Machine learning in real estate: 
use cases, examples & adoption guidelines

Machine learning in real estate: use cases, examples & adoption guidelines

October 24, 2025

Eight common ML use cases in real estate

Machine learning has become a key technological driver in the real estate industry, powering property valuation models, market trend forecasting, customer analytics, and process automation across platforms and corporate systems.

8 ML use cases in real estate
Trained with historical data on past real estate deals, machine learning systems can recognize patterns and relationships among multiple variables to predict how such parameters will affect an asset's cost, therefore streamlining property valuation. The examples of metrics considered are location, size, nearby amenities, parking availability, and crime rate.
Real estate firms rely on machine learning to predict future market trends, select properties to buy or sell, and determine which asset improvements are worth investing in to increase the value of a property. These capabilities help real estate agents build diversified, well-balanced portfolios and mitigate risks associated with market volatility and default rates.
Real estate companies can leverage ML-powered data analytics tools to segment potential customers into distinct archetypes based on their purchase behavior, browsing history, and social media activity. This allows marketers to deliver personalized real estate ads that capture each user’s attention and drive higher engagement and lead generation.

ML-based recommender systems implemented on major real estate platforms provide customers with tailored property suggestions based on their prior search behavior, viewing history, and stated preferences. Much like recommendation tools deployed in retail or entertainment, the aim of these engines is to streamline the search process by guiding users toward assets that closely align with their needs and requirements.

NLP-powered virtual assistants and chatbots can interact with customers, tenants, and partners across a variety of scenarios. For instance, they can provide 24/7 support to renters, send notifications and utility bills to them, and handle queries submitted through tenant portals. Chatbots can also respond to public inquiries on social media, such as questions about property availability, pricing, or neighborhood features, offering real-time insights and recommendations on real estate opportunities in specific areas.

ML solutions help continuously monitor the performance of key components of a property, including HVAC units, electrical systems, and elevators, identify any outliers, forecast potential failures, and enable predictive maintenance. These ML tools not only prevent costly equipment downtime, but also help optimize power consumption by spotting any deviations from normal conditions, such as abnormal spikes in energy usage or performance inefficiencies.

Real estate enterprises can leverage ML tools to safeguard their business operations from fraudulent activities and streamline KYC procedures. Powered by machine learning algorithms, fraud detection systems analyze large volumes of financial, behavioral, and identity data, such as payment histories, criminal records, and credit scores of potential partners, tenants, or customers, to identify inconsistencies and flag suspicious transactions.

Enhanced with NLP capabilities and superior context understanding, RPA bots in real estate can replace or assist managers and accountants in performing a wide range of clerical tasks. Automatable processes include tax billing and reporting, lease contract processing, tenant onboarding, bank reconciliation, AR/AP, and NAV calculations. These intelligent systems improve accuracy, reduce manual workload, and accelerate financial operations, allowing specialists to focus on higher-value analytical and strategic activities.

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Real-life examples of ML in real estate

Redfin implemented an ML-powered real estate appraisal system enabling users to estimate the market value of their properties based on over 500 metrics, including buyer demand and neighboring home prices. The tool estimates around 92 million properties across the US, showing a valuation accuracy of 98% for on-market homes and 93% for off-market assets.

Zillow recently equipped its real estate platform with an advanced NLP feature powered by ML algorithms to answer search queries more efficiently. This solution can understand human-like communication, sift through millions of real estate listings, and recommend properties with features matching the descriptions provided by users in the search bar.

Zillow’s search engine

Image title: Zillow’s search feature interface

Data source: Zillow

This Israeli-based PropTech company created a commercial real estate analytics platform capable of processing real-estate data points gathered from hundreds of sources and covering over 400,000 assets to provide actionable insights. Skyline's ML-driven solution can also identify emerging market trends, pinpoint untapped opportunities, and help firms make profitable investments.

Gridium developed an ML-based data analytics solution to optimize properties' energy consumption, reduce their environmental footprint, and streamline maintenance operations. By adopting this tool, real estate investor KBS saved $47,000 in electricity costs and other operating expenses at the Premier Office Towers in Emeryville, California.

ML adoption roadmap for real estate companies

The path to implementing machine learning can vary depending on the ML use case and the type of solution selected. However, most projects follow a similar sequence of steps outlined below.

