Aviv Group, one of Europe's largest digital real estate platforms, powers a portfolio of leading real estate brands across France, Germany, and Belgium. Under the leadership of Amrita Choudhury, Director of Product Management, Aviv has embarked on a mission to unify platform experiences across diverse brands and geographies, while maintaining trust, performance, and user satisfaction at scale.
To meet these goals, Aviv partnered with Stream to power secure, scalable real-time chat functionality with AI Moderation that enhances safer buyer-seller conversations across its marketplace products.
The Challenge
With a footprint spanning multiple brands including SeLoger (France), ImmoWeb (Belgium), and Immowelt (Germany), Aviv faced the complexity of unifying the platform experience across different:
- Cultural contexts
- Technical stacks
- User expectations
The need to build a consistent, scalable product experience across these brands was clear—but doing so required balancing global efficiency with local flexibility.
Moreover, enabling real-time communication between property seekers and sellers was a growing priority. Aviv needed a solution that could:
- Integrate easily into multiple brand environments
- Provide seamless and safe messaging between users
- Encourage trust and engagement in high-stakes transactions like real estate
Why Platform Experience Matters
Amrita likens the platform experience to a kitchen by saying, "People only taste the cake, but behind the scenes, you have to build the kitchen and get the ingredients right. That's platform experience."
The foundation of reusable APIs, internal tools, and infrastructure must be harmonized across teams and brands. In Aviv's case, this meant centralizing and scaling platform components—like authentication, search, and now, chat—while enabling flexibility for local teams to adapt to their market's needs.
The Decision to Build vs. Buy Chat
Aviv evaluated whether to:
- Build chat in-house
- Buy a third-party solution
- Maintain current UX without chat
Aviv ran a formal RFP process with a detailed list of technical and business requirements. Ultimately, Stream was selected for its:
- High performance at scale
- Trust and safety tools
- Global edge network
- Developer-friendly APIs and SDKs
Implementation: Starting with C2C Chat in Germany
Aviv first launched consumer-to-consumer chat in the German market, enabling private sellers and buyers to communicate directly within the platform. This was seen as essential for:
- Stickiness: Keeping users within the platform, rather than shifting to external messaging apps
- Trust: Establishing moderated chat channels for sensitive, high-value conversations to combat platform circumvention, spam, and scams
- Conversion: Increasing engagement and likelihood to complete property transactions
"Safety is an underlying theme. It's not just about enabling chat—it's about creating a safe environment where users can build trust."
Scaling Across Markets: Global-Local Balance
Building a single platform across diverse brands and markets was not without friction. Amrita shared that success relied on four key principles:
- Start with the Core: Build common infrastructure first.
- Empower Local Teams: Allow adaptation for market-specific needs.
- Co-Create (but with guardrails): Aim for collaboration, but accept the need to dictate base standards when necessary.
- Measure Both Global Value & Local Impact: Avoid leaning too far in either direction.
A concrete example of this balance came during the exploration of AI-powered virtual staging. While the global team saw innovation potential, local teams didn't see commercial value. The compromise: test it in one small market with minimal disruption.
The Road Ahead: 2025 and Beyond
Looking to the future, Aviv's product platform strategy is driven by three major trends:
- Proprietary Data Advantage: Unlocking local, unavailable property data in Europe to improve pricing models and user decision-making.
- Prompt Libraries & Search UX: Redesigning search around structured prompt interactions to predict intent more accurately.
- AI-Centric Operating Models: Evolving engineering teams to include prompt engineers and adapting to innovations like Anthropic's Model Context Protocol.
"If APIs change, if prompt engineering becomes standard, we need to prepare now. It will change how platforms operate."
The Impact of Stream
While still early in its chat rollout, Aviv has seen:
- Enhanced user trust and engagement thanks to Stream's AI Moderation API
- A secure, consistent foundation for real-time communication
- A scalable platform that enables future innovation, while staying rooted in local market needs
With Stream as its partner in development, Aviv is building a modern, unified real estate experience that can scale across Europe without compromising on performance, safety, or flexibility.