Top 5 Hot Tech Trends in 2024 and How They Will Benefit You

From artificial intelligence to next-generation devices, new tech tools promise to enhance efficiency, improve client relations, and, ultimately, help you grow your business. But wait – you have heard those promises made by other new tech breakthroughs in the past, right?

How do you know that all the buzz about this new tech won't be another case of over-promising and under-delivering?

Tech Helpline keeps an eye on emerging technologies that may impact real estate. Let's dive into five new technologies that will make waves in 2024 and explore how they can benefit your real estate business.

1. Personal AI assistants: The rise of digital efficiency

Personal AI assistants are evolving, offering more than just reminders and weather updates – "Hey Alexa, what's the weather today?" Today's AI assistants can manage your schedule, handle client communications, and even generate reports, all through voice commands or simple text inputs. As they continue to integrate with various platforms, you will synchronize your tasks across devices, making your workflow seamless and efficient.

Benefits for real estate agents

For real estate agents, this means less time spent on administrative tasks and more time for client interaction and property showings. Imagine having an AI assistant that can schedule your open houses, send follow-up emails after a client or prospect call, remind you of crucial deadlines – and even answer your texts. This level of automation allows for a more personalized service to clients, as you can focus on their needs, reducing the stress of juggling multiple tasks.

Application in action

An agent could use a personal AI assistant to analyze market trends, compile compelling hyperlocal comparative market analysis reports, and perhaps provide a new way of creating listing prices based on data gathered from the same sources you use now and based on your process, but automatically. This speeds up your process and provides more data-driven approaches to your more complex tasks.

2. Your own ChatGPT: Tailored conversational AI

ChatGPT, a conversational AI, has been customized for various industries, including real estate. This AI can engage in meaningful conversations with clients, answering their questions about properties, buying processes, and financing options in real-time. Its learning algorithm improves with each interaction, providing more accurate and helpful responses over time. It's what Ojo and Ylopo have been working on for years, but a more "lite" version.

Advantages for agents

The next wave of ChatGPT plugins may help revolutionize how you interact with clients. They might help you qualify leads, provide instant responses to inquiries, and even handle preliminary discussions, freeing you to focus on more complex negotiations and closings. Expect this new technology to be embedded in your website and, eventually, social media platforms, ensuring you're always available to your clients any time of the day.

Real-world usage

Imagine a scenario where a potential seller or buyer has questions in the middle of the night; you know from experience that it does happen. Your personal ChatGPT plugin can engage them, provide detailed information about listings, and even schedule viewings, ensuring that you don't miss out on opportunities just because you're offline. Then, it will give you the entire conversation before you take over and connect directly with the prospect.

3. New devices like Rabbit R1: Next-generation timesavers

The Rabbit R1, perhaps the hottest new tech at the January Consumer Electronics Show (CES), stands out as what could be the best new tech tool for real estate.

How many apps do you have on your phone? How many do you use daily? How many do you still need, but only occasionally? What if there was a device that could turn all your apps into an "Easy button"? Just tell it what you want, and it will deliver it back. That's what Rabbit R1 will do. It is a personal assistant to control your smartphone.

A red-orange device half the size of your smartphone but a bit thicker costs $199. And it's harder to get than the first-gen iPad; it doesn't even ship until late March – the second batch of 10,000 units sold out in one day.

This device uniquely aggregates and summarizes notifications and messages from various apps, including email and social media, into a single, streamlined summary. For real estate agents, who often toggle between multiple platforms to stay connected with clients and manage their listings, the Rabbit R1 offers a significant leap in productivity and time management.

Benefits for the agent

With the Rabbit R1, the daunting task of checking numerous apps for updates becomes a thing of the past. Imagine starting your day with a concise summary of all your communications across platforms. This capability allows agents to assess their priorities quickly, respond more efficiently to client inquiries, and manage their social media presence without switching between apps. The time saved can be redirected towards more valuable activities, such as client meetings and prospecting.

Practical application

Consider the scenario where an agent manages multiple listings across different platforms and communicates with clients through email, text messages, and social media. The Rabbit R1 can compile all messages related to each listing and present them in a unified view. This ensures the agent has all the relevant information at their fingertips, enabling them to provide timely and comprehensive responses. Because it protects the agent from overlooking messages, the Rabbit R1 enhances the agent's ability to maintain high client satisfaction and engagement levels.

4. Smarter smartphones: Enhanced capabilities for agents

Smartphones are getting smarter, with next-gen features that agents will welcome, including better cameras for property photos and built-in AI that makes activities like maximizing your CRM or creating a market report a breeze.

How agents benefit

With more advanced smartphones, agents will better manage their business on the go, from having a CRM they use daily to reducing the time they spend marketing and on social media as automation assistance becomes a big deal. Smarter phones mean agents can provide faster, higher-quality information to clients. The better agents can leverage this new tech, the further they can distance themselves from the competition.

In the field

An agent gets a text from a prospect and has no idea who it is. Embedded AI could automatically search emails – and even the web – for missing email, phone, and other contact info, updating your CRM automatically. This may not happen this year, but this type of smarter tech is coming. Need a virtual staging photo? Soon, digitally creating fully outfitted rooms may be do-it-yourself from upcoming advancements.

5. Automated listings: Upload your photos, first!

Automated listings technology uses computer vision and generative AI to simplify creating property listings. By simply uploading photos, AI-powered CV can identify home features automatically (Wolf stove, Subzero refrigerator). It also can instantly create photo captions for every photo.

Advantages for agents

This technology saves time and ensures that listings are optimized for visibility and appeal. More importantly, CV automatically ensures compliance: it can find people, logos, and other potential MLS violations before the listing is complete. It may even blur the suspect item to make the photo compliant. Agents can focus on face time with sellers and buyers, confident that their listings are competitive and compelling.

In practice

Do you struggle with writing engaging and compelling property descriptions for your listings? AI provided by Restb.ai, embedded in nearly every major MLS tech system in 2024, does everything mentioned, including providing different property descriptions to select from in various tones. Plus, an agent can edit anything before it's posted, making the property description their own. The new way to start a listing is to upload all the photos first!

Embracing new technology

These top tech trends offer exciting opportunities for real estate agents in 2024. By embracing personal AI assistants, ChatGPT, innovative devices like the Rabbit R1, taking advantage of smarter smartphones, and leveraging automated listings, agents can increase their efficiency by 3X or more, improve client satisfaction, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. These tools will streamline day-to-day operations and create new ways to grow and succeed in the real estate industry.

Related reads

From the Tech Helpline Blog:

• It's magic: new AI-powered software can make your photos look amazing
• 5 emerging technologies impacting real estate
• 3 best AI prompts for real estate agents

Tricia Stamper is Director of Technology at Florida Realtors®, which owns both Tech Helpline and Form Simplicity.