Properstar revolutionizes real estate searches with Microsoft Azure services

Properstar, a leading real estate platform since 2018, has over three million listings worldwide and uses innovative technology to simplify and safeguard the process of buying and renting properties. Thanks to personalized search features and intelligent data analytics, Properstar connects buyers, tenants, and agents to deliver a smooth, customized real estate experience. Headquartered in Switzerland and with a global outlook, Properstar provides reliable support through all stages of each transaction. By next year, it will have a footprint in 65 countries.

The vision of Properstar's founders was to create an innovative real estate platform that gave buyers and tenants greater flexibility and a wider range of filters. However, it soon became clear that two main obstacles first had to be overcome. First, real estate agency data was often incomplete or inaccurate. Important information was usually only available in the free-text descriptions of properties, not in the structured CRM data. To enable more comprehensive and accurate property searches, it was therefore also necessary to integrate the unstructured data.

The second obstacle was that conventional filter systems did not meet the requirements for nuanced property searches. Properstar thus set itself the ambitious goal of developing a completely new and dynamic filter system that would not only provide exact matches, but would also display properties that, although different in some ways, might still be suitable overall. This would ensure that no relevant offer would be overlooked in the future.

Properstar's founders recognized that using AI was the key to quickly and efficiently realizing their vision. Having already established a successful strategic partnership with Microsoft, the company decided to sign up to the FastTrack for Azure program. “Our partnership with Microsoft has been the engine of our innovation,” notes Gérard Paratte, CEO of Properstar. “The extensive Azure ecosystem allowed us to access cutting-edge AI tools and slot them easily into our solution. This in turn enabled us to very rapidly develop the most innovative real estate platform on the market.”

More detail and better matches: Properstar relies on Azure AI technologies

Using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service is at the heart of Properstar's technological solution. AI analyzes unstructured property descriptions in a variety of languages and extracts relevant details such as the presence of a swimming pool, a garage, or barrier-free access. Doing so significantly enlarges the data set, as around 40% more information is collected for each property. All this data lays the foundation for more comprehensive and accurate property searches.

Using Azure AI Search, the developers then created a flexible filter system that lets users distinguish between mandatory and optional features. Now, users can keep an eye on properties that may not meet all their criteria but could still be a generally good fit. For example, if a user is looking for a property with a swimming pool, properties that do not yet have a pool but offer the option of building one are also considered. “We pushed the limits of what Azure AI Search could do and tested numerous approaches,” Ivan Torreblanca, CTO of Properstar, recalls. “In the end, our efforts paid off. By combining Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search, we now achieve a 98% match rate, which means that almost every suitable property is covered.”

Leveraging big data for market analysis

The rich diversity of the Microsoft Azure ecosystem opens up still further innovative possibilities for Properstar. By harnessing leading-edge big data tools such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks, and Power BI in Azure, the company can now perform comprehensive market price analyses and process massive amounts of data from millions of real estate listings and search queries. Armed with this data, Properstar can analyze global market price trends in detail and present them transparently. The result? Buyers and investors have a powerful tool with which to make informed decisions based on accurate price trends. In other words, comprehensive data analysis gives users a significant competitive advantage, while further cementing Properstar's position as a leading player in the field of data-driven real estate markets.

Scalability, security, and agility thanks to Microsoft Azure

At the same time, the Microsoft Azure infrastructure allows Properstar to scale up globally while ensuring the platform's high performance and security at all times. “Microsoft Azure gives us the flexibility to respond to changes in the market,” Paratte stresses. “The cloud infrastructure gives us the agility and security we need to expand our business globally and provide our users with the best possible experience.” Meanwhile, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and the implementation of standardized security protocols guarantees comprehensive data protection and regulatory compliance. This boosts user confidence and protects the platform from security threats, while minimizing the risk of data breaches and/or penalties for non-compliance.

Another crucial aspect is the use of Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory to automate data collection and transformation. These tools enable Properstar to roll out new AI features and capabilities faster, resulting in shorter innovation cycles and a faster time to market for platform enhancements.

The development team has also been able to optimize processes and automate repetitive tasks using Azure DevOps and the GitHub Copilot. Collaboration thus becomes easier, while developers are more productive and happier with their jobs as teams are free to focus more on creative problem solving and innovation.

AI-powered user experience: Properstar shapes the real estate world of tomorrow

Properstar remains focused on innovation and AI-based solutions in order to continuously develop its platform. For example, it has developed a communication platform based on Microsoft Azure that greatly simplifies interaction between buyers, tenants, and agents. On this basis, it is much easier to coordinate viewing appointments and even conduct virtual viewings. An AI-based translation tool also enables real-time conversations between people who speak different languages.

A central component of Properstar’s future concept includes plans for an AI concierge—an intelligent assistant that supports buyers and tenants in their search for real estate and walks them through the entire purchase process. This AI concierge will not only make personalized property suggestions; it will also help manage viewing appointments and documents. There are further plans to make the concierge available as a voice assistant, allowing users to submit spoken requests. “Our goal is to make the user experience as enjoyable and efficient as possible,” Paratte points out. “The AI concierge adds a personal touch to digital interaction, helping users find the right property faster and simplifying the entire process.”

Building on Microsoft Azure, Properstar wants to further step up the pace of innovation, setting new standards and continually redefining what is possible with a data-driven real estate platform—all for the benefit of users who can now find their dream property even more easily.