AI in the Home Buying Process: What Works, What Doesn't, and When to Call an Expert

Find out how AI tools can help navigate the home buying process and where human expertise still matters most. Can AI help you buy a house with reliable information? What would you do if you had only ten years to live, received a $100,000 windfall, or lost your job with just one month of emergency savings? Sean Pyles, CFP®, and Elizabeth Ayoola sit down with a NerdWallet colleague to unpack his journey using AI to buy a home. But first, they take turns putting each other through a series of hypothetical — and sometimes grim — financial scenarios, revealing how they'd really handle everything from lending money to a struggling family member to deciding between a millionaire's Camry and a thousandaire's Mercedes. Then, NerdWallet’s podcast strategist Cody Gough joins Sean and Elizabeth in-studio to share his experience using Claude AI to help him make homebuying decisions. He shares how he used AI to figure out his financing options, find and evaluate agents, work through mortgage applications, and even assess whether specific neighborhoods were the right fit for his family. NerdWallet mortgage writer Kate Wood joins virtually to offer an expert reality check on Cody's experience — weighing in on his financing choices, what the AI got right and wrong about contingent offers in a competitive market, and where tools like NerdWallet's calculators and articles would have served him better than an AI chatbot. 2026 Home Buyer Report – 48% of Prospective Buyers Will Use AI: Compare Today’s Mortgage Rates: See how far your homebuying budget could take you with NerdWallet’s free home affordability calculator: Want us to review your budget? Fill out this form — completely anonymously if you want — and we might feature your budget in a future segment! To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email podcast@nerdwallet.com. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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AI in the Home Buying Process: What Works, What Doesn't, and When to Call an Expert is an episode from NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast by NerdWallet Personal Finance.

This episode is 45:47 long.

This episode was published on Apr 20, 2026.

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