AI Brief: What 2026 Means for Home Builders-172

AI is no longer a trend: it’s becoming infrastructure for how homes are discovered, evaluated, and purchased.

In this first episode of our new recurring segment, AI Brief: Home Building Edition, host Anya Chrisanthon is joined by Anewgo CEO John Lee to break down how we got here, what changed between 2022 and 2025, and why 2026 is shaping up to be a turning point for home builders.

They cover:

• The shift from traditional search to conversational, AI-driven discovery
• What “agentic AI” really means for buyers and sellers
• Why AI browsers, assistants, and agents are changing the buyer journey
• How AI is moving from marketing into full-funnel commerce
• What builders need to do now to stay visible, competitive, and relevant

This episode zooms out to connect the dots without hype so builders, marketers, and sales leaders can understand what actually matters next.

Transcript

Anya Chrisanthon 0:34

welcome back to Anewgo of New Home Sales podcast. I'm your host, Anya Chrisanthon, and today we're introducing something new that we're really excited about starting this month. We're launching a recurring segment. We're calling our AI Brief Home Building edition, a practical no hype. Look at what's happening in ai. And what it actually means for the home building industry. Now, let's be honest, AI headlines are everywhere. Every week there's a new tool, a new model, a new prediction about jobs disappearing, or everything changing overnight. And for builders, it can feel overwhelming or easy to ignore. So this segment exists for one reason, to cut through the noise and translate AI into real world impact for new home sales, marketing, and the buyer experience. Each month I'll be joined by Anewgo, CEO John Lee, and together we'll break down what's changing, what matters and what doesn't, and how builders should be thinking about ai. Not as a trend, but as an infrastructure. This first episode is a little different. We're going to start by zooming out, really looking at how we got here, what AI has become over the last couple of years, and why 2026 is shaping up to be such an important year for our industry. So with that, welcome my co-host, John Lee.

John Lee 2:07

Hey guys, I was just thinking about our name, AI briefs. It's actually a good and a bad name. It's a good name in that you're giving briefings and it's like breaking news up to date. But if it's anything but. Brief because I think there's an overwhelming amount of data that's coming out all the time. It's coming fast and furious and it's coming in in a very overwhelming, complex, and maybe even disruptive way. And that's why we want to kind of break it down into these little brief segments each month. So let's get started. How Start, start shooting.

Anya Chrisanthon 2:41

Well, so I was gonna say, I remember standing on stage at IBS 2022, I guess it was, and at the end of my presentation. I introduced chat, GPT because I, I had asked Chat GPT to come up with an ending for my presentation. Of course, I was talking about technology and what's coming next, and so this chat GPT thing made onto my radar. Not many people knew about it, and I remember people were blown away by its capability. What it did back in 2022 is kinda like a live. Preview of that. And then thinking back to my IBS presentation last year, my talk was all about the operator. You know that no longer home builders are going to be searching the Google that instead they're gonna outsource that to this operator that will be doing the searching for them. So I think. Last year, there was a talk of agentic ai. It was kinda the year of agentic so my question to you, John, is before we jump into, recapping and look at what's next, let's tease them. So when you think about 2026 for ai, what do you dub it?

John Lee 3:57

Ooh, wow. You wanna go forward and then come back? Okay. Well, going forward, I think 2026 is going to be where AI is gonna have a big coming out party, and that's where it's really gonna be applicable for consumers and you're gonna see it, In a wide range of applications. I mean, you're seeing it everywhere, not just on websites. You're seeing it even in portals. You're seeing your spreadsheets, seeing across videos and social media. But I think all that is going to show this convergence of AI combining with search engines, combining with e-commerce and social to really become an AI commerce, platform.

Anya Chrisanthon 4:31

I like it. AI commerce. Here we come. Commerce. Chaing, right? Kaing?

John Lee 4:36

Yeah. It all gets down to money.

Anya Chrisanthon 4:38

So why don't we give our listeners a quick overview from your perspective, John, since you seem to be the authority in AI when it comes to home building, at least. We wanna hear what you think were some of the biggest milestones, maybe from 2022. I mean, 2022 was the year that Chad GPT made a splash. Right? Before that we had ai, but it was in other forms, anything from the internet, the way you search right to. Their bots and algorithms, everything, right? Social media, so we're all familiar with that. So kind of like maybe taking 2022 on where we really had this new idea, new version of AI that, that we know of now. Let's take them through some of the biggest milestones that you think were placed and why were those milestones important? Things happening, but are, is it important? Is it relevant to us? So maybe let's kind of go through those, some of those milestones that you think are. Monument.

