How a real estate company is using AI to find and remove racist language from property documents

Image: Getty Images/fizkes

For too long, racist practices have plagued the real estate industry, and one glaring example of this is the racially restrictive covenants that still exist in countless property deeds in the US. 

These restricted who could buy, sell, lease, or occupy a property based on race. Even though the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ensured that these racist covenants are no longer enforceable, the ugly language first written into property deeds is often left there. It can be hard to find and even harder to officially remove. It's a problem that will take a long time and many parties to solve. 

Seattle-founded real estate firm John L. Scott is working with Amazon Web Services to build an intelligent document-processing program that could help homeowners easily identify racist covenants in their property title documents. Called the Driving Change program, it also simplifies the arduous process of getting property title documents legally changed. 

Without a tool like this, a homeowner would have to read their documents, find the language, figure out how the law with respect to amending property documents works, focus on how to get it notarized, and how to get it to the county recorder's office and so on, Phil McBride, operating officer for John L. Scott, told ZDNET. 

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"The normal homeowner – who really does care – doesn't have the tenacity or time or expertise to do all that," he says. 

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