Dive Brief:

• Realtor.com’s Doorsteps rental listing website has developed a bot — a kind of automated response application — for Facebook Messenger that lets users share their criteria for desired properties and automatically receive rental listings.

• The tool responds to a competitive rental market by giving those looking to rent a home or an apartment a way to target their search results to their location, size, amenity and price preferences from an already-common social media platform.

• Users are served photos and cost information for new properties at 10 a.m. daily, and they can opt in to receive more information about the listing. The company said it will soon let users pick what time they are sent information on new properties.

Dive Insight:

There is an increasing appetite, particularly among millennials, for internet and mobile-based systems to help in the search of a new home or rental property. That’s bringing more interest — and investment — to the market. 

Last month, real estate startup Opendoor, which purchases and resells homes online, announced that it secured $210 million in funding as it seeks to expand its platform to 10 cities in 2017 and 30 cities by 2018.

Doorsteps’ Facebook launch follows the launch of Doorsteps Swipe in 2014. The mobile app lets users browse active listings and – you guessed it – "swipe" right to learn more or left to remove it from the queue. The app reads user behavior and refines the selection of future listings it serves up accordingly.

A survey by Zillow in October found that younger homebuyers are more likely than previous generations to use the internet when looking for a new property, while also using Web-based search and other services to find an agent and explore financing options.

Realtor.com said Doorsteps’ additional features and filter options for the bot will launch in the next few months. It is set to expand to other messaging platforms in early 2017.

For more housing news, sign up for our daily residential construction newsletter.