How to pick the best real estate AI chatbot (Examples + use cases)

What is a real estate AI chatbot?

A real estate AI chatbot is an AI-powered virtual assistant that’s designed specifically for the real estate industry. It helps by handling various tasks, such as:

• Answering client queries

• Making property recommendations

• Scheduling viewings

• Generating leads

By automating many routine tasks, AI chatbots help to improve agent efficiency as well as customer engagement and satisfaction.

How can you use a real estate AI chatbot?

AI chatbots add a conversational layer to your website or mobile app, helping to streamline communications, generate leads, and level up the customer experience. In fact, 87% of people say they consider AI chatbot interactions to be neutral or favorable.

AI chatbots are highly flexible, capable of operating without human intervention to do the following:

Instant 24/7 customer support

Like an always-on emissary for your business, an AI chatbot provides round-the-clock service to users (any number of them) right when they want it. Because they integrate with your CRM and MLS, AI chatbots can give highly accurate and relevant answers to questions about your:

• Property listings

• Prices

• Sale or rent conditions

• Transaction procedures

• Schedule availability

This 24/7 availability helps to improve customer satisfaction and ensure no missed opportunities outside of business hours.

Lead generation and qualification

AI chatbots can screen, qualify, and capture leads on your website or mobile app. In the course of responding to visitor queries, the chatbot can ask qualifying questions and collect key information from potential buyers or sellers. 

This allows you to screen every chatbot user in a seamless, conversational way in the process of providing property listings and answering questions. So even outside of business hours, you never miss a lead.

What’s more, the chatbot will integrate the customer data into your CRM and segment leads by needs and preferences, such as buying a house, searching for an office, or investing in apartments. 

And if certain “trigger words” are used, the bot can forward the lead information directly to a live agent for immediate follow-up.

Read more: Learn how Redfin increased lead generation using an AI chatbot for real estate.

Automated scheduling

Real estate AI chatbots integrate with your calendar, allowing users to easily schedule (and reschedule) property tours, appointments, and phone calls at their convenience 24/7. 

This creates a more seamless experience for potential clients, while freeing up agents to focus on providing personal service instead of managing their schedule.

Intelligent property matching

Say a potential client visits your website in search of a new home. The AI chatbot can ask a series of questions about the desired property location, budget range, preferred amenities, and more, then recommend the most relevant listings based on the visitor's inputs.

In the course of a natural dialogue with the prospect, the AI chatbot will discover their exact needs, making tailored suggestions that appear in the chat interface as an interactive property showcase or even a digital walkthrough. 

Basically, the bot acts a conversational, rich-media search engine for property listings on any page of your digital presence.

Personalized interactions with data integration

As mentioned above, a good real estate AI chatbot will integrate seamlessly with your CRM, MLS database, and third-party systems.

This enables you to collect and analyze customer data from chatbot interactions—contact details, preferences, budget—to update customer profiles in real-time, and then personalize interactions across platforms going forward.

For example, AI chatbots with Zapier integrations allow you to leverage your collected data across thousands of apps, marketing tools, and databases. 

By enabling a data-driven approach, AI chatbots help to improve follow-ups, accelerate the sales cycle, and create a tailored experience that stands out from competitors.

Automated follow ups and notifications

AI chatbots allow you to automatically follow-up with potential customers, triggering existing workflows to send appointment reminders, reply to emails, receive real-time notifications, and more. 

This helps you nurture customer relationships with timely communications that increase engagement, without any manual effort.

Say you connect your real estate AI chatbot to Gmail using a Zapier integration:

• The bot can now analyze an incoming email from a prospect, craft a relevant response for you to review, and once reviewed, send the email reply for you.
• Or, you could receive an email notification whenever a prospect shows an interest in a property listed in your real estate AI chatbot.

Key features of AI chatbots for real estate

While it's simple to launch a real estate AI chatbot, it’s important to choose the right custom AI chatbot for your needs. As you weight your options, these are the key AI chatbot features to look for:

• Customization: You should be able to fully customize the chatbot’s appearance and personality to match your brand.

• Free trial: Quality chatbots offer a free trial so you can test and evaluate the bot’s features, performance, and customizations before making your choice.

• Key use cases: Test the bot’s capabilities for lead generation, appointment scheduling, property recommendations, rich media support, and more before you choose.

• Integrations: Ensure the bot integrates with your existing systems: CRM, property management tools, social media, mobile app, and website.

• Multilingual: AI chatbots should be able to converse with customers in 80+ languages so you can serve customers from all backgrounds.

