Redfin Puts Forth Ai Chat Tool For Home Searches

Redfin recently announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that allows users to search for homes through conversation rather than traditional filters.

The “conversational home search” is now live at Redfin.com — letting users describe what they’re looking for in natural language and refine results through back-and-forth dialogue.

Unlike standard search filters, the system responds dynamically to comments or follow-up questions. For example, a homebuyer might note that a kitchen “should be more modern” or adjust criteria after the AI suggests broadening the search area.

“We always knew that a home search can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Ariel Dos Santos, Redfin’s senior vice president of product and design. “But conversational search lets us look across many more haystacks, with far more detailed information about the type of needle each user is looking for. We relied on search filters to define queries for years, but people share more about their preferences when it’s a conversation.”

According to Redfin, early testing shows that users of the new system view nearly twice as many listings as those using standard search tools.

They were also 47% more likely to request home tours or other services.

“When you’re buying a home, the options can be overwhelming,” said Abhishek Singh, a homebuyer who tested the feature. “It felt like my personal concierge, surfacing better options in neighborhoods I hadn’t considered and showing me homes I wouldn’t have found using the map boundaries I usually set for myself.”

Redfin’s conversational home search is slated to come to iOS in December, with Android availability scheduled for next year.

Broader search net

During testing, Redfin found users tended to search across wider areas while providing more detailed home preferences.

One test user searching for a $300,000 home in or near Baltimore County with specific features was prompted to adjust filters after no results appeared.

When the user opted to “try a broader search” and “relax on the number of bedrooms,” new listings were found.

“Our goal was to build a search experience that’s like talking to a real estate agent who has seen every listing in town and who knows what clients really want through dozens of late-night conversations,” said Dos Santos. “The difference is that conversational search is available 24/7, can scan every listing on Redfin across the U.S. and respond when a buyer says, ‘show me more listings like this one, but with an extra bedroom.’” 

The technology was built with Sierra — an AI platform co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor.

The launch adds to Redfin’s lineup of AI-based tools, including the Redfin Estimate for real-time home values, Ask Redfin for market insights and Buying Power, a feature that helps buyers understand affordability.

Agent lead quality

Dos Santos said the new system could help Redfin agents better understand what clients want before a first meeting.

“As part of this, we’re learning a lot more about our customers and [can] create much richer experiences for them,” he said. “Customers are telling us a lot more about what they’re looking for in their next home than we would get with traditional filters, and that inherently will help us to serve them better across the entirety of the funnel, whether that would be with an agent or with a mortgage banker with Rocket.”

Avoiding discrimination in searches

To address potential misuse of conversational AI, Dos Santos said Redfin has built safeguards to ensure compliance with Fair Housing laws.

“We take Fair Housing guidelines very seriously at Redfin,” he said. “When we launched Ask Redfin, we spent a lot of time working through how we ensure AI follows the guidelines that we’ve set for it — and we’ve taken the same care here with this conversational search.

“There are some questions we will not answer no matter how hard the customer tries to [ask]. We put it through a lot of testing, a lot of rigors to make sure that we’re doing all the things that we believe that are important for the overall housing industry right now.”

Future integration, privacy

Dos Santos said conversational search could eventually connect with other Redfin services such as the Redfin Estimate, Ask Redfin and Buying Power.

“There are a lot of talks happening about how this conversational interface can help other parts of the Redfin overall experience,” he said. “(Redfin Estimate) seems like a really great use case for being able to talk about your estimate and what’s going on with buying power. We’re really working now on tying a lot more data into our conversational service so they can become even richer — and being able to help you engage with different types of conversations.”

Dos Santos said privacy and data management were also central to the design of conversational search — adding that user conversations can be deleted from the tool’s history.

“We have a variety of controls in place to make sure that the users’ information is used in the correct way,” he said. “I don’t want to get into the specifics of it, but it’s a very important thing for us, especially with a lot of the AI products out there not having done that super well.”

Looking ahead

When asked about the next step in conversational AI that will catch the real estate industry off guard, Dos Santos said it’s a projection that’s getting more difficult to nail down.

“Predicting where technology is going to go, I feel like it’s become very hard,” he said. “I expect that using conversational interfaces will become much more commonplace across a variety of industries and technologies. It’s just a really natural way for you to engage with the product.”