Craig Karmin Thu

When Deborah and Bob Bradley moved from their Rancho Sante Fe home in Southern California to McCall, Idaho, Deborah’s one regret was giving up her 5-acre garden. Since long snowy winters precluded recreating her California landscape, she worked with their architect to bring the greenery indoors. “My garden was my heaven, so we designed an indoor garden visible from every room in the house except the bedrooms,” says Deborah Bradley, 61, a custom jewelry designer.

Artificial intelligence is opening new avenues of information to home buyers, sellers, and renters. It’s changing the way people shop for real estate—for better or worse. Consumer use of AI will shape more deals as the use of large-language model platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini become common. In a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults, Realtor.com found that 82% of respondents used AI platforms for real estate insights.

Trapped renters want home prices to fall so they can finally get onto the property ladder. Millions of existing owners want values to stay high. These and other conflicting interests make it hard for policymakers to give young Americans a leg up in a brutal housing market. President Trump is heeding anger about housing affordability ahead of the midterm elections, and the administration has been drip-feeding ideas about how to tackle the issue.