New AI-driven tool aims to help buyers search for homes, fix viewing appointments

SINGAPORE: A new platform driven by artificial intelligence aims to provide home buyers here with a one-stop shop for listings from various property portals and help with booking viewing appointments – all for free.

Launched on Wednesday (Feb 5) by local property search portal Mogul.sg, the platform aims to tackle issues that make home buying in Singapore a “tedious and time-consuming” process.

For example, home buyers, especially those who do not enlist a property agent, will typically have to comb through multiple portals, track their preferred listings manually and contact property agents to fix viewing appointments.

This can be a “messy” process for home buyers, prompting some to turn to agents for help and having to pay a commission, said Mr Gerald Sim, co-founder and chief executive officer of Mogul.sg.

“Our platform will take over the buyer agents’ job and make everything simple for buyers,” he told reporters at a demonstration showcase of the platform.

Called Mogul.sg Artificial Intelligence Agent, or MAIA in short, the new tool will be free for home buyers.

It collects a 0.2 per cent referral fee from the sellers’ property agents only when a sale goes through.

HOW IT WORKS

Users can access the MAIA platform via Mogul.sg’s app or website. 

After keying in preferences such as location, housing type and price, the platform puts together recommended property listings from Mogul.sg’s own portal and other major listing sites such as PropertyGuru and 99.co.

Responding to CNA’s queries, Mogul.sg said its new platform does not have official partnerships with other portals and it only “executes a search” of publicly available online listings when requested by users.

It does not scrape the other portals for listings, which involves collecting and downloading data before users request a search, Mr Sim explained.

That may also be why it is unable to sieve out duplicate listings of the same unit, which were shown to CNA when this reporter had a go at the platform.

“Duplicate listings of the same property occur when different agents are engaged to market the same unit. Our platform goes out to (search) the whole marketplace for a customer and if these are listings on other platforms, we cannot control that,” Mr Sim said.

Apart from simplifying the home-searching process, the platform also hopes to eliminate the hassle of buyers manually coordinating viewings with multiple property agents.

The process is automated in this case, with the platform automatically contacting property agents via messaging platform WhatsApp once a buyer clicks on the “request viewing” button on a listing.

Mr Sim said the platform, built using Google’s Vertex AI platform, is able to understand languages and “converse naturally” with humans.

During a demonstration to reporters, the platform understood Singlish, minor spelling mistakes and common emojis, and successfully managed to confirm viewing dates via WhatsApp.

The app will notify buyers when there are suggested viewing dates and timings. 

Once a viewing is confirmed, the platform sends out a calendar invite to both the seller’s property agent and the home buyer, as well as their contact details.

“Before this, the buyer is doing nothing,” said Mr Sim. “Last time you will have to talk to multiple agents. Now it’s all automated.”

Moving forward, the MAIA platform is hoping to add the capability of understanding more languages, as well as expanding its offerings to include new private property launches and even listings from the Housing and Development Board’s resale listing portal.

“That is something we would like to work on and hope to engage HDB … after this launch,” said Mr Sim.

The new platform could further eliminate the need for a property agent for home buyers, said Mogul.sg's chief research officer Nicholas Mak.

“This app is a bit of a wake-up call to (the agents). They have to up their game or else AI is coming,” he said, adding that property agents have to increase their level of services and professionalism to make themselves more relevant to their customers.

But the new platform could also be a boost for the industry, given how it “delivers direct leads to property agents without additional listing fees”, Mogul.sg said in its press release.

Real estate firm PropertyLimBrothers, for instance, has agreed to partner Mogul.sg and integrate the new platform into its operations.

Mr Melvin Lim, the property agency’s chief executive, said the platform is a “win-win” for both buyers who enjoy a “simpler, stress-free journey” as well as agents who can “build direct relationships with buyers”.