Fifteen percent of Americans plan to buy a home in the next twelve months. Of those, 48% say they’ll use AI tools somewhere in that process. Not to browse listings. To shape decisions.
That’s from NerdWallet’s 2026 Home Buyer Report, based on a Harris Poll survey of 2,094 U.S. adults fielded in November 2025, 296 of them prospective buyers. Worth flagging: NerdWallet is a financial comparison site that earns compensation from some of the lenders it reviews. The AI figure isn’t part of that sponsored content though, it comes straight from the raw survey data, so I’m comfortable citing it.
Here’s the breakdown that matters:
- 27% are using AI to estimate what a home will actually cost them
- 26% are using it to guide them through the homebuying process itself
- 25% are using it to visualize what a place could become before they’ve set foot inside
Read the second one again. Guide them through the process. Not “check a mortgage rate.” A buyer walking into their first conversation with a budget already modeled, a shortlist already narrowed, and a set of assumptions already formed, all before an agent said a single word.
This isn’t the AI-replaces-agents story. NerdWallet’s own advice to buyers in the same report is to still find a trustworthy agent. The shift is smaller and more important than replacement: it’s about when you show up in the buyer’s story. For twenty years, the agent was there from the first search. Now the agent shows up to confirm, correct, or complicate a picture that already exists in the buyer’s head.
I saw this play out with a client of mine, a brokerage in Balneário Camboriú, Brazil. A $2.6M listing closed after a buyer in another country researched the property through ChatGPT, long before anyone from the brokerage entered the conversation. By the time the agent got involved, the buyer wasn’t being introduced to the property. They were being asked to confirm what they already believed about it.
That’s the part worth sitting with. If half your future buyers are forming a first opinion through AI before they ever reach out, the agent’s job isn’t just to be found anymore. It’s to be accurate to what they’ve already been told, and sharp enough to correct it when it’s wrong.
Are you seeing buyers show up already halfway decided? What are they getting right, and what are they getting wrong? Curious what you’re noticing on your end.
Sources: NerdWallet 2026 Home Buyer Report, Harris Poll on behalf of NerdWallet, fielded Nov. 3-5, 2025, n=2,094 U.S. adults (296 prospective buyers), published Jan. 20, 2026.
