Rocket makes AI-powered home search tool car-friendly

Rocket Homes' iOS application has been integrated into Apple CarPlay to help consumers house hunt while they're driving.

Home buyers interested in viewing nearby properties for sale in between running errands can pull Rocket's app up on their vehicles' console screen to see available listings, the real estate brokerage division of Rocket Companies said Tuesday.

Properties will pop up in the "nearby" tab of the app and customers can choose to navigate to the house of their choice, call their real estate agent or save the listing to their "favorites." Homes that show up on a cars screen are curated by Rocket's app, which uses artificial intelligence to sieve through homes for sale and recommend what it thinks will be fitting for a potential buyer.  

"The Rocket Homes app is making house hunting more convenient for busy homebuyers on-the-go," said Doug Seabolt, CEO of Rocket Homes, in a press release Tuesday. "When looking for a new home, the search never stops – even when you are driving around town. That was the thought that led to this feature. Now, when home shoppers see a place that catches their eye, they do not need to remember an address, cross streets or a phone number because Rocket Homes has it handled for them."   

Rocket is pushing out this product ahead of what it believes will be a competitive 2024 housing market. The company notes more than 98% of cars in the U.S. support CarPlay and the majority of Americans with smartphones own iPhones, so the potential use case of the tool could be vast.

The idea of integrating Rocket's app into Apple CarPlay was floated during a company-wide hack week just a few months back, according to Sam Vida, president of Rocket Homes.

"What started off as a hack week idea ended up getting prioritized enough for us to actually build it out," Vida said. "This happened maybe three months ago. It didn't take a super long time because our teams move very fast."

To make this idea come to fruition, Rocket worked closely with Apple because of  "a lot of safety protocols, especially with CarPlay since it is still relatively new, but we were able to move fast because Apple saw the value," Vida noted.

"A lot of this is about meeting the user where they are, so we know that the experience of wanting to buy a home doesn't just happen when you're on the couch looking at your phone, it happens when you're driving, and you might be expecting houses for sale, you might not, but you don't want to have to pull over and pull out your phone and call your real estate agent," he said. "We're really proud of the fact we're able to add another layer of inputs to our AI personalized engine, which then makes our experience more personal."