Recent research suggests just over a third of property professionals won’t be taking a summer holiday this year due to an increase in market activity and the need for extra people power during the busy periods. Ellie AI helps reduce risk of burnout by alleviating individuals from some of the repetitive day-to-day tasks that they can easily get bogged down by. Kate Jarvis, CEO of Fifth Dimension AI explains how.
The property sector is at boiling point. The ‘pressure cooker environment’ has more than a third threatening to quit the industry within the next few years, while the sector had one of the biggest rises in sick leave in 2023. This increase might be due to more face-to-face interactions between property professionals and customers, or it could point to deeper issues such as burnout and stress.
A lack of digitisation and slow uptake of technology leaves many in the industry spending a significant portion of their time and energy on repetitive tasks that don’t use their skills or creativity. But it doesn’t need to be like this. AI is estimated to generate up to $180 billion in value for the real estate sector, leading to the transformation of many of the day-to-day activities carried out by property professionals.
Less admin, more business
In a sector which is document-heavy and data-filled, generative AI can save many hours a week, enabling staff to shift their priorities from low-value and unfulfilling taste to higher value ones, because she will take on the mundane, repetitive, document-heavy tasks that fill real estate. Fifth Dimension’s Ellie AI acts as an additional member of the team, boosting productivity and freeing her colleagues up to spend more time with clients or pursuing new business.
Using automated processes and machine learning, AI platforms can do everything from cleaning up unstructured data and sifting through heaps of information for that one golden nugget, to compiling exhaustive reports of new build pricing and abstracting information from a lease to a custom template. These aren’t the glamorous jobs that property professionals dream of – but they are essential to gaining and maintaining business.
To give a real world example of this, let’s take Ellie’s ability to dissect a 100-page Bank of England report for Allsop and distil it into key insights within minutes – a job that previously took hours. Through her work with Hamptons, she’s also helped their team to cut down the 45 minute job of producing and sharing long, admin-heaving client-facing documents about the performance of a specific development, to less than 30 seconds!
Speeding up and standing out
Although AI being generally available to everyone is still relatively new, we can see the positive effects it is having in the realm of productivity, with nearly a third of consumers believing that AI has improved overall productivity in their workplace over the past year.
This gives businesses a competitive advantage, with their employees freed up to spend more time on innovation, strategic planning, and client relations.
However, as mentioned, the sector is notorious for its slow uptake of new technologies. While 60% of respondents in one research project believe AI will have a significant impact on the sector in the next three to five years, the main barriers to technology adoption are a ‘cultural resistance to change’ and ‘unclear levels of cost and return on investment’.
Those that lead the way will reap the rewards as they use AI to spot and respond to market shifts quicker, unlocking new avenues for growth. Those that struggle to adopt these new technologies will get left behind, which is why Fifth Dimension has also launched a consultancy service to help businesses that want to embrace AI – and fast.
Happy, engaged employees
As awareness of AI and its capabilities grew, people largely divided into two camps: those who embraced it with open arms, and those who feared it would take everyone out of a job in time.
But Ellie AI wasn’t created to put anyone’s job at risk – and in fact, Fifth Dimension AI heavily advocate for keeping humans-in-the-loop when using AI. Instead, she’s an intelligent, versatile sidekick who is always willing to do the heavy lifting – and will never complain about it! And with research highlighting a link between boredom, depression, and repetitive work, AI may be just the thing property professionals need to revive their love for their role.
The team at Allsop started using Ellie to keep up with their growing workload: “Ellie makes my job more enjoyable because she covers drudgery and low-value tasks. That type of task does not tend to get people up in the morning and coming into work with a smile on their face.”
The need for industry AI models
Open AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude have created an even playing field by making certain models accessible to all, with everyone able to benefit from the advancements.
However, these open-to-all AI models are generalist models. They may have extensive functionality, but they are not equipped to provide specialist solutions to specialist problems. This is where closed AI systems, especially those built by specialists and focused on specific industries, really come into their own. When they’re made to deliver on specific tasks and workflows, they lead to superior results.
To give a real world example of this, Ellie can process and produce multimodal documents, unlike ChatGPT. This involves scanned PDFs and even handwriting. She is also programmed to assist with document-heavy workflows and can create documents based on company templates.
In addition, where ChatGPT only uses its own models (such as GPT-4o, or DALL·E) Ellie uses models from a range of companies (more than 30 at the last count!), which means she’s able to leverage the best of what each AI company has to offer – and choose the best tool for each task.
The team at Hamptons were unimpressed with the generic nature of ChatGPT: “ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are surface level and help with basic bits and pieces, but nothing more than that. Ellie goes to a level of detail that none of those other ones can – because she learns your business, your tone of voice, the kind of language you use.”
Visit Fifth Dimension AI to learn more
