Developers in Russia are rolling out in-house solutions designed to simplify home searches and streamline realtors’ work.
Russia’s Plus Group, one of the country’s
largest players in the real estate market, launched its own AI-powered product
for realtors and homebuyers in 2025. Called AL Plus, the tool acts as a smart
assistant that communicates with clients, helps generate content, and provides
guidance on legal issues.
“We identified a very clear pain point:
realtors spend a huge share of their working time not on deals, but on routine
tasks – messaging, social media content, initial request screening, and
scheduling meetings. This directly affects both the number of transactions and
an agent’s income. That’s why we first built an MVP and let agents from our own
network work with it, testing the solution in real processes. We then opened
the platform to the broader market and continue refining it based on realtor
feedback, regularly adding new services. Every month, we roll out at least one
new tool for realtors,” said Maxim Shumkov, director of AI implementation at
Plus Group.
For the Market as a Whole
In less than a year, the platform has
attracted 12,000 regular users, including both agency employees and independent
realtors.
“The Russian real estate market is highly
diverse: agencies differ in scale, level of digitalization, and internal
processes, but the demand for efficiency is the same everywhere. If a tool
genuinely helps an agent work better and earn more, its value goes beyond a
single network. In a broader sense, we are moving toward building a technology
platform for the entire real estate market,” Shumkov said.
Other Plus Group solutions are also used
across the market, including the Toplab Plus digital platform for realtors.
Another service, Menyai i Zhivi (Swap'n'Dwell), allows users to sell their
existing apartment and buy a new one – effectively swapping homes. AI supports
the process by providing an initial property valuation: it analyzes data from
major listings platforms, compares properties with similar offers, factors in
current demand trends, and estimates expected time on the market. Here, the
technology serves as a decision-support tool rather than a replacement for professional
judgment.
“When agents have strong digital tools,
they can focus not on formalities, but on people and their situations. That is
how we see our role: helping the market mature so that solving the housing
question becomes a more comfortable experience,” Shumkov said.
