Conversational AI
for Real Estate

Agenda i
A whole lot a bot talk
AI is not magic 🎩
Bot deep learning models 💾
Connecting external data and APIs 🔌
Bot builder’s are too broad
Conversational interfaces
Structurely bot-chitecture

Bot Talk i
Bots are 🔥
What's a bot?
It’s like Siri, where you can use an app by
just messaging or talking to it
Why would I use a bot?
Its a more natural, on-demand, accessible
and efficient way of using an app
Gartner thinks by 2020, smart agents will
facilitate 40% of all mobile interactions, and
the post-app era will begin to dominate

4 Types of Bots i
A chatbot carries on a 2 way conversation
A personal assistant bot answers questions
and responds to commands
A notification bot posts in a chatroom, glorified RSS feed
A command line bot saves you from alt-tabbing to the browser
Like Holmes
Like Siri
Like Inman’s Bot
Like /commands in Slack
NOT
DELIVERED
NOT
DELIVERED
!
!

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
Bot
User
Bot
User
Bot

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
User
Bot
User
Bot
User
Bot
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
User
Bot
User
Bot
User
Bot
INTENT
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
User
Bot
User
Bot
User
Bot
INTENT
PROMPT
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish
Questions that ask for user data in
slots

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
User
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
User
Bot
User
Bot
INTENT
PROMPT
SLOT
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish
Questions that ask for user data in
slots
Data needed to execute on a specific intent

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
User
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
User
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
User
Bot
INTENT
PROMPT
SLOT
EXECUTION
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish
Questions that ask for user data in
slots
Data needed to execute on a specific intent
Function performed by application using
contextual or given slot data for a specific intent

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
User
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
User
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
User
Bot
INTENT
PROMPT
SLOT
EXECUTION
GOAL
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish
Questions that ask for user data in
slots
Data needed to execute on a specific intent
Function performed by application using
contextual or given slot data for a specific intent
Business application data required to
conclude

We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USACONTEXT
I'm looking for a 2 bed near
Bloomington between 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
User
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
User
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
User
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
INTENT
PROMPT
SLOT
EXECUTION
GOAL
CONCLUSION
User behavior & event data previous
conversation history
A goal the user wants to accomplish
Questions that ask for user data in
slots
Data needed to execute on a specific intent
Function performed by application using
contextual or given slot data for a specific intent
Business application data required to
conclude
Invokes a notification or service for the agent

The Problem With Bot-Builders i
Looking for 3bds 2bths house w/ finshd w/o LL bloomington mn
I’m looking for a home with a finished walkout basement in
bloomington, MN with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms
No sentences are the same in real estate, even
if they are trying to accomplish the same thing
Bot builders rely on deep learning for knowledge
in domains where they don’t have data
There’s simply too much real estate industry specific
jargon for broad deep learners to understand effectively

AI is Not Magic i
Soooo how do you make AI more real estate specific?
Lots and lots of hand trained data
Here’s an example of our data training console 💻

Evolution of Holmes i
It was built with wit.ai and other bot builders
How did you build Holmes V1?
How about V2?
In V2 we are adding CRFs, XGBoost, and
some deep learning NN’s like LSTM
How?

Bot-chitecture 🤖 i
How we built custom real estate chat bots
Natural
Language
Understanding
Preprocessing
Intent classification
Entity extraction
Response composers
Machine learning
Deep learning
Executions

Preprocessing i
Standardizing abbreviations and jargon
bdrm
br
bed
bedroom
Neural network vector
embedding of words
bath
bthrm
bths
bathroom

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
I'm looking for a 2 bedroom
near Bloomington between
200k and 250k
After standardizing

Preprocessing i
Stemming
Removing stop words
moving
mover
moved
move
Reduces a word to its
base, stem, or root
i
Removes most common
“meaningless” words
i Ex: “in”, “for”, “a”
These techniques should be used with caution

