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Star Tech: SuperAgent is the first AI-driven ranking system for property agents in MENA

New mechanism uses data points to help home-seekers find most responsive agents

Property Finder, the region’s leading proptech company, has launched ‘SuperAgent’, Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) first artificial intelligence (AI)-driven ranking system, powered by an in-house data platform — Agent Data Assistant (ADA).

The new mechanism, which was launched at the end of last year, uses millions of data points to help home-seekers find the most responsive agents, with up-to-date and proven knowledge of properties and communities.

ADA browses quality patterns by combining agent responsiveness, quality of property listings, and agent reports to identify top-performing ones as SuperAgents.

An agent becomes a SuperAgent at Property Finder if they meet the guidelines of excellence and offer high-quality services to customers. Choosing a super-qualified agent is a 100 per cent automated process that depends on an individual agent’s performance — it’s not something a client can buy; it’s just data-based decisions to guarantee a true SuperAgent.

Christophe de Rassenfosse, Chief Product Officer at Property Finder, explained how creating new milestones and striving for innovation and excellence define the company.

“For over a decade, we have been committed to building a trustworthy real estate marketplace where property seekers are protected from fake listings and fraudulent advertisers. One way we achieved that was through our ‘verified listings’. Now, with the inception of new ground-breaking AI technologies, we introduce you to ‘SuperAgent’, built on our solid-proof algorithm-based ranking system, ADA.

“ADA adds a layer of science to the analytics workflow, surfacing quality scores and response time to reward best-in-class agents for market-leading consumer experiences, thereby improving the customer journey and establishing trustworthy relationships,” de Rassenfosse said.

“Built as an independent algorithm, the SuperAgent system is completely automatic. Using millions of data points, ADA can identify high-quality agents giving their best to serve home-seekers in their home-finding journey, making them stand out because of the quality of their services. It combines large sets of data with intelligent, iterative processing algorithms to learn from patterns and rank agents based on their performances. Each time an ADA algorithm runs a round of data processing, it tests and measures its own performance and develops additional expertise. This means that using Property Finder guarantees that home-seekers will work with the best agents in the region.”

Property Finder is the first real estate marketplace portal in the UAE to offer this enhanced experience to consumers. ADA can help to identify the best-in-class real estate agents that are committed to helping home-seekers search for their homes. The SuperAgents are building trusted partnerships with the home-seekers.

According to a recent survey conducted by Property Finder, most of the leads for real estate come through WhatsApp. Of those leads, about 36 per cent are responded to by agents within 30 minutes. However, 30 per cent of requests are not being responded to for different reasons.

“This problem affects home-seekers’ experience negatively and impacts the overall trust for the real estate sector, which is what we are fixing with ADA,” de Rassenfosse added.

Property Finder, which started as a classified magazine in 2005 by Michael Lahyani, grew to be the first full-blown digital real estate marketplace the following year. After more than a decade, the group is dominating the digital property business in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) region.

In time, plans are afoot to roll out the SuperAgent programme across other countries where Property Finder operates.

How can ADA help SuperAgent?

ADA is an in-house data assistant platform that supports agents who are consistently among the top performers. It is an independent algorithm built to identify agents who are property-seeker obsessed, always looking to provide the best quality property listing and respond faster than any other agents to the home-seeker’s needs. Based on certain parameters regarding response rates, response times, quality of listings and the number of removed listings from the generated reports, ADA creates a score for all agents which is then used to list the best-qualified agents in the market higher in Property Finder’s search ranking to ensure that property seekers are directed towards high-quality listings from highly responsive agents. It provides a detailed overview of the improvement area for agents to work on through which best agents get recognised as SuperAgents in the market, receiving more exposure and leads.

SuperAgent will raise the bar in the market, driving agents towards an improved experience for property seekers and ensuring prospective home buyers receive a best-in-market experience in identifying high-quality listings.