How it works
How Homechecker uses AI
Every Homechecker Read is prepared with AI, inside a method and a set of checks we designed for reading buildings. This page explains plainly what that means for your Read: what it is good at, where its limits are, and how your information is handled.
What goes into your Read
The Read brings together the evidence available about the home:
- public property records, including the title parcel and the planning zone and overlays;
- aerial and street-level imagery of the property;
- listing photography, where the property has been advertised;
- what the era and construction type of the home tell us about how it was built and how it ages;
- anything you choose to upload — photos, a Section 32, an inspection report, invoices or quotes for work done.
We haven’t visited the property. The Read works from this evidence, so things that can’t be seen in it — behind walls, under floors, inside the roof — may remain unknown.
What the AI does
We use AI-assisted analysis from Anthropic Claude and Google Gemini. Working through the home element by element — foundations, walls, roof, services, wet areas and so on — it:
- judges the likely condition of each element and how much life it has left;
- works out what is likely to need doing over the next ten years, and roughly when;
- estimates what that is likely to cost, in today’s dollars, explaining how each figure was reached;
- notes how confident it is in each finding, and why;
- writes the summary, the questions worth asking and the documents worth requesting.
The AI follows our method rather than improvising its own: how elements are named and grouped, how costs are built up, how timing is set, and how a strata or owners-corporation share is applied.
The checks around it
Before a Read is released, automated checks test it — for example, that costs are explained, that timing and totals add up, and that confidence matches the evidence behind it. If the checks find a significant problem, the Read is held back for a person to review instead of being sent to you.
When you update a Read with new documents, the same checks run again. Where your documents would change something fundamental — whether the home is part of an owners corporation, the number of lots, or when it was built — the update is held for a person to review before your Read changes.
These checks catch inconsistencies; they are not a person verifying every finding. The Read is an independent desktop analysis, not a surveyor’s inspection report.
How confident it is
Every item in your register carries a confidence level:
- High — seen clearly in the evidence, or confirmed by a document;
- Medium — reasonably inferred from what the evidence shows;
- Low — estimated from the era and type of home, and worth checking.
The Read tells you which is which, so you can see what is estimated and what is established. Documents you supply firm things up: an invoice for a new switchboard, for instance, turns an estimate into a confirmed finding, and the Read says which document it relied on.
What happens to your documents
Your account, Reads and uploads are stored with our database and storage provider. To prepare and update your Read, relevant property information, documents and images are sent to our AI providers. In short:
- we use commercial AI services that are contractually configured not to train models on the data we send;
- processing happens outside Australia, primarily in the United States;
- we use your documents to prepare and update your Read, and for the purposes set out in our Privacy Policy — never to sell or for anyone else’s marketing;
- you can ask us to delete your Reads and uploads at any time, from your profile or by emailing us.
Only upload what you are entitled to share, and remove details you don’t need to include, such as identity numbers, signatures or bank details. The full detail — including provider retention, where information is stored and how long we keep it — is in sections 7, 9 and 10 of our Privacy Policy.
What it isn’t
A Read is not a building inspection, pest inspection, engineering report, valuation or legal advice. Use it to understand a home and plan ahead — alongside a building and pest inspection, the right professionals for important findings, quotes before you commit to work, and legal advice where you need it. Our Terms set this out in full.
Talk to a person
Questions about how your Read was prepared, or something in it that doesn’t look right? Email hello@moyneross.com and a person will get back to you.
Using an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT? You can connect it to our home-buying guides for free — see Use Homechecker inside your AI assistant.