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Homebuyers and sellers are beginning to use artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to research homes, understand local markets and find real estate agents.
This is changing real estate discovery.
For years, a Realtor's online visibility depended mainly on Google rankings, real estate portals, referrals, reviews and social media. Those channels still matter. But a new layer is emerging between consumers and real estate professionals: AI recommendation engines.
Instead of searching:
“Richmond Realtor”
a buyer can now ask:
“Who is a good Realtor for a first-time condo buyer in Richmond, BC?”
Instead of opening ten websites, the buyer may receive a short answer containing only a handful of names.
The National Association of Realtors now explicitly acknowledges this behavior. In May 2026, NAR wrote that buyers and sellers are increasingly asking AI tools questions such as “Who is the best real estate agent near me?” and “Who is the top listing agent in my area?” NAR describes Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, as a new opportunity for real estate lead generation.
That shift creates a new question for every real estate professional:
When a buyer or seller asks AI for a Realtor recommendation, does AI know who you are?
The Short Answer: Are People Really Using AI for Real Estate?
Yes.
AI is already becoming part of the housing research and decision-making process.
A 2025 Realtor.com survey of 1,000 U.S. adults who had recently bought or sold a home, or were considering doing so, found that 82% were using AI for real estate market information. ChatGPT was used by 67% of respondents and Gemini by 54%. Real estate agents remained the most trusted source, but AI was almost tied with agents when respondents were asked which sources helped them become smarter about the market.
The trend is not limited to the United States.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's 2026 Mortgage Consumer Survey found that 16% of Canadian mortgage consumers who researched online used AI to obtain mortgage-related information. This was the first year CMHC measured the behavior.
McKinsey describes an even broader change.
In its July 2026 analysis of residential real estate, McKinsey said AI is changing how consumers discover housing, compare options, get questions answered, assess affordability, schedule tours and build trust. It also noted that consumers are increasingly incorporating AI-powered answer engines, assistants and recommendation-driven discovery into the front end of the housing journey.
AI is therefore no longer only a productivity tool for real estate professionals.
It is becoming part of how consumers make real estate decisions.
Are Buyers and Sellers Using AI to Find Realtors?
Yes, this behavior is emerging.
NAR now specifically identifies questions such as “Who is the best real estate agent near me?” as examples of the way buyers and sellers are using generative AI.
This matters because finding a Realtor is fundamentally a local recommendation problem.
Consumers do not necessarily want a list of every licensed agent in Vancouver, Toronto or New York. They want an agent who fits a specific situation.
A buyer might ask:
- Who is a good Realtor for buying a condo in Richmond?
- Which Realtor specializes in first-time homebuyers in Burnaby?
- Who knows Coquitlam detached homes well?
- Which Realtor can help a Mandarin-speaking buyer in Metro Vancouver?
- Who is experienced with downsizing in Vancouver?
AI systems are designed to answer questions like these directly.
And consumer behavior outside real estate suggests that people are becoming comfortable asking AI for local professional recommendations.
BrightLocal's 2026 research found that 45% of consumers had used AI tools for local business recommendations during the previous year, up from only 6% the year before. AI had become the third-most-used source for local business recommendations behind Google and Facebook.
Another BrightLocal study found that 23% of consumers used AI during their most recent local-business search, while 31% said they used AI for local recommendations at least monthly.
A Realtor is exactly the type of business where local knowledge, reputation, specialization and trust matter.
That makes real estate particularly relevant to the rise of AI-powered local discovery.
Google Search and AI Search Work Differently
Traditional search and AI recommendation systems solve different problems.
A Google search for:
“Best Realtors in Vancouver”
may show ads, map listings, directories, brokerage pages, agent websites and organic search results.
The consumer still has to evaluate those options.
An AI query can behave differently.
Ask:
“I live in Vancouver and want to sell my condo and buy a detached home in Coquitlam. Which Realtors should I consider?”
The AI system may research available information and produce a summarized shortlist.
This changes the competition.
With traditional SEO, being visible somewhere on page one can still generate traffic.
With AI search, the important question may become:
Were you included in the answer at all?
A 2026 Local Falcon study demonstrates how concentrated these recommendations can become.
Local Falcon ran 37,500 AI searches across the 100 largest U.S. cities, testing queries including “best realtor near me,” “best real estate agent near me” and “top rated real estate agent near me.”
Among the established agents and teams benchmarked in the study, 91.5% were never cited by an AI platform.
Even more striking, in the average city, the single most-cited Realtor received approximately 26.6% of all agent citations, while the top 10% of agents captured 56.1%.
