Can AI serve as a 'great equalizer' in the real estate industry?

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Whether it be by telling Alexa to play your favorite song or using face recognition to unlock your phone, artificial intelligence is making your life easier on a daily basis. As more industries continue to undergo digital transformation, AI continues to optimize how many different industries conduct their businesses— even real estate. Anywhere Real Estate is utilizing AI technology to help diversify home ownership. 

Racial disparities such as structural racism and bias have affected the ability for people of color to own homes in the US for years. An Urban Planet study using 2019 ACS data showed that white homeownership rate is 30 percentage points higher than the Black homeownership rate and higher than any other racial group in the US. 

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Anywhere, an American real estate services company that owns major brands in the industry such as CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby's International Realty, found a way to implement AI into their business model to better connect with customers, remove biases and diversify homeownership. 

SEE: Top 25 emerging technologies: Which ones will live up to the hype? 

"It is critical to look at data that potentially causes bias in decision making, for example, the type of mobile device a person uses to submit a document as a data point may lead to unintended co-relation on race and social status. This will help improve diversity of homeownership through a machine-driven decision-making process," Damian Ng, Senior Vice President of Technology at Anywhere, tells ZDNET. 

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