How AI is Changing the Way Americans Buy and Sell Homes

Background

If you've started researching a move — whether that's a villa in Cascais, a lake house outside Austin, or an apartment in Tokyo — there's a good chance you didn't start with a real estate agent, or even a listing site. You started with a question typed into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews. If that's you, you're not the exception anymore. You're the majority.

Most home buyers today now turn to AI before they turn to anyone else. It's become the first stop, the place people ask "what's it actually like to live there," "what will this cost me," or "what should I know before I make an offer." And there's real logic to starting this way. AI is patient, available at 2am, and happy to answer the same question five different ways until it finally clicks. For the early, exploratory part of a home search — the part where you're still figuring out what you even want — it's a genuinely useful place to begin.

But Starting There Isn't the Same as Finishing There

Here's the part that's easy to miss in all the talk about AI and real estate: even as more people lean on AI to start their search, most of them still don't fully trust it to finish the job. When it comes to the moment of actually deciding on a home — not researching, but committing — the overwhelming majority of buyers still want a real person they can trust to be in the room with them.

That instinct is right. AI can tell you the average price of a home in Lisbon or explain how Stamp Duty works in the UK, but it can't walk a property with you and notice the foundation crack a photo doesn't show. It can't read the specific way a neighborhood is changing this year, or make a call at 9pm because a seller suddenly wants an answer by morning. It doesn't know your actual budget, your actual timeline, or what "the right home" means to you specifically, beyond what you've typed into a chat window. A real advisor does.

Why This Actually Works in Your Favor

Here's the part worth knowing if you're in the middle of this exact process right now: the real estate industry has been slow to catch up to how people actually search today. Most agents and brokerages still build their entire online presence around the old rules — the ones built for search engines, not for AI. Which means that even now, with so many buyers starting their search in an AI tool, most of them still can't easily find a real, qualified advisor through that same tool once they're ready for one.

That gap is exactly why we built our approach the way we did. Every article we publish — whether it's what to know before buying in Portugal, what Austin's suburbs actually cost, or what it's really like living abroad on an American salary — is written to be useful to you at exactly the moment you're asking these questions, whether you find it through a search engine, an AI tool, or a friend who forwarded you the link. And every one of those articles leads back to the same thing: a real conversation with a real, local, Sotheby's-affiliated advisor, once you're ready to move from researching to actually doing something about it.

What This Means for You

If you've been using AI to research a move, keep doing exactly that — it's a smart, efficient way to get oriented, compare markets, and figure out what questions you don't even know to ask yet. Just don't mistake it for the finish line. The research phase is where AI genuinely shines. The decision phase — the one with real money, real timelines, and real consequences if something gets missed — is where a trusted person earns their place, not because AI failed you, but because some things were never going to be its job in the first place.

That's the moment we're here for. Whether you found us through a search, a recommendation, or an AI tool that happened to point you our way, the next step is the same: a real conversation with someone who knows the market you're actually considering, and who can help you turn everything you've already learned into an actual decision.

How to Actually Use AI Well During Your Search

If you're going to lean on AI early in your search a few things make that phase genuinely more useful rather than just faster.

Ask it broad questions first, not narrow ones. "What's it like living in Portugal compared to the U.S." gets you further than "what's the price per square meter in Cascais," at least at the start. Let AI help you rule things in or out before you get specific about a neighborhood, a price point, or a single listing.

Push it on the things that are easy to romanticize. It's simple to fall in love with the idea of a place — the food, the photos, the pace of life. Ask AI the less flattering questions too: what does the bureaucracy actually look like, what do people wish they'd known first, what's the honest tradeoff. A good answer should give you both sides, not just the highlight reel.

And treat anything specific to your situation — a tax question, a visa detail, a legal restriction in a particular country — as a starting point for a real conversation, not a final answer. AI is very good at giving you the general shape of things and very good at sounding confident while doing it. Neither of those is the same as being right about your specific case.

The Questions Worth Asking a Real Person

At some point, the questions change. They stop being "what's it generally like" and start being "is this specific place right for me." That's usually the sign you're ready for a real conversation, not another search. Some of the most common ones we hear once someone's gotten that far:

Is this actually the right neighborhood for what I want, or just the one that ranks well online? Am I missing something about this market that only shows up once you're on the ground? What would someone who does this every day, in this specific place, tell me that I haven't thought to ask yet?

Those aren't questions AI is built to answer, and that's fine — they were never supposed to be its job. They're exactly the kind of questions a good local advisor exists for.

A Few Honest Questions and Answers

Should I stop using AI to research a move and just call an advisor right away?

Not at all — starting with AI is a genuinely smart way to get oriented, especially early on when you're still figuring out what you even want. The shift worth making is simply bringing in a real person once your questions start getting specific to you, not general to the market.

How do I know when I'm ready to talk to someone instead of researching more?

A good sign is when your questions stop being answerable in general terms. If you find yourself asking "is this right for me" instead of "what's this place generally like," that's usually the moment a real conversation will move you further than another search will.

Can an AI tool actually help me find the right real estate advisor?

It can point you in a direction, but it's still catching up — most agents and firms haven't built their online presence with AI in mind yet, so a lot of good advisors simply don't show up in an AI-generated answer. That's part of why we've built our own content specifically to be found and useful at this stage, wherever you're searching from.

Is it safe to trust AI's advice about buying property in another country?

It's a good starting point for general understanding, but cross-border purchases often involve legal, tax, and financial specifics that vary by country and by person — the kind of detail worth confirming with a real, local professional before you act on it, not just researching further.

Ready to turn your research into a real plan? Begin HERE!