Edmonton-based proptech company and brokerage HonestDoor is adding to real estate's artificial intelligence (AI) boom with a one-year price projection report service and an upcoming offering it hopes will answer all matter of housing market inquiries.

In April, the company released a housing comparison service which involves AI selecting up to nine similar properties, including photos and price per square foot, for clients to peruse for a $20 fee.

The technology is also designed to predict the price of the property in one year, based on trends and historical data drawn from HonestDoor’s bank of information.

Planned for release later this year is a free virtual real estate agent named Doora, designed to reply to both basic and more detailed questions about real estate markets, neighbourhoods and housing features.

Curious about the average price per square foot on a particular street, or whether west-facing backyards sell better than east-oriented backyards? Doora is meant to be a conversational AI solution for home buyers, sellers and industry professionals to answer those types of questions.

“We wanted to do it for a while, and now we’ve finally got to a point where the technology is there and it’s usable and there’s so many new experts in the space that are so good at it,” Dan Belostotsky, founder of HonestDoor, told RENX Homes in an interview.

Such tools can give home buyers and sellers more independence, information and perspective about the properties they are involved with, he said.

Founded in 2019 and operating as a brokerage across most of Canada — except for Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec — the company handled hundreds of deals and over $500 million in listings in its first year operating only in Alberta. Residential properties are its bread and butter, but it also deals with commercial properties.

Comparable data and a one-year price forecast

The data HonestDoor feeds its AI tools is drawn from MLS and government sources, according to Belostotsky. Its market evaluation report uses AI and machine learning to list comparable housing across factors such as price, square footage and days on market. 

“If you could program automation that would now pick the correct similar houses in your neighbourhood to compare to your house and provide that to your clients, that’s an unbelievable time saving,” Belostotsky said.

More ambitiously, it forecasts the price of a home over the next 12 months. 

Belostotsky said it is not much of a stretch to look ahead a year, pointing to how AI can number-crunch data from hundreds of thousands of properties from the past six years, a task humans would find immensely daunting.

There is the possibility of unforeseen events like war or other dramatic changes that could impact the reliability of the prediction, he admits, but the program discloses the varying degrees of confidence in the accuracy of its projections. 

Belostotsky is confident in the predictive power of the modelling. It was back-tested by inputting only 2020 data to predict home prices in 2021, and the results were near the actual outcomes, he explained.

The reports service is offered in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and other cities in British Columbia. HonestDoor has received a positive response, Belostotsky said.

Doora

Its second AI tool, Doora, is designed to be accessible on HonestDoor’s website by logging on, then typing in questions or having a verbal conversation.

“The fact that now we could actually strike up 25,000 conversations a day for someone searching on the map is huge.”

The intent is to address an “unlimited amount of questions, anything your imagination can think,” Belostotsky said, with a simple and instant reply. Armed with HonestDoor data amassed over the past six years, the company has a “huge advantage” to train its AI.

A feature the company is aiming to offer is Doora remembering individual users and their quirks, just like ChatGPT.

Belostotsky would not disclose which AI language model HonestDoor will use as a framework for Doora.

He is positive Doora will not generate a significant amount of misinformation or incorrect responses, a problem with AI tools called hallucinations. Edge cases exist in any industry and a human realtor can also provide wrong information, Belostotsky said. Plus, he has been pleased with the reliability and accuracy of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

“Could it somehow lead you down a wrong path? Very unlikely.”

But to be sure, checks and balances will be incorporated for double checking and alerting about errors.

Belostotsky hopes to reach over one million users per month with its AI tools.

HonestDoor’s planned fundraise

HonestDoor will be doing a round of Series A funding this year to accelerate its business, though he declined to disclose how much it hopes to raise.

He plans to use the funding to stimulate growth into provinces where HonestDoor has thus far not been very active, to work on licensing, and explore the U.S. market.

“We’ve been operating as lean as possible up until now, and now we’re ready to really make a big impact on this country with our services and on our platform,” Belostotsky said.