Luxury real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman Inc. is betting artificial intelligence can expand its business beyond buying and selling homes.
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On Wednesday, Douglas Elliman announced a companywide AI overhaul, saying it will launch a new business, Elius, that aims to turn decades of proprietary real estate data into AI-powered products and market intelligence the company will sell to external customers. The brokerage will also use Google Cloud’s AI technology to automate some of its operations.
“We’re going to transform ourselves into a technology company,” said Michael Liebowitz, Douglas Elliman’s chief executive officer. “The traditional brokerage, as we know it, must change.”
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The initiative is intended to reduce operating expenses over the next two years as AI automates some work across finance, marketing, commissions and other corporate functions. Liebowitz said the company expects a “significant amount” of headcount reduction but declined to estimate how many positions could ultimately be eliminated, adding that the company won’t know the extent of those reductions until the technology is fully deployed.
Shares of Douglas Elliman were down 17% this year through Tuesday, compared with a gain of 20% for the Russell 2000 Index of small cap companies.
Liebowitz said the broader real estate industry will need fewer real estate agents as AI becomes more capable, though he believes luxury transactions will continue to require experienced human advisers.
The strategy comes as brokerages face a slowing housing market and intensifying competition. Rivals including Compass Inc. have introduced AI-powered tools for agents while also expanding through acquisitions. Liebowitz said Douglas Elliman aims to differentiate itself by building its own AI platform while remaining an independent company.
“The direction was really to be part of the future and not merge our way out of where we are now,” he said.
Elius is at the center of the new strategy. The company said the AI platform will use data from its brokerage operations and a roughly $27 billion development-marketing pipeline to provide human agents with pricing intelligence, market insights and workflow automation.
Elius will be entirely owned by Douglas Elliman to ensure the company retains sole ownership of its proprietary data and all AI products built through its Google Cloud partnership.
The company expects Elius to eventually generate revenue beyond its brokerage business by offering AI-powered products and market intelligence to external customers, though executives did not provide a launch timeline or financial targets.
Last October, Douglas Elliman introduced Elli AI, an application that allows agents to search across multiple listing services and generate reports for clients. Elius builds on that technology by creating a centralized AI platform that captures and learns from the company’s proprietary data, forming the foundation for future AI products and services.
Bharat Krish, chief AI transformation officer at Zazmic, the Google Cloud partner helping implement the project, said the platform is designed to identify potential buyers before they begin actively searching for a home. By combining Douglas Elliman’s historical data with publicly available information, such as changes in an individual’s personal circumstances or online behavior, the system can flag potential buyers for real estate agents.
“The initial client is the brokerage,” Krish said, but added that Elius could eventually benefit buyers by providing more personalized recommendations based on client behavior data.
The project will be funded using existing cash, and the company doesn’t expect the investment to materially affect its finances in the near term. Executives said lower technology costs and AI-driven efficiencies are expected to offset much of the investment over time, but they declined to provide a time line.