Real estate brokerage platform Redfin released a conversational chatbot to help house hunters search for homes using natural language.
The tool lets users describe what they want and refine results through back-and-forth dialogue. Unlike real estate platforms that offer only one-off natural-language queries, Redfin says its chatbot can ask clarifying questions, respond to feedback, and surface more tailored recommendations.
“We relied on search filters to define queries for years, but people share more about their preferences when it’s a conversation,” Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin senior vice president of product and design, said in a statement.
Seattle-based Redfin, acquired by Rocket Companies in July, built the system with Sierra, the AI customer experience platform recently valued at $10 billion.
Redfin and other real estate companies are racing to deploy conversational AI tools. Last month, fellow Seattle real estate giant Zillow unveiled the first real estate app within ChatGPT.
Redfin’s new conversational interface aims to mirror how buyers talk to a real agent — but with the advantage of scanning every listing on Redfin nationwide. Home shoppers can tell the chatbot what they’re looking for, react to suggested listings (“more like this, but with an extra bedroom”), or adjust search criteria as new ideas arise. The feature also supports multiple languages.
As buyers interact with the chatbot, it “learns from real user conversations” to deliver increasingly relevant options over time, according to the company.
Early testing suggests that the feature is well-received. Users of the conversational search technology viewed nearly twice as many homes as those using filtered searches. They were also 47% more inclined to ask for a tour or other Redfin services, the company reported.
The tool is available on Redfin.com and mobile web, and will come to Redfin’s iOS app in December.
Last year the company launched its “Ask Redfin” generative AI assistant designed for homebuyer questions about a specific listing.
