AI, automation, and data are reshaping real estate, with REA Group putting technology to the test as agents and tech teams tackled some of the industry’s biggest pain points.
REA Group’s 2026 Hackdays brought together technology experts and real estate teams to turn 10 ideas into tested solutions targeting some of the sector’s biggest pain points.
Held at REA’s Melbourne HQ, the firm’s technology experts and, for the first time, real estate agency teams came together to develop real solutions for business and industry challenges.
Over three days, participants explored customer experience, AI, technology, business processes and community impact, turning ideas into tested concepts and prototypes.
REA CEO Cameron McIntyre said this year’s customer involvement added frontline industry insight to REA’s product development process, reinforcing its focus on building solutions with customers rather than simply for them.
“There’s a lot going on in the space at the moment with artificial intelligence and the way technology’s changing our business and our customers’ businesses,” McIntyre told REB.
McIntyre said rapid advances in AI and technology have been reshaping REA and its customers’ businesses, with the Hackdays providing a way to help agents navigate the change by collaborating on real-world problems.
“It gives our customers insight into the way our engineers think, and it gives our engineers access to our customers, which they don’t ordinarily get.
“And to collaborate and work together to solve real solutions is super motivating. Everyone wants to build a product that has a need and that our customers will want.”
10 projects to see the light
While REA’s hackdays have been going on for 16 years, this was the first time that real estate agents participated directly in the project.
McIntyre said around half a dozen ideas uncovered customer problems he had not realised existed, highlighting the value of an “outside-in” approach to product development that starts with customers’ needs rather than REA’s assumptions.
For three days, real estate agents and engineers worked on real-world industry problems, exploring potential solutions, how they could be integrated into REA’s platform and their potential to scale.
The 10 Hackdays projects focused on solving practical challenges across pricing, property search, rental enquiries, market intelligence and customer decision-making, using data, AI and automation to improve experiences for agents, vendors and buyers.
REA Group executive general manager – sales, Gerard Connell, said the ideas brought together customer problems with REA’s broader expertise, with designers, marketers, and technical teams working alongside participants to develop the concepts.
“We’re taking their ideas and their pain points and their white space and coupling that with our coders, designers, marketers, and other teams who are energised by solving problems, and then using AI and data and our technical expertise to deliver those solutions faster.”
Connell said more than 55 ideas qualified for consideration, with the final selection weighing up the significance of the friction and whether a solution could serve the industry at scale.
“It could be addressing a pain point of significance. It could be about the ability for that solution to serve the industry at scale. In some cases they were great ideas, but they were quite bespoke,” Connell told REB.
The event culminated in a “Shark Tank” pitch session, with “IM360” by Ray White Commercial CSR taking first place, followed by “Agent Angel” by Ray White Upper North Shore in second and “Launch IQ” by Ray White Mildura in third.
The winning projects tackled practical challenges across commercial, rental, and residential real estate, from transforming static information memorandums into interactive property experiences to automating rental enquiries and inspection planning.
Another winning project used realestate.com.au search data, comparable listing performance and local buyer behaviour to help agents create more evidence-led listing content and stronger campaign launches.
To help turn customer ideas into action, REA Hackdays awarded Advantage Plus AI Acceleration Grants to the winners and participants, with $30,000 going to first place, $20,000 to second place and $10,000 to third place.
Each remaining participant received $5,000 to support their innovation and growth in the era of AI.
2026 Hackdays winner, Grant Turner from Ray White Commercial, said: “To think we started at the beginning of the week with just an idea, and we finished the week with a win. How awesome.
“A highlight of the Hackdays experience was absolutely the team that turned it into a reality. There is so much talent across our team, and everyone stepped in to play their part.
“We were able to present something that the judges fell in love with, which was something special,” Turner said.
McIntyre said that while only three projects won this year’s hackdays competition, more solutions will come to life.
“Our eyes shouldn’t be set on just putting in place just the first three. The other 15 that didn’t necessarily win a prize, but solved a real-world problem and removed a friction point.”
Connell said the process also gave REA greater clarity around which problems mattered most to customers.
“In some cases, a lot of these ideas are already live ideas within REA. What I think that does is it brings clarity that actually this is what they care about.”
“So it’s bringing the customer perspective and the truth behind that to the forefront of how we make decisions.”
Technology at the centre front of REA
According to REA Group chief technology officer Steve Maidment, Hackdays are only a small part of the technology developed by the property platform.
Maidment said that REA was looking at tackling workflow friction as it remained one of the biggest frustrations agents have, particularly around the time spent on processes that could be streamlined.
“A lot of our customers are small businesses, and if you can help remove hours out of a week, that’s time that they could spend working on their business as opposed to in it.”
Maidment said that while AI could help address these frustrations, businesses need to rethink workflows rather than simply automate existing tasks.
“Everyone thinks AI is going to solve the problem. It can get you part of the way there, but I think it takes quite a bit of effort to really rethink the workflow, not just what a human would do, but really rethink it end to end.”
He said REA was exploring the idea of sending engineers and product specialists into customer businesses to observe how they work and identify problems that may not be immediately obvious.
“You actually watch them do their job day to day because they’re not going to tell you necessarily all their frustrations.”
“And then we will go away, and we think about how we can solve the business problem, not just the problem the individual has.”
Looking ahead, Maidment said REA was experimenting with new interfaces that could change how consumers search for property, combining financial and yield data with property information.
The challenge, he said, was knowing when consumers were ready for new technology, with REA testing features with portions of its audience before broader release.
“We might have 40, 50 experiments going on. So if you’re lucky enough, you might see some of that futuristic stuff.”
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