Search Acumen launches REI, the UK’s first AI model trained to handle local authority real estate search data

• Search Acumen launches new, proprietary AI product REI: ‘Real Estate Intelligence’, which is powered by a proprietary model that handles Local Authority search data automatically, cutting due diligence times by days or even weeks.
• The technology is particularly beneficial for real estate lawyers handling portfolio transactions, such as large social housing portfolio sales/purchases, that might deal with hundreds or thousands of individual titles which all require local authority searches.
• The launch of REI marks the biggest change in how local authority data is handled and analysed in decades, with AI able to read flat PDFs, extract and categorise relevant information and provide automatically generated analysis and summaries, standardising information from around 340 local councils.

Leading Proptech firm Search Acumen has today unveiled REI (‘Real Estate Intelligence’). REI is a proprietary AI application that now forms part of Search Acumen’s existing end-to-end case management system for real estate lawyers.

REI is powered by a proprietary AI model which has been trained to recognise, extract and categorise property data from local authority CON29 searches, which have, since the 1990s been returned as PDF or physical documents, requiring lawyers to read and analyse these documents manually. At the same time hundreds of councils across the UK all return searches in different formats. REI doesn’t just extract and sort information, it also standardises it saving lawyers significant amounts of time, particularly on due diligence around large portfolios that sit across multiple local authorities. Finally, the effectiveness of the model makes the due diligence process more robust, removing the potential of human error.

By integrating REI into its existing platform, lawyers that utilise the Search Acumen’s services can benefit from REI right away for no additional fee, when ordering official Local Authority searches.   The integration means information extracted by REI can be reviewed and analysed within the platform, where their pre-site investigations, project management activities and post completion tasks can also be completed, housing all of their insights, findings and outputs in one platform, mitigating the need to use any other third-party sites or data resources.

REI is particularly effective for large portfolio transactions, which require lawyers to review information from potentially thousands of properties across the UK. When working at scale in this way artificial intelligence is particularly valuable saving lawyers a huge amount of time and energy. For sectors like social housing, where budgets for legal services tend to be compressed, but large portfolio sizes mean the amount of due diligence required is extensive, REI allows lawyers to remain cost-competitive and profitable by reducing time spent on administration tasks and driving efficiencies in data collection, analysis and reporting.

While initially focused on Local Authority searches, the potential of REI to read and understand real estate data from a range of sources – from Land Registry to HMRC – is exponential as the model and product continue to evolve. Search Acumen is also continuing to develop its Chat GPT-powered generative AI assistant to make the application as user-friendly and intuitive as possible.

Andrew Lloyd , Managing Director at Search Acumen, says:

“This is the biggest change in how local authority data is processed and analysed for decades, made possible through artificial intelligence. Particularly for larger portfolio transactions REI could cut due diligence timelines by days or even weeks, efficiencies which in turn allow lawyers to focus on advising clients, offering more cost-competitive services and boosting their profitability and productivity. Search Acumen has been at the forefront of digital transformation in the property sector for over ten years, but the launch of REI is one of the most exciting moments in our history, putting us right at the forefront of the AI revolution in commercial real estate and on the precipice of a hugely positive shift in how we handle property transactions through technology.”