This suggests that AI visibility may be much more concentrated than traditional search visibility.
Being a Successful Realtor Does Not Automatically Mean AI Will Recommend You
One of the most important findings from current research is that real-world success and AI visibility are not necessarily the same thing.
Local Falcon compared AI citations with RealTrends production rankings.
Only 21.2% of the highest-volume individual agents in the cities studied were cited by any AI platform.
That means a Realtor could have:
strong transaction volume,
years of experience,
excellent client relationships,
hundreds of past clients,
and a respected local reputation,
yet still have weak visibility when someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for an agent recommendation.
Why?
Because AI systems do not personally know the Realtor.
They must reconstruct that Realtor's reputation and expertise from information available across the web.
If the digital evidence is unclear, fragmented or missing, an AI system may have difficulty understanding why that Realtor should be recommended for a particular query.
What Information Does AI Need to Understand a Realtor?
AI visibility begins with clarity.
An AI system should be able to determine basic facts about a real estate professional with high confidence.
For example:
Who are you?
Are you an individual Realtor, team or brokerage?
Where do you work?
Richmond? Burnaby? Vancouver? Coquitlam? Surrey?
What do you specialize in?
Condos? Luxury homes? First-time buyers? Sellers? Investors? Downsizers? Presales?
What evidence supports that expertise?
Listings, market reports, neighborhood guides, client reviews, transaction history, third-party mentions and professional profiles can all contribute to an AI system's understanding of an agent.
Can your information be verified elsewhere?
Consistency between your website, brokerage profile, Google Business Profile, review platforms and other authoritative sources can help establish confidence.
This is one reason a Realtor's website remains important even in an AI-first discovery environment.
BrightLocal analyzed 200,875 non-branded local AI searches and approximately 1.9 million AI citations in 2026. It found that 93% of unique domains used as sources were business websites, and business websites accounted for 42% of citations.
AI search does not make websites irrelevant.
It changes what a website needs to accomplish.
A Realtor website should not simply look professional.
It should clearly explain the entities, locations, services, expertise and evidence that machines and humans need in order to understand the business.
What Is GEO for Realtors?
Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, is the process of making a Realtor easier for AI systems to find, understand, verify and potentially recommend.
SEO focuses primarily on improving visibility in traditional search engines.
GEO focuses on visibility inside generated answers from systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI experiences.
The two disciplines overlap.
Good websites, strong local authority, useful content, reviews, structured information and credible third-party references can help both.
But the measurement is different.
Traditional SEO asks:
“Where do I rank on Google?”
GEO asks:
“When someone asks AI a relevant question, am I included in the answer?”
NAR describes GEO similarly: structuring a real estate professional's digital presence so AI systems can find, understand and recommend them.
Why AI Recommendations Could Matter More Than Traditional Rankings
AI does not simply retrieve information.
Increasingly, it helps consumers reduce their options.
BCG's 2026 research into consumer purchasing behavior found that generative AI is becoming an influential purchase touchpoint. More than 60% of consumers surveyed expressed high trust in GenAI results.
Separate BCG research found that AI introduced consumers to brands they otherwise would not have considered in approximately 63% of AI-assisted purchase journeys. BCG described AI as increasingly assembling the consumer's consideration set on their behalf.
Real estate is different from buying a pair of shoes or choosing a restaurant, and consumers should not rely on AI alone for a major financial decision.
But the underlying discovery behavior matters.
If AI begins the research process by introducing three or five Realtors, those agents have entered the consumer's consideration set.
Everyone else has to find another way in.
This is why AI visibility should be thought of as consideration visibility, not simply website traffic.
AI Is Not Replacing Realtors
The rise of AI does not mean buyers and sellers no longer need real estate professionals.
Current research suggests the opposite relationship may be more realistic:
AI helps consumers research. Humans remain essential for trust, judgment, negotiation and execution.
Realtor.com's research found that despite widespread AI adoption, consumers still considered real estate agents the most accurate and trusted source of housing market information.
McKinsey similarly argues that housing companies should combine AI efficiency with human support, especially because real estate involves affordability, financing, repairs, negotiations and emotionally significant decisions.
The important change is therefore not:
AI versus Realtors.
It is:
AI becoming part of the path that leads consumers to Realtors.
That distinction matters.
The New Real Estate Discovery Journey
The old journey often looked like this:
Search → website → research → contact Realtor
The emerging journey can look more like:
Ask AI → receive recommendations → verify Realtor → visit website/reviews/social profiles → contact Realtor
AI may increasingly sit near the beginning of the funnel.
