We have a wide-ranging product roundup for you this week. We'll start in Mexico...
Propiedades.com, Mexico's second-largest real estate marketplace, has launched a tool designed to find homes that meet the financing amount of the loan from the National Workers' Housing Fund Institute (Infonavit).
For context, Infonavit is the largest mortgage lender in Latin America and the fourth-largest worldwide. It receives 5% of all formal workers' salaries and provides housing-related mortgage products. The institute finances up to 65% of the purchase of units, especially for workers with low and medium incomes.
The new tool uses an artificial intelligence system to manage an inventory of more than 1.2 million properties in Mexico, with the portal's users able to access a credit simulator that allows them to estimate the credit capacity for a loan by Infonavit and other financers.
Juan David Vargas, General Manager of Propiedades.com, said:
"This new tool is another step towards the democratization of credit information, supporting users on their path to home acquisition.
"In the first seven months of 2024, this tool has been used more than 68 thousand times, with 74% of queries related to Infonavit credit applications, reflecting the preference of Mexicans for this public institution to finance the purchase of real estate."
realestate.com.au today announced that it has bolstered its property owner dashboard experience with a new AI-generated styling tool allowing users to renovate property images digitally.
The room visualisation feature, powered by Roomvo, has been used to restyle over 500,000 property images in the first month since launch, according to the Group.
Jonathan Swift, executive general manager for consumer products at REA Group, said:
"We have leveraged AI and machine learning models for over a decade and more recently our focus has been on experimenting with generative-AI to drive our consumer strategy forward.
"Personalisation underpins the realestate.com.au consumer experience and our AI-generated personalised homepage delivers 7.5 million individual recommendations via hundreds of different layout combinations every day. We know these tailored experiences drive deeper engagement, delivering value to our customers.
"We’re excited to add a room renovation tool for property owners and believe there is a future where this technology has the potential to unlock how Australians connect with their next home, not just their current home. The way consumers search for property on realestate.com.au in five years from now will look very different to today’s experience."
UK market leader Rightmove is preparing the launch of its national autumn advertising campaign in advance of what the portal says will be a busy selling season.
Rightmove will be returning to TV, kicking off with an updated version of the brand’s ‘Dunk’ TV ad, with high-profile coverage including during ad breaks for the Paralympics between August 28 and September 8, and additional out-of-home placements across the UK.
Matt Bushby, chief marketing officer at Rightmove, said:
"Alongside our sponsorship of The Voice UK, Rightmove will be present across high-profile TV slots and outdoor nationwide this autumn, designed to capture the attention of potential home-movers considering their next move.
"We've already seen an uptick in moving activity since the first interest rate cut a few weeks ago, and our presence across various high-reaching channels aims to drive even more people to our agents' brands and properties this autumn.”
Rightmove recently announced that it will be the headline sponsor of the popular tv show The Voice.
UK-based challenger portal Jitty has launched an image search that allows home buyers and property enthusiasts to find their dream home by describing their ideal living space in their own words.
Jitty's AI-powered portal then analyses photos in property listings to provide highly accurate and relevant results according to the searcher's specific prompt.
Instead of relying on potentially misleading keywords, property browsers can now search based on specific criteria, such as neighbourhood vibes, exterior style, and desired interior features from walk-in showers to standalone baths, fireplaces and exposed wooden beams.
Graham Paterson, CEO at Jitty, said:
"AI is advancing rapidly, and we’re thrilled to use its power to revolutionise the home-buying experience. We started with a basic search tool, then enriched it with deeper insights.
"For example, with existing portals people can search for ‘Four beds, £250k, in Bournemouth.'
"Now, with Jitty they can search for ‘Three bedrooms and a home office, with a driveway and a garden big enough to play football in, in a city by the sea within a two hour commute of London. I need hardwood floors, an ensuite bathroom, and I still want to have Deliveroo.
"Our goal is to help people find their perfect home, whether they’re buying or just browsing."
UAE-based proptech startup Huspy has expanded to Valencia, according to chief of staff Ziad Nassar on a recent podcast appearance.
Huspy was already active in Madrid having launched operations in the Spanish capital earlier this year, and Nassar told the Demystify podcast that Huspy "landed in Valencia" in mid-August.
He said:
"We have already gotten 15 real estate agents to join us, uploaded seven properties for sale, scheduled visits and have just received our first offer for a property sourced by a Huspy real estate agent.
"We’re focusing heavily on expanding our real estate business across the Spanish territory, starting with our initial office in Madrid and our second office in Valencia, and, after that, our aspirations are within the next 12 months to launch at least one more European market and at least one more Middle Eastern market."
Huspy markets itself as a one-stop solution to finding and financing a home, including being the leading mortgage lender in the UAE and promising to deliver mortgages in as little as two weeks as well as offering off-plan buying opportunities as well as selling and renting.
The startup was founded in 2020 and has since raised an undisclosed investment round to build and distribute a housing 'super app' and expand into Europe—with the Valencia launch one step further into the European market.
Japanese marketplace operator Lifull has begun offering consulting services to improve labour productivity in collaboration with TeamSpirit.
TeamSpirit is a SaaS company that provides its proprietary TeamSpirit service, which allows users to obtain attendance data and work logs. The service enables the recording, compilation, and analysis of employee behavioural data - which Lifull believes will allow the company to improve so-called "labour productivity" and human resources issues from all angles.
Lifull said:
By recording and analyzing "work logs," which are detailed data on the hours and content of employees' work, and extracting issues, we improve work efficiency, leading to early and high achievement of goals.
By systematizing this series of activities and providing it to all employees and providing lectures on how to use it, it will become commonplace to use work logs to reflect on daily actions and make daily improvements.
What is unique about LIFULL's efforts is that they aim to achieve sustainable growth for the company by "fostering a culture of continuous improvement," rather than just achieving temporary improvements through measures such as reducing labor costs.
ViewIT has released a generative AI-powered virtual assistant that uses data from Dubai's Land Department (DLD).
ViewIT used prompt engineering to train the assistant to give accurate, detailed responses to users, by either text or voice. The AI assistant can also provide information about amenities and distance comparisons between properties.
The firm says the DLD data is updated weekly using Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet LLM (large language model).
Hamdan Mohammad, Artificial Intelligence developer at Viewit, commented:
"Using prompt engineering to refine the virtual agent was a lot of trial-and-error for a few months.
"Prompt engineering these models requires starting with broad prompts and refining based on AI responses and user feedback while tweaking the temperature (randomness) of the answers.
"Other businesses should start with small datasets, train and iterate with more data, and scale up prompt complexity after lots of user feedback (people ask some weird questions!). Previously, overloading the system from the get-go had been our biggest mistake."
Online Marketplaces spoke to founder Farhad Junaid in October 2023. Read the full interview here.
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