How AI Is Being Used to Read Leases, Other Real Estate Documents

Laura van Wyngaarden

CHICAGO–A typical client for Nicholas Bartzen, an associate with Levenfeld Pearlstein’s Community Association Group, would be a condominium representative whose building has anywhere from four to 500 units and whose board has a question that needs to be responded to quickly. The answer can most likely be found within the condo’s governing documents but as Bartzen tells GlobeSt.com, “the way these documents have been written is anything but uniform.”

To find the clauses that he needs within these documents, Bartzen turns to an application called Diligen, which uses machine learning — a type of artificial intelligence that self-corrects and learns as it receives more information — to scan the governing document. To be sure there are other applications on the market that offer similar AI-driven scanning services; Bartzen likes Diligen because he says it is aimed at his niche practice of law. Other applications that he vetted, he says, “didn’t have the algorithms that I need for my clients.”

AI Makes Its Way Into Real Estate Tech

It has become a cliche to say that real estate has been slow to adopt technology. In the last few years, though, the industry has made strides in many areas — apps now proliferate in such areas as tenant-landlord communications or asset management.