Sarah Bell is the Co-Founder, COO, and CMO of Aire Software. She is also known for playing a leading role in the creation of RITA, a clever robot designed to solve the problems of cost and scale in growing real estate businesses.  

AI is changing real estate for consumers, but with that change comes fear. Will robots and AI replace real estate agents, especially in regards to customer interface? Sarah believes that they won’t. And coming from the ‘mother’ of a robot, that’s saying something.

She believes that real estate agents will remain central and very important in the transaction. After all, humans of different strengths and weaknesses already work in teams in workplaces. Robots and AI will, Sarah says, just become an essential member of this team.

The question isn’t “Will they take all our jobs”, it’s “How can we take advantage of this technology to make as work better?”

RITA, for example, was not designed to replace the agent nor disruptive (Fun fact: RITA stands for Real Estate Intelligent Transaction Assistance), she was designed to be supportive technology. With the current state of the real estate industry, agents stand to gain much from supportive tech.

“Most agents have all this data just sitting in their CRM. It’s latent opportunity. They aren’t making that human-to-human engagement. What RITA does is take the details in their CRM, mash it up with other data, and convert into opportunities.”

RITA was created to feel like the dream assistant. She doesn’t have to be trained out of the box, she already knows how to analyze the CRM, understand who reads every single mode, and what the context is of every single relationship in the business. Plus, if agents get really busy, they don’t have to read RITA, she can just continue expanding and learning.

Another of RITA’s handy functions are essentially making cold calls easier–giving agents reasons to call.  So an example of that is, she might notice that 15 on Jane Smith's street come on the market. And an agent knows the property owners of 8 and 12, RITA is going to suggest for the agent to get in touch with their property owners–let them know about the new event that’s happening on the street.

That would help an agent establish themselves as a local market expert and reduce cases of being hung up on.