What I Refuse to Automate

Plenty of property work should be automated, and the walk-through of a house is not part of it.

Online valuation estimates are useful for a rough idea. They take recent sales in an area, the size of the stand and the house, and produce a number in seconds. Reminders for lease renewals, levy statements and rates payments can run on their own, and nobody misses typing them out by hand. But a machine estimate has never stood in the kitchen. It cannot smell damp behind a cupboard, see that the extension at the back has no approved plans, or notice that the house next door has turned into a noisy tavern. Any of those can move the true value a long way, and none of them appear in the data the estimate is built on.

The same goes for the hard conversations. Telling a seller that the house is worth less than the bond, or telling a tenant that the lease will not be renewed, deserves a person on the other end who can hear how it lands and answer what comes next. A template email can deliver the words. It cannot carry their weight.

So the line is fairly clear. Work that only needs to be accurate can run by itself. Work that needs judgment or decency still needs a person in the room.