Custom Software & AI Development
AI search that knows today's prices — across nearly 60 community sites
A large real estate client wanted AI to help renters find apartments that match their needs in price, features, amenities and neighborhood — with pricing and availability that change throughout the day. We built one AI search index that updates itself, sent pricing and availability questions to the live database, and replaced site search with an assistant that knows which of nearly 60 community sites a renter is on.
The problem
What they were dealing with
The client wanted to use AI to help prospective renters find apartments that match their needs in terms of price, features, amenities and neighborhood. But with pricing and availability changing throughout the day, how do you make sure the AI returns accurate, up-to-the-minute results?
How it ran
The sequence
Search and live data, each doing the part it is good at: the index understands the question, and the database answers anything about price or availability.
01
One AI search index, kept current
We combined community data from dozens of database tables with the site's CMS content into one AI search index, which updates automatically as content and unit data change.
02
Live answers on price and availability
Questions about pricing and availability skip the index and are answered from the live database, so prices are always current.
03
An assistant on every page
We replaced the standard site search with an AI assistant available on every page. Because the site includes nearly 60 community microsites, the assistant knows which community a visitor is viewing and answers questions in that context.
Results
What it produced
Renters now get accurate answers about current pricing and availability in seconds and are immediately able to contact an agent or schedule a tour.
Under the hood: .NET, SQL Server, Azure AI Search with Semantic Ranker, Azure OpenAI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and Hangfire.
Reference
What this ran on
- Platforms
- Microsoft Azure
- Technologies
- .NET
- SQL Server
- Azure OpenAI
- Azure AI
Related reading
The thinking behind this
More work
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