Home shoppers looking for new construction increasingly start with a question instead of a search filter. They type something like “new-home communities near Myrtle Beach under $400,000 with a pool” into ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI search and get back a summary of builders, neighborhoods and price ranges in seconds.
The habit is spreading fastest among younger buyers. Bank of America’s 2026 Homebuyer Insights Report found that 20% of prospective buyers and current homeowners have used AI tools or chatbots for homebuying research, including 28% of millennials and 32% of Gen Z. In an October 2025 Realtor.com survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, ChatGPT (67%) and Gemini (54%) were the AI platforms respondents used most for housing information.
New construction is where AI search helps most and where it is easiest to misread. A new-home community is a set of floor plans, lot premiums, phases and incentive offers that change month to month, and an AI summary compresses all of it into a paragraph.
Key takeaways
- One in five prospective buyers and homeowners have used AI for homebuying research, rising to 32% among Gen Z (Bank of America, 2026).
- Buyers use AI mainly early in the process: affordability math, learning how buying works and researching neighborhoods.
- When Google shows an AI summary, users click a regular search result in 8% of visits, against 15% without one (Pew Research Center).
- AI answers rarely cover lot-level flood risk, HOA budgets or this month’s builder incentives. Those still need a direct check.
How are buyers using AI search to find new-construction homes?
Buyers use AI search mainly to narrow a market before they contact anyone: which areas fit a budget, which builders are active and roughly what a monthly payment would be. Among Bank of America respondents who used AI in their home search, 57% used it to estimate affordability, mortgage payments or closing costs, 55% for general education about the process and 52% to research neighborhoods, market trends or property values.
For new construction, conversational search replaces a slow step. Comparing builders used to mean opening a dozen builder websites, each with its own site plan, plan names and incentive banner. A prompt such as “compare D.R. Horton and Lennar communities near Conway, SC” now returns a side-by-side answer in one place, even if the details still need checking.
Listing platforms have moved into the same space. Zillow launched an app inside ChatGPT in October 2025 that returns listings with photos, maps and pricing, and said it planned to add new-construction listings and 3D tours over time. Realtor.com has added natural-language search on its own site, so buyers can describe a home in a sentence instead of setting filters.
Why is Myrtle Beach a test case for AI-driven home search?
Myrtle Beach shows the pattern clearly because so many of its buyers are shopping from somewhere else. The Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach metro was the second-fastest-growing in the U.S. between 2024 and 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, adding 13,244 residents to reach 427,551. That 3.2% gain compares with 0.5% nationally.
Retirees, households relocating from Florida and North Carolina, second-home buyers and working-age families settling inland around Conway and Longs arrive with the same problem: an unfamiliar market and limited time to visit. For many of them, an AI chat, a builder’s 3D tour and a video of the actual lot replace the first trip.
The supply side is concentrated. National production builders, including D.R. Horton, Lennar, Pulte, Meritage Homes, Toll Brothers, Ryan Homes and Beazer Homes, dominate the Grand Strand. Census data show roughly 6,800 single-family units authorized in the greater Myrtle Beach area in 2025 and about 4,340 through August 2026, roughly 13% below the same stretch of 2025. Floor plans from different builders can look interchangeable in an AI summary while lot premiums, HOA structures and flood-zone lines differ sharply underneath.
Buyers who want a human-maintained reference to check AI answers against can use the new-construction guide from Jerry Pinkas Real Estate Experts, which profiles the home builders and new-home communities across the Grand Strand.
What does AI search get wrong about new construction?
AI search handles information that is public and changes slowly well. It is weak on anything specific to one lot or one month, and builder incentives are the clearest example. With the 30-year fixed rate at 7.28% as of Oct. 1, 2026 (Freddie Mac), 66% of builders in the National Association of Home Builders’ September 2026 survey reported using sales incentives, while 38% cut prices. Lennar’s average sales price of $372,000 for its quarter ended Aug. 31, 2026 reflected incentives of about 12%.
On the Grand Strand, the most common incentive is a mortgage rate buydown through the builder’s affiliated lender, often paired with closing-cost credits. Offers change by phase and by month, so an AI answer built from pages indexed weeks earlier can describe last quarter’s deal. A buydown can also lower the monthly payment more than an equivalent price cut while leaving the recorded sale price, the figure future appraisals anchor to, untouched.
“The incentive that matters is the one that changes your monthly payment and your resale position at the same time,” says Jerry Pinkas, a Myrtle Beach broker who founded his independent brokerage in 2005 and works with buyers relocating to the Grand Strand.
The way AI answers are displayed adds a second gap. A Pew Research Center analysis of 68,879 Google searches found that users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when none did, and clicked a link inside the summary in just 1% of visits. For a home buyer, that means the builder page with the current price sheet, or the HOA disclosure, may never get opened.
The table below sets out where AI search helps a new-construction buyer and what still needs a direct check.
| Task | Where AI search helps | What to check directly |
| Shortlisting areas | Summarizes growth, price ranges and builders active across a metro | Peak-season commute and flood exposure street by street |
| Comparing builders | Lists communities, floor plans and typical HOA features | Current phase pricing and lot premiums |
| Incentives | Explains how rate buydowns and closing-cost credits work | This month’s offer, in writing, priced as a buydown and as a price cut |
| Affordability | Estimates a monthly payment from price and rate | Insurance quotes and the HOA budget for the specific lot |
| Representation | Explains how buyer-agent compensation works | The builder’s agent registration rule before the first visit |
How should buyers check what AI search tells them?
Buyers get the most from AI search when they treat its answer as a shortlist and verify the parts that move money. A practical order of checks for any shortlisted community:
- Ask the AI for its sources, then open the builder’s own page for current pricing and incentives.
- Pull the FEMA flood zone for the specific lot, not just the community.
- Request the HOA budget and ask what the developer pays until turnover.
- Get homeowners and flood insurance quotes before signing.
- Drive the commute to the beach and U.S. 501 at peak summer hours.
- Ask for the incentive in writing two ways, as a buydown and as a price cut.
“I ask sales offices to quote the same home two ways, once with the buydown and once with that money taken off the price, then have an outside lender run both,” Pinkas says. “The better option is usually obvious within a day.”
Do buyers still need an agent if AI finds the home?
AI can find the community, but it does not represent the buyer. Many builders require a buyer’s agent to accompany or register the client on the first visit to the sales center, so a buyer who goes straight from a chat window to a model home may lose the option of representation for that purchase. The builder commonly offers compensation to the buyer’s agent, though terms vary, so buyers should confirm them in a written buyer agreement before touring.
New-home buyers are already the likeliest to go without an agent. The National Association of Realtors’ 2025 buyer profile found that 88% of all buyers purchased through an agent, compared with 92% of those buying previously owned homes. Buyers still say they want people involved at the decision points: more than half of Bank of America’s respondents prefer a real estate professional for touring and contract guidance, and a Cotality survey found that 44% of buyers would pay more to have a human verify information generated by AI.
“The person in the model home is good at their job, and their job is the builder,” Pinkas says. “On the Grand Strand you can find two nearly identical floor plans a few miles apart with very different HOA dues, lot premiums and flood exposure. Someone on your side should line those up before you sign.”
The bottom line
AI search has become the first step for a growing share of new-construction buyers, especially younger ones and those relocating from out of state. It is good at turning a whole metro into a shortlist and at explaining how buydowns, HOAs and builder contracts work.
It is weak on the details that set the real price of a new home: this month’s incentive, the flood zone of one lot and an HOA budget the developer still controls. The buyers who come out ahead use AI to build the shortlist, then check those details directly and bring their own agent to the first visit.
