What Is Computer Vision And How Is It Changing Real Estate

Before taking a dive into how computer vision can transform your real estate business, let’s take a look at, what is computer vision? It is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computers and systems to derive information from digital images, videos, and other visual inputs, take actions and make recommendations based on that information gathered. It is expected to reach USD 48.6 billion by 2022. In our daily life chores, we too utilize computer vision in business, entertainment, transportation, healthcare, and much more. In this blog, we are going to take you through the applications of computer vision and how they are being used in the operations of different real estate companies and prop-tech startups.

Computer vision helps in acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding digital images and extracting high-dimensional data from the real world to produce more accurate and reliable information. Other than applications in the fields of transportation, and healthcare, it is also growing in the real estate space. The role of computer vision in the real estate sector is vast, and the applications of the technology can bring drastic changes from helping in content search and discovery to generating recommendations, metadata, content moderation, and damage analysis, image enhancements and making videos, which are essential and serves as the best tools for your successful real estate business.

• For agents, it can help them get accurate property assessments, and image tagging, which can provide a minimalistic, non-obstructive buying experience. Compare properties using metadata, and help buyers quickly identify properties according to their preferences.
• For photographers, the computer vision algorithm can learn from the manually enhanced photographs and makes robust changes in lighting including white balance and color grading, scene semantics, and capture defects, like motion blur. It is not only limited upto this but it can be used in several other ways.
• For enterprises, computer vision software makes it possible for businesses to find solutions for specific challenges they face along the way. Such as customers’ movements can be tracked throughout the store to get insights into product visibility and efficacy. Eye movement, facial expressions, and other gestures can be used to recognize products that attract maximum customers, and much more!

The recent advancements in computer vision are helping the real estate sector unlock areas that have been considered impossible before such as achieving a scalable solution for property assessment, image-based searching, 3D representation of properties, and much more! With the availability of technologies at low costs, computer vision applications are expanding fast in the industry. Some of the essential applications of computer vision that can bring revolutionary changes in your real estate business are:

‍Redfin provides a condition assessment of the property by analyzing photos and telling you the relative condition. Foxy.ai can be installed in chrome. It will give a score based on automation analysis. It can help you save time when assessing hundreds of homes a day. Using computer vision, you can filter out the houses sold in good condition against those requiring many repairs and work. The image-based search would be able to identify properties that display similar characteristics.

‍This application can be used in imaging, mapping, and measuring. For example, if you have a phone with a regular 2D camera, you can use this application to reconstruct the photo and make a 3D representation of the house. Planr is one such company which provides such services. Furthermore, 3D imaging helps the interested buyers to judge the accessibility of services in and around the area. Therefore, 3D renderings help direct our attention towards the significant highlights that work to enhance the marketability of a given property by improving the details of its physical surroundings.

Computer vision can help reveal hundreds of property attributes from listing photos that are typically not captured as part of the listing information. Users will now understand subjective factors, such as the quality of natural light and the vastness of the view, without even stepping into the property. In addition, users would be able to list properties using specific image characteristics, rather than what has been traditionally done using quantifiable property attributes such as beds, baths, living areas, etc. In the future, agents would be able to generate complete property details and room-wise amenities lists by just uploading a set of photos. Computer vision will enable recognizing the elements in these images, restricting them, and creating listing information that can be uploaded directly into an MLS or a listing platform.

Property tech solutions are becoming an integral part of the current market and changing how companies do their business. From focussing on solving problems to profit-making to knowing what the customer wants and being able to translate that into customized products will go a long way in shaping the prop-tech sector in the near future. Prop-tech solutions in real estate will allow property owners and landlords to manage their assets with more efficiency, ease, and flexibility by developing products and services that will save people time and money and promote affordability. Some of the prop-tech startups using computer vision in real estate are:

1. Styldod is a design-tech company that aims to simplify your real estate marketing and help you quickly, easily, and inexpensively edit and enhance photos, remove clutter, and virtually stage rooms. Their wide range of  services includes:

• Virtual staging and renovation.
• Matterport virtual staging.
• Architectural planning and virtual tours.
• Photo editing services, like, image enhancement, real estate video editing, and so on.

2. Knotel, is a property tech company founded in 2015. Its core mission as the adjustable, tailor-made workspace provider is to make real estate simple, flexible, and responsive for brokers, owners, and customers. Knotel provides an intuitive platform for shaping, constructing, and designing custom workspaces tailored to a business’s needs and preferences.

3. Homeday is a real estate tech startup founded in 2015. It also helps in accurate land valuation, flexible leasing services, automatic real estate property document generation, and more.

4. OnSiteIQ was founded in 2017 in New York, the United States. It provides a computer vision platform for construction risk assessment. Since then, the company has acquired more investments. Here are the product solutions provided by OnSiteIQ:

• 3D 360-degree real-time construction site monitoring.
• Next-gen interactive floor plans functionality.
• Insightful AI-based progress monitoring features.

5. VergeSense is one of the market-leading real estate startups founded in San Francisco, United States. The company provides an advanced workplace analytics platform. The key VergeSense platform’s features include:

• Building-to-desk person count system.
• Agile seating solutions.
• Best-in-class AI sensors.
• Next-gen computer vision for smart analytics.

The use of computer vision is multiplying. It makes the process simpler and faster, allowing clients and industries to check. The efficiency is usually the same and reliable; it doesn’t depend on external factors. Additionally, the precision of computer vision ensures better accuracy of the final product. In addition to this, the prop-tech industry is growing quickly. From designing to artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things, startups pushing digital transformation are positioned to disrupt the real estate industry as we once knew it. And if the last couple of years has taught us anything, it’s to believe that new software technology can disrupt just about any space. If you want to know how the real estate industry reacted to prop tech last year, you can read about it here.

Styldod is a design-tech company that aims to simplify real estate marketing and help agents present homes in their most favorable light online by reimagining and automating the listing photography process. Having begun as a virtual staging company, today, Styldod has affordable and best-in-class products and services for every facet of real estate marketing and photography. Styldod’s suite of services include virtual staging, image enhancements, floor plans, virtual renovation, 3D renders, 360 degree virtual tours, and Matterport virtual staging, to name a few. We're trusted by over 10,000 realtors from all over the US and from agencies like ReMax, Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams. Know more about us at https://www.styldod.com