John Lee 5:37

Yeah. And since most of our audience are on businesses, I'm gonna speak mostly from the business to business side. The B2B side, obviously it's gonna be the big impact. It's gonna be on the consumer side, but you know, starting out it was generative ai. That's when we can go out and have ai, gather all this information and then generate whether it's, textural information, video information, and even audio. So it was multimodal and that really changed the game for, particularly the marketing people, the marketing and sales arena. And they were able to generate a lot of not only, Content, but personalized content so they can make very unique messages, create very unique message to their audience. And that really took a couple of years for it to take off. Partly it was just chat, GPT at the beginning, OpenAI, and then it obviously exploded into, with perplexity, Claude, and now Gemini has joined in with Google. So now everybody in, you know, meta has llama. So everybody is jumping into the game, even though, there's a lot of other ais around the world. So now it's become ubiquitous. So now that everybody can, generate content, both for work purposes, but even just for casual, consumer purposes, it's now. Going from, I'll stick to the business side, going from the top of the funnel, generative AI where you're trying to generate content to attract an audience to AG agentic ai. So AG agentic AI really, took off in 2025 and that's when now the AI is moving from. The back office to the front office and the front. I say the front office is moving to the consumer's, interface. And so now with agenda ai, the AI is not just introducing you to a website or to a brand or to a, seller, it's actually helping you through that entire shopping process from, discovery to, finding the products, to comparing the products, to ultimately even purchasing and transacting the products online.

Anya Chrisanthon 7:32

Now before we get much further, I wanna make sure that our listeners stay with us. There's a lot of, slang that is being thrown around when it comes to ai. So agentic. So first of all, in case you are not familiar with agentic ai, again, 2025 was dubbed the year of agent ai. So, John, can you explain to us what is agentic ai? What does that mean?

John Lee 7:54

I'll try to speak in the way we relate to it. A lot of times, in a complex purchase, particularly between a buyer and a seller, because it's so complex and arduous and our requires a lot of expertise, we have agents work on behalf of us in the old days and travel agents. If you need somebody to represent you, in negotiations, it could be, a sports agent, a talent agency. And then in buying a home, you need a real estate agent. So that agent is that intermediary that facilitates that transaction between the buyer and the seller. Ideally you want to have, a direct relationship between the buyer and the seller to reduce cost and time. But what's gonna happen with agent AI is. Instead of another human that has to be in a contractual relationship and you have to work with a lot. The AI is actually working on behalf of you as your surrogate shopper. The more agency that you give it, the more discretion and capabilities, almost in the sense of a power attorney to act on your behalf. Now, it could be at a very. Simple level, like just scheduling a tour or, maybe filling out forms, things like that. But long term it may be able to help you, be the first one to purchase or to, quickly arrange the entire travel itinerary and go ahead and make those bookings and reservations. So they could be a great, time saver eventually as well. The AI can actually work across many other apps. So instead of you going to your Uber app, your Instacart app, your Zillow app and everything, you just make that command. Right now, we're just learning how to prompt, it's like, Hey, generate something. Well, now you're gonna command it to execute something. And so instead of you having to log in and remembering your passwords and going through all the clicking and everything, you just say what you want and it executes that for you.

Anya Chrisanthon 9:38

Yep. And we're starting to see that in action with shopping. Right? Many of you probably use chat GPT, not just to look up. Fancy recipes or give you directions or whatever else, but you're probably using this for shopping as well. Mm-hmm. So if you're curious, you can of course plug in, information like, Hey, I'm looking for new construction in my area. This is what I'm looking for in Chad GPT, and see what it does. But now we're also starting to see many browsers that have. AI built into it. Where what's interesting is when you can see how those browsers work, they actually tell you what's happening every step of the way as they're looking up that information. For example, Atlas, right? Um, Atlas is the one by Chad. GP is that the one by Chad? G Bt, yeah.

John Lee 10:29

GBT

Anya Chrisanthon 10:30

Open ai. Yes. Yeah. Atlas and I think there are several others that came out recently. So John, can you talk to us a little bit about these browsers? What's important about them and, what shift is this signaling to us?

