How Artificial Intelligence helped Housing.com enhance ‘verified listings’

A few days back at REA India, 24 cross-functional teams from Technology, Product, and Marketing participated in a 24-hour AI/GenAI hackathon, showcasing live demos the following day. How was the experience, and which use cases were tested? How did you measure the outcomes?

The recent AI/GenAI hackathon was a phenomenal success and perfectly exemplified the culture we are dedicated to building at REA India. Innovation, for us, is a deliberate practice—it’s about shipping value faster by experimenting, learning, and scaling what works. The experience showcased what happens when we adapt quickly to new technology and maintain a bias for experimentation.

We had 24 cross-functional teams from Technology, Product, and Marketing departments sprint for 24 hours, focused on leveraging AI/GenAI to unlock new proptech ideas for Housing.com.

The theme was AI/GenAI to unlock proptech ideas for Housing.com. The tested use cases focused on generating better customer and consumer experiences, achieving faster operations, and enabling smarter decisions.

We recognize that translating these ideas into reality requires collective effort, and many pilots will necessitate partnership from functional groups like Sales, Finance, Legal, HR, and IT/Security. Carrying this energy into Q2 delivery and continuing to build this experimentation mindset is what we consider our competitive edge.

During FY24-25, REA India recorded a 58% increase in verified listings. As listing quality in the property market is a major area of concern, how did you achieve this feat? How is your standard different and more efficient compared to your peers?

Our ultimate goal at Housing.com is to change the way India experiences property, while providing a seamless, authentic, and reliable property-buying experience that advances transparency for both buyers and sellers. To do so, we have combined technology with human touch in an innovative way to redefine the listing standard in the property market.

For us, technology isn't just a tool, it's a strategic arsenal we leverage to raise the bar in the industry. Our AI-driven algorithms meticulously screen every incoming listing, pinpoint discrepancies, and eliminate potential fraud and misinformation. This process is backed by a manual review where our dedicated teams scrutinize every aspect of a listing, from location, photographs to property details, ensuring each listing is not just reliable but precise.

We believe our listing standards are a cut above the rest. Unlike many others, we don't just rely on technology or human review, but we merge the best of both. This dual-pronged approach not only assures the quality of our listings but also contributes to enhancing the user experience by offering reliable information. As we continue to prioritize our users' needs and evolve our processes, we are proud to say that our commitment has led to a significant spike of around 58% in our verified listings during FY24-25.

Therefore, at Housing.com, it's not just about listing properties, but it's about providing a trusted, reliable, and enhanced real estate experience across the value chain. Our relentless innovation ensures that each property listed comes with an added layer of trust and reliability, making us a standout player in the property market.

Listing is just table stakes. The real differentiator is conversions, sales, and high-quality leads. That’s where the platform’s technology and operations make a measurable impact. What work have you done in that area?

We fundamentally agree that the great differentiator is conversions, sales, and high-quality leads, and our technology strategy is designed to make a measurable impact in this area.

We view Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI (AI/GenAI) as a real unlock for achieving better customer & consumer experiences, faster ops, and smarter decisions. Our work in conversion optimisation is focused on a balanced customer and consumer approach and is supported by our innovation framework, including the AI Labs.

Artificial Intelligence: Should I Build or Buy? What is your opinion?

This question gets to the heart of how we plan to effectively cross the GenAI Divide. The MIT survey data provides compelling strategic guidance on this crucial "Build or Buy" decision, and we pay close attention to findings like these.

Our Key Takeaways from the Survey:

We recognize that organizations that understand this pattern position themselves to cross the GenAI Divide more effectively. The data indicates that, for many AI initiatives:

• Success Rate: External partnerships with learning-capable, customized tools proved successful twice as often as internal builds. Externally sourced solutions reached deployment approximately 67% of the time, compared to only 33% for internally built tools.

• Adoption and Usage: Employee usage rates were nearly double for externally built tools.

• Efficiency: These external partnerships often provided a faster time-to-value, lower total cost, and better alignment with operational workflows. Companies were able to avoid the overhead of building solutions from scratch while still achieving tailored solutions.

Our Opinion:

In our view, while these figures are based on self-reported outcomes and might not account for every confounding factor, the differences reported are too significant and consistent to ignore. We believe that each organisation should be strategic about using AI.

When it comes to complex, learning-capable, customized AI tools, external partnerships often provide a significant advantage in terms of speed of deployment, cost, and crucially, employee adoption. We maintain a pragmatic, flexible approach, but the evidence suggests that leveraging external expertise allows us to ship value faster by avoiding the internal challenges of building complex AI from scratch. This allows our internal teams to focus on integrating and scaling these high-value tools across our platforms.

As tangible examples of successful AI implementation, we can draw upon the likes of DX, Databricks Genie, and Cursor, which are external tools that facilitate swift development while ensuring high adoption rates.