AI in Property Valuation: Finding the Right Balance

AI is an increasingly ubiquitous topic on the agenda of most conversations, meetings and conferences I’ve attended this year and the prevailing message is loud and clear; AI is here to stay.

It is already changing how businesses operate and what clients expect. The real question is not whether surveying profession embraces it, but how, where and crucially when, it should be used.

While I don’t come from a technology background, the strategic value of engaging with AI to help the running of a valuation business has been clear from the outset. However, I can also recognise that it is not the solution to everything and it has its limitation. As in business and indeed life, it’s all about balance.

Smarter business planning

The most immediate and widely discussed gains are in the running of the firm. Job tracking, job allocation, report auditing and fee tracking all involve large volumes of data and constant juggling. Used well, AI can show where workload is building up, which jobs are at risk of slipping and how fee income is performing against forecast. It can also help us spot trends in valuation and market data, so we plan resources with more confidence.

However, the key point is that none of this touches the valuation opinion itself. It makes the business more efficient, and it frees Valuers to spend more time on the work only they can do. Additionally, and crucially, this should free up more time for team members to build the all-important relationships with clients.

The Valuer's role stays human

Throughout my career I’ve challenged the common misconception that valuation boils down to simply a number. The reality is it’s a professional judgement, reached through a myriad of lenses; inspecting the property, understanding the local market, weighing the comparable evidence and applying experience that no dataset fully captures. Just as importantly, it is a judgement someone is accountable for with their highly regarded RICS designations.

Lenders and clients place their trust in the valuation profession, not in an automated system producing a figure. When a valuation is challenged, a client needs a qualified professional who can explain the reasoning and rationale behind it. An algorithm cannot do that, however there is absolute use and benefit from using AI data sets to provide data trends. While Ringley has developed bespoke systems to do this, it is not at the expense of the human eye and mind which remains absolutely crucial to this profession.

What the RICS expects

RICS has been clear that AI use in surveying practice must be responsible, and its professional standard sets out what that means for members and firms, warning against heavy reliance.

In practice, it comes down to a few key principles:

• Having a policy in place; firms need a clear approach to how AI is used
• Governance and regular monitoring. A policy that sits in a drawer is not enough.
• Due diligence on tools. Firms should understand what a tool does, what data it relies on and w its limits.
• Professional responsibility. The Valuer remains responsible for the output, whatever tool helped produce it.
• Transparency. Clients should be able to understand where and how AI has been used.

This may surprise some Valuers, but RICS does not approve or certify individual AI systems, rather they partner with tools. Compliance rests on how a firm uses them, so no tool is "RICS compliant" in itself. I believe this is a good thing as it keeps responsibility where it belongs, with the professional.

Professional indemnity is part of the picture too. Insurers are paying close attention to AI use, and firms should speak to their insurer to understand its position before relying on any tool. Read the small print!

Data you can trust

The quality of an AI tool depends on its source material. Open-web tools can draw in inaccurate or unverified information, which then quietly influence decisions. At Ringley, our AI is built on information we have manually entered and verified, rather than whatever the wider internet offers. This keeps our data under control and our outputs easier to defend, and is a practical way of meeting the governance expectations RICS sets.

So embrace AI but remember we’re a people-first business, trust is our differentiator and there is no substituting the professional human touch required to be a valuer.