While 2017 saw major technological changes impact the mortgage and property industries, this year could see even more monumental changes, according to Greg Dickason, international chief technology officer at CoreLogic.

“With massive public cloud providers such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft racing to commoditise machine learning and facilitating rapid digital innovation, [what’s certain] is the pace of innovation will only increase,” he said.

“My prediction is that [2018] will be the year of voice. We will see intelligent applications proliferate on top of the Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices – allowing customers to search for and select services using their voice. This will change the way we think of how we get service, and we will take for granted that devices will understand us.”

In the mortgage and property industries, voice-activated apps will help guide buyers through their mortgage applications, filling in forms, or helping them set up appointments with professionals.

“We could see tenant service requests for maintenance being managed through a chat interface, home price estimates and area research being voice driven, and even 24-hour open homes allowing inspections at any time with access and information [being] voice and biometric driven,” he added.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will make leaps this year in the form of more intelligent services, homes, and devices. “From self-driving cars, automated drones, and more effective one-to-one marketing platforms, ‘Narrow AI’ will be driving a lot of new value in our industry,” Dickason said.

“In the security space there will be more hacks and data breaches. We may see intelligent homes and devices being compromised, with our Intelligent Things sometimes becoming part of a malicious botnet. When your refrigerator is part of a denial of service attack on The Pentagon and you need to worry about installing anti-virus while refilling the ice tray, you know the future has arrived.”

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