AI is everywhere now, nearly all of us use it on a regular basis often without even knowing. It has become a part of our daily lives and often proves to be very helpful so does that mean you should use it to summarise your Home Survey report?
Buying a home comes with a lot of paperwork, you have pages and pages of it. From your conveyancer, from the estate agents, from your mortgage broker, from your lender, from the seller. Plus there is all the other admin to do along with normal everyday busy lives. Then your surveyor sends you an 80 page report and expects you to read the whole thing! Who has time for that? Makes sense just to get Chat GPT or Gemini to read it for you and just give you the important bits, right?
I completely get it, most of us are time poor and the home buying process very quickly eats up whatever time you might have available but a survey report is one area where it is worth taking the time to read through the whole thing. Many survey reports will use a 1, 2, 3 condition rating system to help guide you to the most significant issues but even under an element with a 1 rating there could be some information that might be vital to your decision making due to your particular circumstances. On top of that some sections may include information not just on defects but also on how to look after your property moving forward.
It is important to remember that AI is not actually “intelligent”, it just responds to prompts based on learnt patterns. This can mean it might:
– Provide inaccurate information, what is often referred to as an AI hallucination.
– Remove or miss context. A defect might be a minor issue in one house but more serious in another depending on lots of factors such as its type of construction or location.
– Overgeneralisation. Because AI works on patterns it can have a tendency to apply concepts in very generalised ways, basically the way it has seen it applied most during its learning when in reality houses have their own specific quirks and needs. This means a good surveyor will often have to tailor their advice to the needs of a house, AI might not get this and, therefore, offer solutions that does not really apply to your house.
However, that does not mean AI is no good when it comes to reviewing and summarising Home Survey reports, it just means you have to be a bit cautious when you ask AI to pick out the most important issues or tell you what you should do next.
If after you have read the Home Survey report you need a summary or have questions you can ask AI but the number 1 option should always be to speak directly to the surveyor who provided the report. That is why I always offer the chance to speak to me after they get their report, this can be by phone, video call or email whatever works for you.
To book your Home Survey including plenty of time to talk to me and ask all the questions you need click here.