How ChatGPT is affecting the business of real estate agents

This is an english version of a similar article I wrote originally in Spanish. I used AI to translate it (google translator) and manually edited and modified the text . The image above is also AI generated with Open AI's Dal-E

January 31, 2023

ChatGPT is one of the most hyped and talked about viral topics lately. My friend and colleague Alberto Grajales ?????? (thanks Beto) shared this CNN article below with me on how Open AI's nice technology is becoming addictive to some real estate agents and invited me to comment on it. I found that what I thought about it would not fit in a brief linkedIn comment so I decided to write a full article about it (not using ChatGPT I promise) but commenting on how it could affect their business (hopefully positively) .

The subject offers ample room for discussion, but anticipating my vision a bit, I think that ChatGPT is a "nice to have", a useful and good tool if used well and if it is not depended upon or abused using it too much. All things considered, the real estate business still has, in most cases, a very important human and personal component. It also has many repetitive and "automisable" elements and processes where technology can become a great ally. But we must bear in mind that even then, a human personal touch usually remains necessary and could be a differential or definitive factor for success.

Unfortunately, (at least in percentage terms), there are still few real estate agents that have become fully digital, or that use technology constantly and efficiently, especially in emerging markets such as Panama or Costa Rica, but also in more mature markets such as Spain, Italy or Portugal. Even in the US or the UK fully digital agents are still an elite or a minority. Although the digitisation process and the generation of what some call "agent 2.0" is, in my modest opinion, unstoppable, technology and the use of new digital solutions continues to be a pending subject for many real estate brokers.

As CNN's article says, Chat GPT "It's not perfect but it is a great starting point". This is more truly so, when one looks at listings or descriptions of property ads as poor and "without-substance" as the ones we are accustomed to seeing in many of the properties published by real estate agents, not only in emerging markets but almost everywhere. Some of these supposedly dedicated and "professional" agents, do not dedicate the time, professionalism and "love" that many of their clients require. So, between an empty, poor and short description or one made with GPT Chat that is richer in detail and written with a certain intention or a certain tone, I would affirm the latter is a thousand times better than the former.

Having said that, I think that we are still far from a listing description made by a chat bot, (no matter how much AI you put into it), that can surpass the work done by the property owner, or an expert and dedicated agent. It is their deep knowledge of the neighbourhood and the city area where the property it is located, the details they can provide about the property that no one else knows, the potential for an incremental revaluation, and most importantly the experience they can transmit about what it is like to live in that house or that apartment, that makes the whole difference. What makes that property different or special?

Another important factor for the description is that it must be written in colloquial, relevant and curated language, without copy-paste or hackneyed formulas. One has to describe or talk about the property with direct and natural language like someone talking to a friend. As the article mentioned "writing something eloquent takes time" it is not easy and its requires not only time but a certain degree of mastery.

That is where ChatGPT can be super useful, shortening times and optimising efforts, multiplying tasks and making it easier to make semi finished and complex descriptions at scale. In addition, it is certain that the bot will learn to do it better and better using better natural language. It must be said that it already does a pretty decent job at it. Furthermore, ChatGPT's learning curve will not take years but more like months, perhaps just weeks. Agents, (or anyone using it for that matter), must not fall into the trap of depending only on this tool, nor directly accepting and publishing what it "vomits" at us without processing it, correcting it and, above all, ENRICHING and PERSONALISING it.

Therefore, in order to make a better use of it, the outcome must be continuously monitored. Every response should be trimmed down edited and added with your own proprietary information. Each request must be properly chosen. Sometimes it will require several iterations of request to get the best answers. The bot's progress and learning curve should also be monitored to keep finding the best use cases. My suggestion is to always have your own input and use a less professional and more "human" language. Even doing all this additional manual work, this technology will save heaps of time and effort. By doing all that you will not only get the best out of this technology combined with the personal touch a professional agent, but you will get better organic positioning, you will better connect with the potential buyer and you will find the ideal client sooner.

I worked for 10 years in an international vertical property search engine, Mitula Group. Our value proposition, both to users and to our digital media partners, (mostly real estate portals), was that we could achieve better organic traffic by positioning our indexed properties in search engines, doing it better and more relevantly than real estate portals themselves. We achieved this mainly by making the search and positioning process more sophisticated, processing and ordering all the attributes and characteristics of the property ads. We took or "readi" all the descriptions to select more and better keywords from each of them, and thus position the ads better. We also allowed the potential buyer to know and filter using more details of each property, that could be valuable or even decisive in their purchase decision. Regardless which country and for which market segment we looked, the ads that consistently performed the best were those generated by individuals, (property owners), who described the property in their own words, in greater detail and with more care or empathy. They persistently achieved much more traction and more interested buyers than those written by professionals.

Chat bots can more easily emulate the technical, repetitive, predictable and most abundant language on the web, that of a professional agents, who create hundreds of property descriptions per week, (many of them very similar to each other). As I mentioned above, ChatGPT will be able to improve its processing and response in natural language, to look more and more like the texts generated by independent individuals. These descriptions are perhaps unprofessional, and less standard but much more creative, unpredictable and empathetic. They are written by people who are very interested and dedicated to the sale of their most valuable asset. They have words that express more than just property features and near by amenities, words that share what experiences and sensations they had when they lived in it, and what it is really about the property that is worth the most or they enjoyed the most. Those little details that no one else knows and that maybe one day ( soon) the "ChatGPT's of the world" will learn to mimmic.

Artificial intelligence and chat bots are something that has been used for years with more or less success in the real estate sector and has been improving over time. Predictive models of real estate prices and valuations or chat communication systems are getting better, more common and more useful.

This new generation of intelligent and more humane chatbots, much more powerful and sophisticated, such as ChatGPT, offer a remarkable evolution and a much broader and more complex capacity to act. One of the reasons why the system is free to use is because it is still learning and being tested. Every time someone uses it (and there are millions of people using it every month), the system learns and becomes more sophisticated, more intelligent with each new use. I think we are not able to conceptualise how much an AI system like this can improve and learn in a short time. The human brain has a lot of difficulty understanding and assimilating exponential growth, which is how AI works and improves in the time.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to think that we have not yet seen more than the beginning, a timid edge of the iceberg that is below everything that ChatGPT and artificial intelligence can do and can bring us. For many, it may be, (much like the story of the Titanic), an iceberg that causes its collapse, while for others, those who know how to adapt, using it intelligently and in a humane way (without artifice) it can be a huge opportunity, much like selling ice from the same iceberg in the Sahara.

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