John Lee 10:46

Okay. In parallel to, The evolution of the bots. So you referenced, you know, this has actually been going on for a long time, but the bots were built primarily around algorithms that really didn't have any intelligence. And now that we've given it artificial intelligence, it has the mind, but it never had the hands to actually, achieve anything. So, it gave you great tips. But it couldn't actually go through that process. So what we also seen is this evolution of the interface. That initial interface obviously was the search engine, right? Where you put in a few keywords and it generated, a lot of, websites for you to now explore on your own. But now you're seeing, like you're saying, that evolution, that search engine into a conversation channel. So instead of just putting in five keywords, that actually gives you 10 words back. And the minute you respond and it responds back, you've actually now have converted from. A traditional searcher to now, a conversation with ai. And now with that evolution, of search engines, it's now migrating to, AI browsers and AI browsers. Like you may use Firefox, safari Chrome. But what's happening is now those browsers have become. Intelligent. And with those browsers, one of the big, differences is now you'll have this AI assistant that you can click on and it pops up as a side panel adjoin to whatever website that you're looking at. So now you have a guide along your entire website journey wherever websites. And nothing that the websites did, it's actually been appended on it because it's a browser that's appended to that. Now that s ai assistant. The difference between that and an AI agent, the AI assistant is guiding you as you are doing. The shopping as you're clicking on the buttons and scrolling and, filtering and doing all those things. Now, when it becomes an AI agent, like you alluded to with,, operator, which is a Chat GPT product, using their Atlas browser. And then, Facebook just acquired Manus, which was a Chinese company, but now it's exclusively, outside of China. Now it's a Singaporean company that's acquired by Meta. So now what happens is that AI is now. Doing the navigation of the website, maybe even doing navigation of social media. Maybe you don't wanna scroll through all these social media things and maybe let the AI go through there and find the things that of really particular interest to you. And all that capability will dovetail into,. AI applications. So the next evolution from AI browsers is AI apps. So chat PT or open AI has just opened up their AI app store. So it's akin to traditional Apple or Google app stores. But now they're all intelligent. So all those apps I was referring to earlier with Uber, Instacart and all that, now they will all become intelligent because if they were just dumb, they would require you to manually go in there and log in and say, oh, I don't know what. Pizza toppings you like, you go in here and do it. Well now when you've already ordered things from Instacart and you visited Italy and then all it knows all those things in context. So now the AI is intelligent as it's working across this app network. And so what will happen is the sellers, the vendors will have to now create their. Products and format it into a data structure and data tags so that those AI apps can be able to pull their data in there, synthesize it in the context. Hey, along with that, wonderful Italian pizza, we pair that with a wonderful red wine from this vineyard, and it's able to now put all that together on behalf of the buyer. So now it's not. It could be a, just a buyer's assistant giving you the, Somalia tips or advice, or it could go all the way to ordering that wine for you as an agent.

Anya Chrisanthon 14:25

So what strikes me is that sounds like we have a whole new channel that's been emerging, and that's this conversational channel.

John Lee 14:36

Mm-hmm.

Anya Chrisanthon 14:36

Right? So let's talk a little bit about what that means for home building. How do we keep track of this conversational channel? Do we need a separate CRM system for this channel? Like give us a little glimpse as to what's coming and, How do we even operate this new conversational channel so that people can start wrapping their brain around what's coming next?

John Lee 14:57

Well, you know, the paradox is. To become more human, we actually need more ai because AI has now allowed us to go from speaking like bots in five key words, to actually having a natural conversation even your own natural native tongue. Your language, and even in a way that we as humans communicate, which is visually and through voice and through text. So it's appealing to all senses. AI doesn't need all those senses. It only speaks in ones and zeros, but it's actually making it more appealing to, humans and the way humans really communic. At both a large audience level and individual personal level is through conversations, right? So it's natural for us to come back to our roots and not cave paintings, but to actually have a natural conversation. Now, the problem is all the channels that we've done for marketing historically as we went from the Real world to the virtual world is we left out the conversation piece. So now we're bringing that back in and we can speak naturally. You could speak in Russian, and I could speak in Chinese, and we could still communicate with each other because AI could translate that not only translates it, it transcribes it. So if you as a seller want to know what's really going on, you don't get lost in translation. You see it all in English.

Anya Chrisanthon 16:19

That's crazy because that's

John Lee 16:20

the world,

Anya Chrisanthon 16:22

smaller

John Lee 16:22

world.

Anya Chrisanthon 16:23

If you have this information, think about as a builder, if you have information on what your ideal buyer is actually saying. Mm-hmm. What are they asking when they're searching for your home? What kind of question are they asking? What objections they're throwing out there? That is so valuable and we've never had full on conversations unless they came to your. Model home, right? Yeah.