1

Business analysis

The initial stage focuses on identifying the company’s business goals, technical needs, and current IT environment. During this phase, the company needs to assess whether an ML-powered solution would bring greater value than traditional software in terms of ROI and feasibility. If the analysis confirms the potential benefits, the team defines the ML project's scope, including objectives, deliverables, and timeframes, as well as the future solution’s functional and non-functional requirements.

2

Initial data analysis

Next, the project team conducts an exploratory data analysis to map all available data sources and evaluate their quality and reliability. These sources can include internal corporate data assets as well as external datasets, such as public databases or third-party APIs.

3

Product design

At this stage, the company determines the appropriate technology stack for the future solution, which may include the ML system itself, an IoT platform for streaming data collection, processing, and analysis, and cloud platforms for scalable data storage. The project team also develops a detailed implementation plan and product specification describing the architecture, components, UX/UI design, and integration logic. Depending on the project’s complexity, creating a PoC can be useful to validate the approach and confirm financial viability of the future solution.

4

Building the ML solution

Once the design is finalized, the ML model is trained on relevant datasets to recognize patterns, anomalies, and trends. Several ML models can be created to achieve the desired performance. Major cloud providers offer services, such as Amazon SageMaker or Azure Machine Learning, to help streamline these processes.

5

Model integration & deployment

The development phase involves implementing both the front-end and back-end components of the solution and embedding the trained ML model into the software architecture to activate its intelligent capabilities. The project team should also configure all necessary API- or ESB-based integrations to integrate data from other applications and IoT sensors. Cloud data integration tools can help in this regard. Then, the ML solution is deployed to the selected on-premises or cloud-based environment.

6

Support

After deployment, the solution requires ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and user support. This includes staff training, system updates, performance enhancements, and new feature rollouts based on feedback. The ML model should also be periodically retrained with fresh datasets to maintain its accuracy and adapt it to evolving business conditions.

Benefits of ML in real estate

Broader data insights

Machine learning technologies like NLP and computer vision help collect and analyze vast amounts of real estate and market data from diverse sources. Such an expanded data pool provides analysts with a wider set of real estate-related metrics to better interpret trends and uncover deeper insights.

Superior valuation accuracy

ML-powered Automated Valuation Models (AVM) deliver high-precision property assessment, providing accurate insights for better investment and pricing decisions.

Increased sales performance

ML solutions encompass powerful tools, such as recommendation engines, to route customers toward suitable listings, along with features and techniques to drive sales, including user segmentation, targeted advertising, and lead scoring.

Cost reduction

From the automation of time-consuming clerical processes via software bots to power consumption monitoring through data analytics platforms, machine learning solutions help real estate organizations to optimize their budgets and resources.

Improved customer experience

Machine learning software enhances user experience across the real estate journey, from AI chatbots and virtual assistants providing instant support to platforms offering personalized recommendations, simplified search, and immersive virtual property tours.

Risk mitigation

ML systems' anomaly detection and predictive analytics capabilities safeguard real estate businesses from various financial risks, including fraud and market volatility. Additionally, predictive maintenance systems contribute to safer, more reliable property management.

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Current challenges of using ML in real estate

While machine learning benefits your business, implementing it can involve various business and technical complexities. Here are some tips to overcome typical obstacles and streamline ML adoption.

Use case identification

Issue

One of the key challenges in the early stages of machine learning adoption is identifying the right use case, specifically, determining where an ML solution provides a clear advantage over conventional technologies. This decision is critical, as it directly influences technology ROI and affects executives’ buy-in.

Recommendations

Because ML development typically requires substantial resources for model training, data processing, and infrastructure, it’s most effective when applied to high-impact business areas. Focusing on such use cases as market and asset targeting, operational optimization, portfolio management, property valuation, and partner selection allows companies to maximize ROI and ensure meaningful, scalable results from ML adoption.

Data collection

Issue

Beyond obvious parameters, such as square footage, number of rooms, listing duration, and comparable home prices, the attractiveness of a real estate asset is also shaped by numerous less apparent variables. The challenge lies in identifying reliable data sources and processing vast, heterogeneous datasets to extract actionable insights.

Recommendations

To accurately define property value, realtors and other real estate professionals increasingly rely on ML-powered technologies for automated data collection from diverse data sources, such as social media, market studies, demographic reports, satellite imagery, and review platforms. Non-traditional parameters, such as the quality of local services, employment opportunities, and crime rate, are now combined with information from public real estate databases and corporate systems like real estate ERP or CRM to support comprehensive, data-driven property analysis.

