How an AI Agent Reached $100M in Property Deals

In a move that highlights the transformative potential of AI in real estate, tech startup eSelf recently raised $4.5 million in seed funding and launched a groundbreaking platform that enables businesses to build face-to-face conversational AI agents. These agents can interact seamlessly with customers in real time, delivering a level of personalization and availability that traditional, strictly human-led interactions often cannot match.

A striking example comes from Portugal, where Porta da Frente Christie’s integrated eSelf’s technology and has already achieved over $100 million in sales attributable to leads generated by their AI real estate agent. Through video-powered conversations and on-the-fly property recommendations, the AI agent has helped homebuyers find listings more quickly than ever—providing real-time answers no matter the hour or time zone.

This excitement around AI in the property sector aligns with broader industry research. According to a recent McKinsey report, generative AI has the potential to add up to $180 billion in value for the real estate industry by making it easier to tap into the mountains of data that brokerages, developers, and investors already hold. While real estate has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies, the McKinsey analysis underscores a fresh “generational moment” for the sector: generative AI can reshape everything from property searches and leasing to architecture and design.

Below are a few key takeaways and benefits from these developments:

1. 24/7 Customer Engagement: AI agents can provide instant responses to prospective buyers regardless of time zone. In Porta da Frente Christie’s case, this accessibility proved especially important in accommodating clients from the U.S. and Brazil seeking properties in Portugal.

2. Tailored Property Recommendations: Traditional real estate agents usually juggle multiple listings. AI agents, by contrast, can “remember” thousands of properties at once and recommend the best fits based on a user’s stated needs. This level of personalization helps to minimize the back-and-forth typically needed to hone in on a suitable property.

3. Faster, Smarter Lead Qualification: AI systems quickly ask relevant questions—like budget, location preferences, and property size—to filter through large property portfolios. This frees up human agents to handle higher-value tasks and negotiations while technology handles routine screening and customer Q&A.

4.  Potential for Significant ROI: From one brokerage reporting $100 million in AI-driven sales to McKinsey’s high-level estimates of $110–$180 billion in industry impact, there is growing evidence that AI solutions can deliver tangible returns.

5. Future-Proofing the Real Estate Business: As generative AI matures, the potential goes beyond basic listings. Virtual tours, hyper-personalized design concepts, investment modeling, and tenant-facing chatbots stand to change every link in the real estate value chain.

Important Considerations

While the benefits are significant, McKinsey emphasizes that realizing AI’s full value requires far more than deploying software. Leaders must address data infrastructure, risk management, and compliance in regulated areas like leasing and financing. Issues such as model “hallucinations,” potential biases, and privacy requirements all call for ongoing oversight and governance.

Still, real estate’s traditional barriers to innovation—large volumes of disparate data, wide geographic footprints, and the necessity of working across time zones—become prime opportunities for generative AI to shine. eSelf’s success story in Portugal and its substantial seed investment round underscore how quickly these new tools can deliver transformative results.

Looking Ahead

In an era where technology breakthroughs are reshaping entire industries, real estate stands poised for its own digital leap. As more brokerages, developers, and property managers adopt face-to-face AI agents—whether through eSelf or similar platforms—clients will expect higher levels of responsiveness and personalization as the norm. The McKinsey report frames this as a chance for the industry to redefine itself at the cutting edge of customer engagement, property operations, and investment analysis.

Those who act decisively to integrate generative AI, invest in robust data infrastructures, and maintain strong ethical guardrails may find themselves at a strategic advantage. After all, as this Portuguese case demonstrates, just one well-deployed AI agent can make a hundred-million-dollar difference—and that may be only the beginning.