But consumers still verify what AI tells them.
BrightLocal found that many users continue researching recommended businesses after receiving an AI answer. In one study, only 18% of AI local-search users said they were immediately ready to contact the recommended business; most continued checking Google and other sources.
This means GEO does not eliminate the need for SEO, reviews, websites or social media.
It connects them.
Your website may provide expertise.
Reviews provide trust signals.
Third-party platforms provide corroboration.
Local content establishes relevance.
AI systems can use those signals to construct an answer.
The consumer can then use those same signals to verify it.
What Should Realtors Do Now?
Realtors do not need to abandon SEO or chase every new AI platform.
The first step is simply understanding their current AI visibility.
A useful AI visibility test should examine realistic questions that actual buyers and sellers might ask.
For a Vancouver-area Realtor, those could include questions around geography, property type, customer situation and expertise.
The goal is not merely to ask:
“Does ChatGPT know my name?”
The better questions are:
“Which customer problems does AI associate with my name?”
“Which competitors appear when I don't?”
“What sources is AI relying on?”
“What information about me is missing or unclear?”
“Does my visibility change across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI?”
Local Falcon's study found that 82.6% of agents that appeared in AI results were named by only one AI platform and no others.
There is therefore no single universal “AI ranking.”
Visibility should be measured across platforms, queries and customer intents.
What Does This Mean for Real Estate Marketing?
For more than a decade, real estate digital marketing focused heavily on being found.
The next phase will increasingly focus on being understood and recommended.
A Realtor's digital presence needs to communicate more than a name and brokerage logo.
It needs to create a machine-readable and human-verifiable answer to questions such as:
Who is this Realtor?
Where do they work?
What are they known for?
Who do they help?
Why should someone trust them?
What evidence supports their expertise?
What do independent sources say about them?
When that information is scattered or ambiguous, AI has to guess.
When it is structured, consistent and supported by credible evidence, AI has a clearer picture to work with.
That is the foundation of real estate GEO.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can ChatGPT recommend Realtors?
Yes. ChatGPT can answer questions asking for real estate agent recommendations using information available to it and, when browsing or search capabilities are available, information from the web. NAR has specifically identified “Who is the best real estate agent near me?” as an example of the questions buyers and sellers are increasingly asking AI tools.
Are homebuyers actually using AI?
Yes. Realtor.com's 2025 survey found that 82% of surveyed current or prospective buyers and sellers were using AI for real estate market information. In Canada, CMHC found that 16% of mortgage consumers who researched online used AI for mortgage-related information in 2026.
What is GEO for real estate agents?
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the practice of improving a real estate professional's visibility and clarity inside AI-generated answers. The objective is to make it easier for systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to understand who the Realtor is, where they operate, what they specialize in and what evidence supports their expertise.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. GEO and SEO overlap significantly. Websites, local content, reviews, authority and clear business information remain important. GEO adds another measurement layer: whether AI systems mention, cite or recommend the business when answering relevant consumer questions.
Does ranking highly on Google mean a Realtor will rank highly in AI?
Not necessarily. BrightLocal's 2026 local AI study found that Google Maps visibility did not translate directly into AI visibility. Local Falcon also found a significant disconnect between real estate production rankings and AI citations.
Why should Realtors care about AI visibility now?
Because AI is moving into the discovery and research stage of the housing journey. McKinsey reports that AI is already influencing how consumers discover housing, compare options, ask questions and assess affordability. NAR now specifically recognizes AI-driven Realtor discovery as an emerging lead-generation channel.
The Bottom Line
The most important change in real estate search is not that consumers have stopped using Google.
They haven't.
It is that consumers now have another way to find answers.
They can ask AI.
And when they ask AI which Realtor to consider, they may receive only a small set of names.
Research from Realtor.com, NAR, McKinsey, CMHC, BrightLocal, BCG and Local Falcon points in the same general direction: AI is moving deeper into consumer research, local discovery and the housing journey.
For real estate professionals, that creates a new category of visibility.
Being visible on Google still matters.
Being visible on social media still matters.
Having reviews still matters.
But there is now another question worth measuring:
When a buyer or seller asks AI who they should work with, are you part of the answer?
Maahes currently runs your selected local questions through the Gemini API each week. You can see whether you appear, how you are described, and which sources are cited when available. This does not test the consumer Gemini app or other platforms discussed here.
Start with an AI Visibility Test and see what AI says about you.