SMG's Martin Waeber on AI, Monetising Seekers, and Hockey

Martin Waeber, Managing Director of SMG Real Estate, expects personal AI property advisors to become standard on leading property portals within three years.

In an impromptu interview with the Online Marketplaces team at the Proptech and Portal Watch conference in Madrid, Waeber shared some opinions on where he believes AI will take the industry, among other topics.

“Three years is a long time. I believe we will see that basically everybody has their own AI property advisor, which helps you go along the whole journey, managing all the hurdles you have, and assisting you to get into your new home. I think this will probably be a standard, I would assume, of any leading portal around the globe.

"For seekers, the most practical contribution will probably be in narrowing down choices on different options for my next home, and probably also getting more transparency on the trade-offs between those options, with the possibility of AI and proprietary data. It will help seekers reduce the effort, at the end of the day, and probably also decrease the uncertainty which always comes along when you’re looking for a new home.

"It will be the duty of portals to remain very transparent with the consumer. This is the whole trade-off of two-sided marketplaces. One side pays for the listing, but on the other side, our job is to serve the seeker. So I think it will be a fine line, but always probably in favour of the seeker."

Waeber also teased an upcoming AI product launch for property managers. As a rentals-driven market, Swiss property managers lose a lot of time answering requests from potential renters, while renters are often frustrated when they hear nothing back.

“We caught this pain point for both sides and developed an AI auto-reply. The AI knows all about the listing, and what should be answered on any request of a potential seeker. The tool is constantly learning and saves agents many hours a month. It’s still early stage, but we already have 100 adopted customers, with more to come."

Waeber said SMG’s consumer-side monetisation focuses on the private side of the market, shifting from pay-per-ad listings for private sellers to more demand-side and seeker-side revenue. The aim, he said, is “a more resilient model” as freemium platforms offering free private listings become more common.

“That’s the ultimate intention: to have a new growth path, but which gives us the flexibility to play on both sides depending on the market circumstances. And I truly believe on the seeker side of things there is much more to gain in the future, also with AI.”

On why SMG speaks openly when many major portal operators do not, Waeber said: "I’m convinced, and a true believer, as I always was: do good things and speak about them. Otherwise it’s not valuable if nobody knows what you’re doing."

As a listed company in a competitive market, he said SMG has to be careful not to disclose anything that could affect financial markets or help competitors. "I have a clear focus on what can be said and what can’t be said, but what can be said should always be disclosed as broadly as possible."

Waeber is a big hockey fan. As is widely accepted in team sports, the collective is more important than its star player. As an outgoing Managing Director, his advice to his peers is simple: aim high.

"In this industry, you have to set the bar always high. Make good choices on your team. You can have a very, very high-performing individual player, but if this player doesn’t fit into the team performance, he can even destroy the performance of the whole team and, by analogy, of the whole company. One of our core values is, 'better together', combining high performance and humility at the same time."