bind and needed to find a place to live fast. He was about to get divorced and his soon-to-be ex-wife had forced him out of the family house. He was living in a rundown motel and was desperate to find a place before he ran out of the little money he still had.

“Bob” met me at the house about an hour later. He was wearing nice clothes and driving a nice car. After a quick walk through the house, he said he would take it and wanted to move in that day so he wouldn’t have to spend another night in the dive motel. Bob offered me the first month’s rent in cash and a check for the deposit. That is when I made what I hope is my last big mistake as a landlord. We filled out the rental agreement and both signed it. I didn’t have him fill out an application, I didn’t do a background check, verify his employment, or check his references. I let Bob move in based on his sob story and appearance. Can you guess where this story is going?

Bob didn’t trash the house or do any serious damage, but his deposit check bounced, and I never saw another dollar from him. Bob wasn’t going through a divorce, instead, he had filed for bankruptcy the week before. His bankruptcy attorney took the position that he was legally not required to pay rent while his case was in bankruptcy court. Bob lived in my rental for seven months before I was able to evict him. I also learned he had pulled similar scams a couple of other times. I hope I learned my lesson and won’t be letting another tenant in without doing a full background check. What I want to know is why tenants always have the upper hand in these situations? Why don’t landlords have more rights since they are the property owner?

Answer: Hello Darrell. That’s a tough lesson to learn from your first tenant but you are not the first landlord to get the short end of the stick. Choosing good tenants is a critical part of protecting your real estate investment. Every landlord should have a rigorous screening process – complete with background checks that ensure that they don’t end up with risky tenants who end up costing them thousands of dollars in evictions, lawsuits, and major property repairs.

The newest media consoles don’t scream “entertainment center” — they look more like stylish credenzas.

Many people changed where and how they lived, but “upgrading their policies for all of these experiences fell by the wayside,” an appraisal executive said.

Booking stylishly decorated private residences as alternatives to sets and studios is a growing niche in the short-term rental market.

If you are struggling to retain talent then it may be time to give the fine print around your non-compete a good once over, according to investment specialist Donald "Dek" Bake. Avoid a stagnant non-compete with these fresh alternatives.

The share of homeowners who sold to an iBuyer declined in the opening months of 2022, as Zillow continued its exit from the business.

Want more ideas on how to work your lead pipeline (and specifically, generate and close those coveted listing leads we all want)? Download this FREE GUIDE!