Google Rolls Dice on Real Estate Listings

Google put several for-sale listings directly into its search results on mobile devices over the weekend, after testing a new paid-for partnership with the AI-powered real estate brokerage HouseCanary.

Google appeared to be testing an upgraded search function that links to specific listings—which directly lead to full property pages including agent contact details and the ability to organise tours—for a limited number of markets in the US.

According to a screenshot of a Google search result shared in an article by Mike DelPrete:

These results are a curated selection of propertiers brought to you in paid partnership between Google and ComeHome. Property results ar not supplied or sponsored by listing agents or brokers.

HouseCanary operates the portal and nationwide brokerage ComeHome, while also operating a data insights business that provides accurate property data, valuations, market forecasts, and AI-driven analytics across the length and breadth of the United States.

HouseCanary says it has detailed information for around 100 million homes in the US. Ballpark figures suggest this is well over half, and potentially as high as two-thirds, of the total housing stock in the United States (circa 150 million homes).

'HouseCanary AI' will also be of interest to Google, "a full‑funnel research assistant that has access to all of HouseCanary’s industry-leading data and analytics," according to a HouseCanary company statement made earlier this year.

Additional functionalities of HouseCanary AI include one-click document downloads and an alert system for when off-market properties are likely going to be publicly listed imminently.

Google is one of the few search platforms in the country more well-known than Zillow, and now it has a highly knowledgeable lab partner in the form of HouseCanary. Assuming its brief experiment this past weekend bore fruit, watch closely for repeat experiments in more markets in the coming weeks and months. If Google is happy with what it sees, it is one of the few companies in the world that could theoretically scale this home search feature globally.

Given OpenAI's recent collaborations with the market-leading portals REA Group (Australia) and Scout24 (Germany), there's increasingly little doubt that the AI giants are making aggressive forays into the global real estate marketplace industry, and this is perhaps the terrain upon which the real portal wars will be fought.