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
I'm looking for a 2 bedroom
near Bloomington between
200k and 250k
After standardizing
I'm look for a 2 bedroom
near Bloomington between
200k and 250k
After stemming

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
I'm looking for a 2 bedroom
near Bloomington between
200k and 250k
After standardizing
I'm look for a 2 bedroom
near Bloomington between
200k and 250k
After stemming
I'm look 2 bedroom near
Bloomington between 200k
250k
Stop words removed
for, a, and

Intent Classification i
n-gram feature generation
This is a
sentence.
1-gram (unigrams)
2-gram (bigrams)
3-gram (trigrams)
This is a sentence
This is is a a sentence
This is
a
is a sentence
tree based machine learning algorithms
trained on n-gram indicator features

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
Preprocessed text
i'm look 2 bedroom near
bloomington between 200k
250k
n-gram features (n=1, 2,
3)
i’m look look 2 i’m look 2
2 bedroom 2 bedroom near
Intent classified by
boosting or random forest
intent = “search for home”

Ston 123meShow
Entity Extraction i
Conditional Random Fields (CRFs)
Applies arbitrary labels to
a sequence of text
i
Example: address
extraction
info Main
0
STREET-NUM
B-STREET-NAME
I-STREET-NAME

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
Intent classified
intent = “search for home”
I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
CRF labelling scheme applied
• bedrooms = 2
• minimum price = 200,000
• maximum price = 250,000

Entity Extraction i
Neural network with LSTM for extracting subtle features
Neural network architecture capable of
learning long-term dependencies between
words
i
Image source: http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-08-Understanding-LSTMs/

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
Contains property feature
#52: “Finished basement”

Entity Extraction i
Neural network with LSTM for extracting subtle features
Neural network architecture capable of
learning long-term dependencies between
words
i
“I’d really like a bedroom and extra storage in the lower level.”
“Finished basement”

Executions i
Recommendation engine
Predictive days on market model
Automated valuation model
Public data lookup
Market stats
Maps
Points of interest
…
Machine learning
External APIs
Internal databases

I'm looking for a 2 bd near
Bloomington btwn 200k and 250k
Were there any other features you
were looking for in a home?
Bot
I'd really like a bedroom and extra
storage in the lower level
Sure! I found 39 homes I think you’ll like
Bot
Could I catch your email so I can send
you these listings?
Sure, its becky@buyer.com
Great Becky! I’ll have those listings to
you ASAP
Bot
We’re here talk, so ask us anything!
Message us below or from your favorite app
Brokerage USA
User
User
User
Recommendation engine
is triggered to execute
• bedrooms = 2
• minimum price = 200,000
• maximum price = 250,000
• finished basement
• storage space

Composers i
Humanizing a bot, but not too much
Stochastic structured responses
All responses are
generated randomly from
pre-defined messages or
template messages
Structured vs. statistical composers
Markov
chains,
seq2seq
Difficult to
train and rely
completely on
the quality of
training data
No machine
learning needed

Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence

Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence

Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.

Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Tell me a joke!
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Tell me a joke!
Sure! Uh, why did the bot ask for food?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Tell me a joke!
Sure! Uh, why did the bot ask for food?
Idk. Why?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Tell me a joke!
Sure! Uh, why did the bot ask for food?
Idk. Why?
Because it needed a byte! Lmao
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

The latest assessed value I have was $396800 in
2014.
Brokerage USA
Typically replies instantly
What was the latest assessed value?
Tell me a joke!
Sure! Uh, why did the bot ask for food?
Idk. Why?
Because it needed a byte! Lmao
How a-bot that one?
Holmes 
Type a message….
Home (1) Manage
There are 3 bedrooms at 123 Main St. Ames, IA.
How many bedrooms at 123 Main St?
AI is about the illusion
of intelligence
A good bot doesn’t
need to pass the
turing test
Personality is still
important

Thanks for listening! ✌️
structurely.com