How AI and ChatGPT are Redefining Apartment Search

Given recent rapid advances in artificial intelligence, the future of apartment search is evolving.

There’s a new definition for SEO. It’s not so much “search engine optimization” anymore, but rather, “search experience optimization.”

Brooke Henderson, RVP Strategic Partnerships at Yext, shared that observation this week at the Apartment Innovation and Marketing Conference in Huntington Beach, Calif.

She was part of a panel moderated by Esther Bonardi, Vice President at REACH by RentCafe that included Nomo Nagaoka, Project Manager at RentCafe and Catriona Banks-Orosco, Director at REACH by RentCafe.

“Consumers can go through multiple digital channels during marketing,” Henderson said, not just online search for text, but through platforms that offer video in many ways.

Henderson and the panel also touted the benefits of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT and shared some of its limitations and deficiencies.

“ChatGPT can get it wrong,” Henderson said. “About 15 to 20 percent of the time it ‘hallucinates’ and gives [sometimes wildly] inaccurate results.”

She shared examples of how to solve for a door that is too narrow; ChatGPT said to trim it horizontally; and how it believes mixing grape juice and cranberry juice created poison.

“But it will save onsite staff a lot of time so they can focus on the harder tasks required in the leasing office,” she said. “It can write direct mail text.”

Nagaoka said today’s developing AI- and ChatGPT-driven bots are capable of more than the bot buttons many apartment websites had used before, citing that their conversation skills are more free-flowing and human-like.

To leverage AI’s capabilities, the panel said it’s crucial for businesses to provide more information about themselves because that’s what publishers want.

Marketers must also structure their data to show intent and what is unique about the property or business.