Washington homebuyers get a new AI-powered search tool
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Looking for a four-bedroom home near a Red Line Metro stop under $1.2 million? There's a new AI real estate platform that can help Washingtonians with that.
Why it matters: Buyers already have the upper hand in much of the D.C. area's housing market — but new search tools don't hurt.
What they're saying: "The way we're researching for houses is so old," says Nurit Coombe, a Bethesda-based real estate agent with The Agency. "It's so not intuitive. It's so boring."
- Coombe wanted to create something that mirrors chatting with an agent about the kind of lifestyle you're looking for with a house purchase — so she co-founded HouseMe.AI. "We learn about you as a person."
State of play: HouseMe.AI wants to be an easier-to-use version of Zillow — no dropdown filters to navigate, no scrolling through listings to find just what you want.
- Instead, users type exactly what they're looking for into the chat — "a two-bedroom townhouse walkable to restaurants" — and the platform pulls up properties matching your search.
How it works: The free search engine uses data from the listing platform BrightMLS, and is currently available in the DMV, plus Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey and Toronto.
- It can also create market analyses for buyers and sellers, comparing a property's asking price to other nearby sales, giving buyers a suggested offer price and negotiation strategy, and estimating a final bill that includes closing costs.
- Plus: It lets users reimagine listing photos to see what a property would look like once renovated.
Yes, but: Coombe is adamant this isn't meant to replace human professionals.
- "It cannot open the door and show you the house," she says. "You need an agent for that."
- It also can only pull from information on the MLS — meaning it can't tell you about an off-market property.
Reality check: This isn't the only real estate platform using natural language search, says Bright MLS' chief AI officer Rajeev Sajja, who points to other groups with similar search engines like Homes.com.
- But he does see this type of search as the way of the future, and thinks it could eventually replace the dropdown filter-style search as the industry standard.
Mimi's thought bubble: I'm a prolific Zillow surfer, and I did find that typing my specifics into a chat bar was far easier than curating a specific search via filters.
- But I still think that using ChatGPT to reimagine listing pics does get a better result — HomeMe.AI's generated photos were a little off.
The bottom line: Think of HouseMe.AI as another tool that buyers and sellers can use to start their home search — but you'll still probably want an actual human agent to get you across the finish line.