VIRTUAL PROPERTY SEARCH

Here’s an interesting (and slightly scary) use of AI.

The problem:

A client needs to lease a ground-floor commercial space in a high foot-traffic area—ideal for a café.

The usual playbook:

1. Check your office inventory

2. Post the requirement on social media

3. Drop it in broker group chats

4. Drive around the city looking for FOR LEASE signs

This works. But it’s slow, manual, and heavily dependent on luck and timing.

Then the thought hit me.

Why does a human need to do the driving at all?

Cities are already mapped. Streets are already photographed. Storefronts are already visible.

Google Street View already “sees” the city.

Now imagine this instead:

a. AI virtually “drives” through selected streets using Google Street View

b. AI scans storefronts

c. It flags FOR LEASE / FOR RENT / FOR SALE signs

d. Extracts phone numbers and basic details

e. Drops everything into a spreadsheet

You start calling.

+ No walking.

+ No traffic.

+ No missed streets.

+ No waiting for someone to post in a broker group.

In theory, you could already do this manually with Google Street View—but anyone who’s tried knows the pain:

- Slow loading

- Tedious, one street at a time

AI removes the friction.

We’re not fully there yet—at least not in a clean, consumer-ready way.

But the pieces already exist:

a. Street-level imagery

b. Computer vision

c. Text recognition

d. Automation

When they finally click together, this won’t be a “nice-to-have.” It will quietly kill one of the most time-consuming parts of commercial brokerage.

Hopefully...soon.