• Analytics: A bot analytics dashboard for reporting and KPIs lets you track the bot’s performance, customer engagement, and make the most of this valuable channel.

• 3rd-party data: If you want your bot to be able to show data from outside sources like Zillow, it must include an API (application programming interface) that can pull this data into your site.

• Response workflows: Even though AI chatbots create their own conversation flows, you may want to give a precise answer to certain business-critical questions. You can define these responses in a workflow builder.

• AI capabilities: Chatbot performance can vary widely depending on the quality of the AI, so check the bot’s responses for accuracy and relevance during the AI chatbot free trial to ensure it meets your needs.

7 examples of real estate AI chatbots

Choosing the right custom AI chatbot for your real estate business will have a direct impact on your operational efficiency, lead generation, and deal closing speed. Here’s a shortlist of the top real estate AI chatbots to consider, including their best features and drawbacks.

1. Sendbird

Sendbird is an in-app communications platform with no-code real estate AI chatbots for any website or mobile app. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to build a custom AI chatbot in minutes.

With its fully customizable chatbot interface, Sendbird makes it easy to create a bespoke and engaging experience for property listings, lead gen, and customer support. The robust AI enables you to automate scheduling, tailor recommendations, while screening and qualifying every visitor as a potential buyer or seller.

Sendbird’s top features include:

• Lead capture forms and quick reply buttons for automated lead generation

• Live chat integration for seamless bot to agent handoffs

• Fully customizable to real estate workflows

With powerful features and key integrations at an affordable price, Sendbird is a great option. For all the advanced capabilities, though, you’ll need to add a line of code to your site or app to launch the bot, unless you use the no-code integrations for WordPress.

Read more: Learn how Redfin increased lead generation using an AI chatbot for real estate.

2. Convoboss

Convoboss is a marketing platform with real estate AI chatbot solutions for small businesses. With pre-built templates for lead capture and property listings, it’s a good option for those who want to get started quickly. The drag-and-drop chatbot builder also simplifies the process of creating a custom AI chatbot.

The top features of Convoboss include:

• Multilingual support

• Automated lead qualification for identifying high-priority prospects

• Visually appealing chatbot user interface (UI) text boxes

While it's easy to get started, Convoboss has a few shortcomings. Specifically, it lacks the level of customization you might want for total control over the brand experience. It’s also less scalable, and so may not perform so well for growing or large agencies with complex needs.

3. Landbot

Landbot is a no-code chatbot builder for websites and landing pages. With intuitive and visually engaging chatbot designs, it’s a good option for real estate businesses that want to create a custom chatbot to match the look and feel of their brand.

Landbot’s top feature include:

• No-code chatbot builder to easily craft conversation flows

• Analytics dashboard for tracking and optimizing interactions

• WhatsApp integration to connect with leads via a popular messaging platform

The drawback of Landbot is that the chatbot isn’t AI-powered, but rule-based. This means that its conversation flow must be preprogrammed, or it won’t be able to answer. Compared to AI chatbots that run on natural language processing, Landbot can provide less relevant or contextual responses that may disappoint users.

4. Chatbot

Chatbot is a versatile and affordable chatbot option for automating real estate interactions. It’s simple to use and set up, so it’s a good choice for solo agents or smaller teams.

However, Chatbot offers limited AI functionality, and primarily relies on pre-written scripts to interact with users. That said, if you don’t mind doing more legwork, its best features include:

• Pre-built templates for real estate lead generation

• Omnichannel support that works on Facebook Messenger, websites, and more

• Automated lead qualification and agent routing features

5. Manychat

Manychat is a popular platform for AI chatbots because it excels at social media integration, such as Instagram and Facebook Messenger. That said, it doesn’t cater specifically to real estate workflows, and it’s also less effective for websites and mobile apps.

The top features of Manychat are:

• Broadcast messaging to notify leads about new listings en masse

• Integrations with social media sites and marketing tools like Mailchimp

• Automated follow-ups to keep potential clients engaged

6. Drift

Drift is a premium chatbot builder designed to help large and enterprise businesses generate leads and automate customer service. It offers AI agents for real estate that integrate with sales and marketing tools like Braze, Clevertap, Salesforce, helping you deliver personalized experiences and drive results with account-based marketing.

Drift’s top features include:

• Seamless bot to live agent handoffs

• User-friendly quick reply button to guide action

• Capabilities for attachments and large files

While Drift offers advanced features and customizability, it comes at a higher price point than most and requires some amount of coding expertise or resources to get set up.