ML model reliability

Issue

Machine learning models can produce inaccurate predictions if trained on outdated or low-quality data, potentially leading to costly decisions. Common causes include overfitting, which occurs when a model learns too narrowly from its training data, and model drift, which happens when performance declines as input data changes over time. Ensuring ongoing reliability and relevance is therefore a key challenge in ML system operation.

Recommendations

Model accuracy can be strengthened through robust data management practices, which includes data cleansing, ETL-based transformations, and metadata management. Splitting datasets into training, validation, and test subsets and ensuring they are not mixed up helps minimize overfitting, while continuous monitoring and retraining with updated data mitigate model drift.

Custom componentBuilt-in componentSMP = SageMaker PipelinesSageMaker PipelinesFull train dataset (S3)SageMaker modelData ingestion, training mode (SMP Processing step)Data preprocessing
(SMP Processing steps) Hyperparameter tuning (SM HPT job inside SMP Processing step)Full training
(SMP Training step)Wrap model
(SMP CreateModel step)Ingestion query results
(Parquet on S3)Train/Validation datasets
(feature columns, CSV on S3)Output property file
(S3, SMP)Model artifacts (S3)Model metrics
(in SageMaker)Model artifacts (S3)

Scheme title: AWS-based training pipeline for an ML-powered real estate platform


Data source:  AWS — Machine Learning Infrastructure for Commercial Real Estate Insights Platform

Data privacy & security

Issue

Given the amount of sensitive information, including financial data, that machine learning and artificial intelligence software for real estate needs to handle, organizations become potential targets for breaches, leaks, and cyberattacks. Integrations with external systems and IoT devices further expand the range of points of vulnerability. Therefore, poor data security can adversely affect business operations and corporate reputation and draw the attention of financial authorities and regulators.

Recommendations

Ensuring compliance with applicable standards and regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, is essential. ML systems should incorporate strong cybersecurity measures, including identity and access management, multi-factor authentication, real-time event monitoring, and user activity tracking. Secure data exchange should rely on cryptographic protocols, such as  Transport Layer Security, X.509 certificates, or symmetric keys. Complementing these controls with a robust data governance framework and internal security policies further enhances organizational resilience against cyber threats, data breaches, and operational disruptions.

Microsoft’s cybersecurity reference architecture

Image title: Microsoft’s cybersecurity reference architecture


Data source: Microsoft — Cybersecurity Reference Architecture: Security for a Hybrid Enterprise

Machine learning reshaping the real estate sector

Just a few years ago, financial organizations such as Morgan Stanley defined real estate as one of the least digitized sectors. More recently, however, this industry has come a long way in implementing the most advanced applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve decision-making, automate processes, and provide better services.

Despite these advances, many organizations still encounter difficulties driven by the black-box, data-driven nature of machine learning. Engaging experienced ML consultants such as Itransition can help address these challenges and ensure tangible business outcomes.

FAQs

What is machine learning in commercial real estate?

Machine learning in commercial real estate refers to the use of advanced algorithms and data-driven models to automate routine, effort-intensive processes, such as property valuation, investment analysis, tenant and lease matching, portfolio optimization, and maintenance scheduling. ML systems for real estate also analyze historical and real-time data, such as property details, market trends, tenant behavior, and economic indicators, to predict property values, optimize investment strategies, and enhance tenant experiences, supporting informed decision-making across the enterprise.

What ML tools can be used for real estate?

Real estate organizations can leverage a variety of ML and AI tools to improve operational efficiency and decision-making:

  • Predictive analytics software to forecast market trends, occupancy rates, and property valuations
  • Recommendation systems to match tenants or buyers with properties based on preferences and historical data
  • Computer vision systems to analyze images and videos of properties for inspections and assessments
  • Conversational AI solutions, such as AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, for 24/7 customer support and automated routine interactions

How much does machine learning implementation cost?

ML implementation costs for real estate vary significantly based on several factors, including the number of data sources, data type and volume, required algorithm accuracy, and infrastructure requirements. Basic proof-of-concept implementations can start at around $10,000, while enterprise-level systems typically range between $200,000 and $350,000. Additional expenses can include ongoing maintenance, model retraining, and infrastructure scaling.

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