Online home listings were traditionally built to inform, not interact. They have served as digital brochures filled with photos and virtual tours, property details and a contact button. Now, rising expectations for instant answers and more personalized digital experiences are pushing real estate technology to rethink how home searches work.
Rather than simply displaying information, AI-powered listings allow buyers to ask questions about a property, explore neighborhood insights and connect with agents as they scroll.
One company leading the charge to evolving home searches is Infinityy, a startup that participated in the 2025 REACH program through the National Association of REALTORS®' Second Century Ventures. In this Q&A, CEO Lisa Nickerson discusses how interactive listings work, what buyers tend to want to know and how AI is reshaping the online home search experience.
Consumers have more real estate information at their fingertips than ever before. So, what's still missing from the online home search experience?
NICKERSON: For years, the industry's answer to consumer demand has been to add more information to listings-more photos, more data points, more documents, more filters. But consumers aren't actually looking for more information. They're looking for clarity. They want immediate answers to their specific questions.
The future of real estate experiences will be less about overwhelming buyers with content and more about creating environments where they can interact, explore, ask questions and get guidance instantly. Buyers want to understand not just the square footage or finishes but what it feels like to live there, how the home fits their lifestyle, the neighborhood surrounding it and whether it aligns with the life they're trying to build.
Is that the challenge you were trying to solve when you created Infinityy?
NICKERSON: We built Infinityy to solve a fundamental problem in real estate: The consumer experience had become fragmented, passive and disconnected from how people actually make decisions today.
We saw an opportunity to transform the listing from a static marketing page into an interactive decision-making environment. Infinityy enables consumers to ask questions, explore homes and neighborhoods more intelligently, and instantly connect with an agent when interest is highest.
How does the AI assistant actually engage with the buyer inside a listing?
NICKERSON: The AI assistant engages buyers conversationally, allowing them to ask questions naturally-almost like having a knowledgeable guide available 24/7. A buyer might ask about the layout, nearby amenities, commute times, schools or even broader market trends related to the home they're considering. The experience adapts based on what the buyer is interested in learning more about, and [the technology] can answer questions in more than 75 languages.
Also, by integrating with Google Street View, buyers can better understand the surrounding spaces and places they're considering, creating a more immersive and contextual experience from anywhere in the world. We're also expanding the intelligence layer around the transaction through our partnership with Local Logic, which brings neighborhood insights and market context directly into the experience. Consumers can access information related to walkability, lifestyle preferences, demographics, amenities, transportation and market statistics in a way that helps answer the real questions driving their decisions.
When buyers are ready to act, they can instantly connect with an agent through text, voice or even live collaborative video directly inside the listing itself. That immediacy changes everything. Real estate decisions are emotional and highly contextual, and the ability for an agent to join a buyer "inside" the listing experience, in the exact moment interest or curiosity happens, creates a far more valuable interaction than a delayed follow-up hours later. It transforms the listing from a static marketing page into an active collaboration environment between consumers and agents.
What kinds of questions can the AI realistically handle about a property?
NICKERSON: The AI can handle a wide range of questions-from factual property details to broader lifestyle and neighborhood context. Infinityy listings are built directly from the agent's MLS listing, while also giving listing agents the ability to easily add additional information they believe is important to a buyer's decision-making process.
For example, buyers might ask about the layout, finishes, square footage, HOA information, amenities, parking, nearby restaurants, schools, transportation options, commute times, walkability or local market insights. Through integrations like Google Street View and Local Logic, the experience can also help buyers better understand the surrounding neighborhood and how a property fits into the lifestyle they're looking for.
Infinityy is also very intentional about the role AI should play. The AI is designed and trained to operate within fair housing guidelines and compliance standards. When consumers want deeper expertise, interpretation or guidance, the platform connects them directly with the listing agent.
How does the platform identify and qualify leads? What signals does it use to determine buyer intent?
NICKERSON: Buyer intent is looked at through the lens of engagement quality, not just lead quantity. Historically, agents have had very limited visibility into what a consumer was actually interested in while viewing a listing online. Infinityy creates a more meaningful understanding of intent based on real behavior and interaction.
The platform analyzes signals such as how long a buyer spends inside a listing, what features or spaces they engage with most, the questions they ask, whether they revisit the experience, what neighborhood insights they explore and when they choose to invite others into the experience or connect directly with the listing agent.
Those behaviors create a much richer picture of buyer interest than a traditional form alone. Someone casually scrolling through photos behaves very differently than someone actively asking detailed questions, exploring the neighborhood, sharing the listing with a spouse or initiating a live conversation with the agent.
Infinityy also provides listing agents with a transcript and summary of each buyer tour, giving them insight into what mattered most to the consumer during the experience. By the time an agent follows up with a lead, they already understand the buyer's interests, questions and priorities.
As online home search continues to evolve, what innovations are you most excited about right now?
NICKERSON: One major development is our partnership with Local Logic, which brings neighborhood and market intelligence directly into the Infinityy listing experience. Together, we're enabling consumers to explore the relationship between spaces and places by combining property information with insights around lifestyle, transportation, amenities, demographics and market dynamics.
We're also seeing strong momentum through our work with the Miami Association of REALTORS® and Miami MLS, where nearly 60,000 members now have access to Infinityy's AI-powered platform. Integrating directly with the MLS allows agents to instantly activate intelligent listing experiences across their active listings, making adoption significantly easier and more scalable.
The future of real estate isn't AI or humans. It's AI empowering humans to create more informed, immediate and meaningful consumer experiences.