7. Tidio

Tideo is a multi-platform real estate AI chatbot that combines live chat and automation to help guide prospects to a live agent conversation. With a user-friendly chatbot builder and affordable pricing, it’s an attractive option for real estate agents that want to level up their customer interactions.

Tidio’s best features include:

• Customizable chatbot conversation flows

• Chatbot analytics and reporting

• Support for chat on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and websites

The drawback here is Tidio’s AI, which has less robust natural language processing than AI-driven platforms like Sendbird. This can limit the quality and accuracy of responses, requiring agents to preprogram replies to ensure customers get helpful, accurate, and human-sounding responses on a reliable basis.

Benefits of AI chatbots for real estate

Before you add a real estate AI chatbot to your website or app, the big question is—how exactly will it grow your business? Here's what you can expect:

Improved lead generation

AI chatbots can screen and qualify website and app visitors as it engages them, for a proactive approach to lead generation. In practice, the chatbot presents the prospect with a data collection form if certain conditions are met in the chat session, such as keywords, message volume, or repeat engagement.

AI can also segment and tag leads for automated follow-ups, keeping prospects engaged with new properties or passing leads directly to an agent if certain "trigger words" are used. You can also prompt users to join  your newsletter or follow you on social media.

Ultimately, you'll be able to gather key details about visitors’ needs and preferences, enabling personalized follow-ups that help you close more deals faster.

Instant engagement

When someone visits your website or app in search of property listings, prices, or answers to common questions, your chatbot is there to provide immediate answers and guidance.

To provide these accurate and tailored responses, AI chatbots pull information from your integrated systems as well as a knowledge base of documents (FAQs, lease agreements, etc.) unique to your business that they’ve been trained on. Training effectively customizes the bot to your business, enabling it to provide relevant and accurate recommendations and resources so customers get the exact information they need every time.

Saving valuable time

By handling routine customer inquiries plus automating scheduling, support, and follow-ups at scale—AI chatbots help increase agent’s productivity, freeing them to focus on building relationships and closing deals.

Affordable

The total cost of ownership for AI chatbots is low, considering that they increase productivity, enhance lead generation, and accelerate the sales cycle without adding to headcount.

Competitive advantage

AI chatbots are a major upgrade to the digital customer experience of real estate businesses. From tailored service interactions to instant answers 24/7 to eliminating the waiting on email or phone calls, AI chatbots add a layer of convenient and conversational customer service that can elevate you above the competition.

How to create a real estate AI chatbot

If you’re new to AI chatbots, it may feel like a challenge to use this powerful new business tool. The truth is, setting up an AI chatbot is so easy that anyone can do it.

For example, Sendbird allows you to create a custom AI chatbot in minutes without any coding.

It takes just six simple steps:

1. Sign up for a 30-day free trial: Most good chatbot builders offer an AI chatbot free trial, and Sendbird is no exception. You’ll join over 10,000 businesses that use the Sendbird AI chatbot.

2. Fill out basic information: Just enter the basics about your bot, like a name and a welcome message. You can change this later in the dashboard at any time.

3. Connect a knowledge base: You want your chatbot to provide accurate and relevant responses to user queries, so you’ll connect your bot to a knowledge base of your business data, FAQs, property listings, etc. so the bot can reliably give users accurate business-specific information. This can always be updated later.

4. Customize the appearance and personality: You can customize the bot’s appearance and even its personality and tone of voice to match the look and feel of your brand.

5. Test your AI chatbot: Before you launch, ask your bot a few questions to gauge the accuracy and quality of its responses. You can refine its responses in the bot studio testing area, where you can update the bot’s knowledge base, set predefined responses to business-critical questions, and more.

6. Launch: Once you’re happy with your bot’s appearance and answers, it’s time to publish. Sendbird offers simple, no-code integrations with WordPress, plus integration guides for GoDaddy, Squarespace, Wix. You can always watch our AI chatbot tutorial for how to embed the chatbot in any other website or mobile app in just a couple of clicks.

If you prefer, you can also watch this 1 minute video that shows you how to create an AI chatbot:

Redfin: A case study of a real estate AI chatbot

Using Sendbird, the real estate platform Redfin built a custom AI chatbot to serve as a virtual assistant for inbound lead engagement. Following deployment, the “Ask Redfin” AI chatbot for real estate reduced the time to agent introductions, improved lead generation, and Redfin saw 93% of users return to their mobile app within a week.

To learn more, read the Redfin case study.