In recent months artificial intelligence has commanded growing attention as its reach extends into virtually every corner of daily life. The chief executive of Cloudflare, one of the companies that quietly route a fifth of the world's internet traffic, posted a brief note that deserved more attention than it received. "Welp, that happened faster than I predicted," Matthew Prince wrote. For the first time in the history of the web, automated software was generating more requests to ordinary webpages than human beings. The split, by Cloudflare's measure, was 57% machine to 43% human. Prince had forecast this crossover for the end of 2027. It arrived 18 months early.
For almost two decades, the bots crawling the web were search engines indexing
pages and scrapers harvesting data. What changed is the arrival of AI agents that browse the web on behalf of a person. They visit pages, compare options, fill out forms and complete transactions, all without someone ever opening a browser. Prince offered the clearest illustration of the scale involved. A person shopping for a digital camera might visit five websites before deciding. AI might visit 5,000.
Today every business is adjusting to an even more empowered consumer, including the real estate brokerage industry. But the impact is now extending beyond the initial stages of the homebuying process when customers are screening homes and communities for best fit, as it has always been about more than the house. It now reaches into the relocation and moving arenas.
Moving is one of life's most consequential transitions, and one of its most complicated. It means packing everything you own, hiring a moving company and sometimes arranging temporary housing. It also means budgeting for repairs once you have the keys, absorbing an unfamiliar set of monthly expenses, understanding the consequences of tax rules and finding your footing in a new community. Relocate for work and there may be another layer of corporate benefits, company policy and required service providers. AI is beginning to shape every part of the process.
Discussions about AI in real estate have looked inward at what technology does for the industry and the professionals who work in it. We, however, have to question what it does for the person moving, as we have grown accustomed to technology that lets us compare options, understand costs and get answers immediately. AI extends that reach into corners of the process that were previously opaque, from what a moving company should charge to how one school district compares with another.
The shift is measurable. A Bank of America survey highlighted by the National Association of Realtors found that one in five prospective buyers and homeowners have used AI tools or chatbots in their research, with adoption approaching one in three among the youngest buyers.
There is room to make the experience less stressful. A Zillow survey found that half of homebuyers cry at some point during the process. The useful question, then, is not how much artificial intelligence may be introduced into real estate. It is how much friction technology may remove.
The advantage of real estate pros
Anyone can now ask an AI assistant about home prices, neighborhoods, closing costs and moving estimates. But more information has never been the same thing as less complication or certainty in decision-making. The work that remains is judging which information is reliable, comparing options that are rarely presented on equal terms and coordinating the many moving parts of leaving one home and establishing another. This is where the real estate professional is irreplaceable.
Consider how fragmented the relocation industry remains today. Household goods are handled by one company. Temporary housing comes from another. Real estate, tax questions and a dozen smaller services each create their own decisions and points of contact. Add the sale of one home and the purchase of another and what should be an exciting transition could begin to feel like a second job.
Alex Wilbrett, vice president of brand engagement and relocation at Premier Sotheby's International Realty, sees the effect of better-informed consumers firsthand. As people use AI to research a move, she says, they are arriving with more information, from housing markets and neighborhoods to schools, commute patterns, costs and the logistics of relocation itself. That access allows consumers to explore their options more deeply and ask better questions, but it can also create a false sense of certainty. Relocation is rarely a series of isolated decisions; each choice affects the next, and understanding how those pieces come together requires context, local knowledge and experienced guidance.
The moving industry offers an early look at where this leads. Bill Mulholland, the founder of ARC Relocation, recently launched Agoyu, an AI platform built to bring transparency to traditional relocation. Rather than spending hours describing what needs to be moved, fielding estimates and trying to determine whether competing quotes are even comparable, a consumer can scan the rooms of a home with a smartphone while the software identifies and categorizes the contents. Once that inventory is reviewed, pricing from participating movers can be compared against a defined scope of work.
Extend that logic and the possibilities become significant. Technology could organize the components of a relocation, clarify costs, compare qualified providers, coordinate dates and keep it aligned with the sale or purchase of a home. Instead of chasing answers across a dozen sources and serving as the manager of your move, the complexity is managed for you.
Should AI manage your next move?
That prospect comes with obligations. When an AI system recommends a mover, a service provider or a home, the consumer should understand why and retain the ability to compare alternatives. Personal information should be protected. Speed matters only when the underlying information is accurate. AI produces answers with remarkable efficiency. What it cannot reliably tell you is whether you asked the right question, whether a material consideration was omitted or how a general fact applies to your particular circumstances. That distinction matters a great deal when the decision is where you are going to live.
Wilbrett's view is that local expertise has become more valuable, not less. People relocating still need advisers who understand market history and the character of individual neighborhoods that do not appear in any dataset. AI cannot tell a buyer what a pending special assessment will cost them in a specific building or read the insurance exposure hiding in a particular street, or judge whether a home lives the way a family lives. Information is now abundant and nearly free. Judgment, interpretation and advocacy are not, and yet they are precisely what buyers arriving over-informed and under-advised will need most.
Moving will always mean more than transporting belongings from one address to another. It marks a new job, a growing family, a retirement, the start of a chapter. Artificial intelligence can make that passage easier, yet ultimate confidence has always been the product of people rather than machines.
The moment machines began navigating the web more than people is a milestone worth marking, but not for the reason it will be repeated. It marks the point at which information stopped being the scarce thing in a real estate transaction, and good counsel became the scarcest thing of all.
Budge Huskey is chief executive officer of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Should you let AI change how you buy and sell your home? | Home Front
