By: Susan Rogers, NewsWorthy Homes Editor
As artificial intelligence begins reshaping home search, new-construction strategist Lori Lane says builders should be thinking beyond where their homes are listed, and about how they will be discovered.
For decades, the first steps of buying a home followed a familiar pattern: choose an area, set a price range, enter a bedroom count and scroll through listings.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to rewrite that process.
At HousingWire’s AI Summit on August 11, real estate executives predicted that AI agents will increasingly play a role in home discovery, helping consumers search for homes based on individual goals and preferences rather than traditional filters alone. HouseCanary CEO Chris Rediger also discussed the company’s national pilot with Google that places real estate listings directly within Google search results.
For Lori Lane, President and CEO of LLANE & Co., the shift represents something much bigger than another new technology for the real estate industry to adopt.
It could change how buyers discover homes in the first place.
Lori Lane has spent more than two decades specializing in new construction, leading the sales, marketing, and sellout of more than 400 new-home communities across Georgia. A frequent media source on new-home trends, she has been featured by outlets including Business Insider, USA Today, and Yahoo Finance and has earned more than 500 industry awards throughout her career.
Now, Lane says builders should be watching how rapidly AI is moving from a behind-the-scenes business tool to something consumers may increasingly use at the very beginning of their home search.
“For years, builders have focused on whether their communities could be found on Google, the MLS and the major real estate portals,” Lane said. “The next question may be different: When a buyer asks AI to help find the right home, will it understand enough about your community to recommend it?”
Home Search Is Becoming a Conversation
That shift is already underway.
Realtor.com recently introduced RealAssist AI, developed in collaboration with Google using Gemini, allowing home shoppers to research properties through natural-language conversations rather than relying exclusively on traditional search filters.
Instead of simply entering “four bedrooms, three bathrooms, under $800,000,” consumers can ask questions about affordability, neighborhoods, commutes, and how a particular home might fit their lives.
According to Realtor.com, 83% of early RealAssist interactions involve users requesting additional context, financial calculations, neighborhood assessments, or discussing how a property fits their needs. The company has also launched a Realtor.com experience within ChatGPT designed to reach consumers during the earliest stages of home search. Realtor.com reports that buyers are using these tools not simply to find listings, but to understand them.
Lane sees an important lesson in that behavior.
“This is much closer to the conversation a great new-home salesperson has always had with a buyer,” Lane said. “The best sales professionals don’t just ask how many bedrooms someone needs. They ask how they live. Where do they work? What does their family need? What are they trying to change about the home they have today? Technology is beginning to bring that kind of conversation into the discovery process.”
A Particular Opportunity for New Construction
For builders, AI-powered search presents an especially interesting opportunity because a new-home community is far more complex than a single listing.
A buyer may be choosing among multiple floor plans, homesites, inventory homes, and stages of construction. Pricing and incentives may change. Some homes may be available immediately while others can be personalized. And the appeal of the community often extends far beyond the specifications of an individual house.
That means helping technology understand new construction requires more than simply publishing an address, price, and bedroom count.
“A community may have exactly what a buyer is looking for, but the information has to clearly communicate that,” Lane said. “The home matters, but so do the lifestyle, location, amenities, floor plan, availability, timing, and value proposition. The more sophisticated the buyer’s question becomes, the more clearly we have to communicate why a particular community is the right answer.”
The issue is already drawing industry attention. The National Association of Realtors recently highlighted the fragmented nature of new-construction information, which can be distributed among builder websites, sales centers, email updates, and third-party platforms rather than one centralized source. NAR called greater accessibility to new-construction information an industry opportunity.
For Lane, the rise of conversational search makes getting that digital foundation right even more important.
The Next Search May Start With a Story, Not a Filter
Imagine a buyer asking:
Find me a new home in an active adult community within 1 hour of Atlanta with pickleball courts, a clubhouse with a bar, plenty of social events, low-maintenance living, and enough space for the grandkids to visit.
That is a very different search from checking boxes for ZIP code, square footage, and bedroom count.
And it creates an opportunity for builders who have clearly defined both who their community is for and why someone should want to live there.
“We’ve always talked about knowing your buyer,” Lane said. “AI may make that more important, not less. If consumers can describe exactly what they want, builders need to be equally good at describing exactly what they offer.”
Lane believes that could ultimately elevate the importance of branding and storytelling in new-home marketing.
Technology can compare price, location, square footage, and specifications with increasing sophistication. What is harder to reduce to a filter is the experience of living somewhere: the streetscape, architecture, community design, amenities, personality and emotional connection that transforms a house into a place a buyer can picture calling home.
AI Can Make the Introduction. Builders Still Create the Desire.
Lane does not see AI replacing the human component of buying and selling real estate. She sees it potentially changing the path consumers take before they reach the builder, community or salesperson.
That distinction matters.
“AI may become incredibly good at narrowing hundreds of possibilities into the homes a buyer should consider,” Lane said. “But buying a home isn’t the same as buying a commodity. A buyer still has to walk into a community and feel something. Great product matters. Thoughtful development matters. The sales experience matters. The story matters.”
Her advice to builders is not to chase every emerging AI platform. It is to make sure the fundamentals of their digital marketing are ready for a world in which consumers increasingly search by asking questions rather than clicking filters.
Accurate information. Clear positioning. Complete community details. Consistent messaging. And a compelling explanation of what makes the product different.
Because the technology surrounding home search may be changing quickly, but the buyer’s fundamental question has not:
Which home is right for me?
“AI may help decide which homes make the shortlist,” Lane said. “But builders still have to create the product, place, and story that make someone want to come see it. Technology can make the introduction. We still have to create the desire.”