John Lee 16:50

Until they actually talk to a human. So we will ultimately get you the human, but we don't necessarily need a human to get you to a human. And I add another thing to the AI in that not only does this transcribe that, that, conversation, but it actually records it. Because as much as it can actually have a voice conversation, it also records an audio clip of it. So in some of the conversations that I've had, and I've listened to, using our ai, assistant. I've learned that the intonation is just as important as the transcription. Mm-hmm. Um, and what I mean by that is if you see it transcribed, do you have any quick moving homes available? Okay. That's alright. That's good. She's interested that if Anya says, do you have any quick moving homes available? That intonation shows a lot more about your intent, your passion, your propensity, or if you say really do you know, is. If you say something negative in a, in a frustrating way, I don't wanna be an actor here. Mm-hmm. But being able to pick that up and to be able to assess, Hey, we really have a problem with our warranties. The person's frustrated are we, they love us. This is the person we want on a social media post, because we can tell from the way their voices

Anya Chrisanthon 18:06

mm-hmm.

John Lee 18:07

How they feel about us.

Anya Chrisanthon 18:08

Mm-hmm. So it's interesting because we're, and I don't know if historically software leads hardware or the hardware really leads software because now we're in a position where we need CRMs and we need systems that are able to capture those full conversations. And as far as I'm aware, we don't really have anything like that yet.

John Lee 18:33

No. This is why, AI is moving so quickly and, when you say hardware and software, they do work like, the pedals on a bicycle. Once one pushes forward to go forward again, the other side has to push. And as the software becomes better and better, you need better and better hardware. That's why they have to invest more into the GPUs, the CPUs, to translate faster, to store more, to have more memory, to have quicker conversations, and to expand into a collaborative process. And we're just starting the conversation. The conversation in buying a new home is not just one-on-one. It's one to many, or many to one. Depends which side you're coming from because there's so many people on both sides of that equation. On the seller side, you could go all the way to, your salespeople, your production people, your warranty people, and the, and on the buyer side, obviously your family and anybody else that's part of the shopping process. So to be able to bring all of that into one, conversation and have all their voices represented. I think it's gonna be very important. So that gets back to your CRM piece, the traditional CRM of, hey, one, I need your name and number and you have to contact me when I'm available as a seller, and I can only speak to you one at a time. And what was your name again? What did you want?'cause I didn't get to see what you're doing that is so far down in the funnel or the customer journey. And what you may not realize as a seller is. You actually had a hundred people that would want to talk to you, but only 10 got the guts and had the time, and even one had the propensity to even wanna talk to you. So you may have left, you may have already lost 90% of your potential audience because you didn't have that conversation with'em. Now how are you gonna say, well, how could I have a conversation with, I don't even know who they are. That's the beautiful thing about ai. People are having conversations with their AI agent, about your product, about your store, about your social media creds before you even join that conversation. So what you need as a seller is somebody that can speak privately, anonymously as somebody's walking your store. When I go into Home Depot, they don't ask for my driver's license before they talk to me. That would be stupid of them, and that would be offensive to me. When I want to go in there and I have a need or want, first of all, there's someone in the store. If you don't even have. Sales. I don't care whether it's human or ai manning your store. Your store is like a museum. Walk along, find if, maybe you'll find something, maybe you won't. I mean it, they had to go through haystacks of websites that they had to click on and you had a paragraph and this and the SEO days. Oh, we're a great website. We love customer service. We want to give you the best customer experience. We have so many opportunities and options for your lifestyle. And then when you come there, it's like. Where's everyone? Oh, we don't even have a search engine here. There is nobody to talk to you. So that is such a terrible experience. They had to go through these haystacks, and to find a needle on the haystack when they get to your stuff. It's another, on your own journey. Mm-hmm.

Anya Chrisanthon 21:27

And of course, that is the reason why we decided to introduce Anewgo AI assistants into the equation because like we mentioned, these smart. Browsers now are having conversations, but the trouble is they're not your smart browser, right? They're just chat, GPT, smart browser. So the conversation that's gonna be happening in there is not, seller agnostic, right? Like meaning that it, it's gonna tell you all about Home Depot. It's also gonna tell you about the Lowe's, right? So what we introduced is AI assistants that go on your website. So when the buyer comes there, they can continue this conversational journey. But like you said, to your point. It's somebody who is, staffing your store, your virtual store, and they're trained in your language. They're trained how to sell them, what to say, how to say it so that they can show off your goods and services while you're sleeping. So. Do you wanna talk a little bit about AI Assistants? Yeah,

John Lee 22:35

sure.

Anya Chrisanthon 22:36

Where we're

John Lee 22:36

now

Anya Chrisanthon 22:37

with that? So

John Lee 22:37

we're already, we're already seeing, um, the buyer's assistant at play already. If you use Amazon, I don't know, do you, have you ever used Amazon? Okay. So, oh, okay. So there's this thing on Amazon a year ago. They, they introduced, their AI assistant Rufuss. So Rufuss sits over there on the side. So if you have a question about, hey. Uh, what kind of hiking boots do I need to go climb the Himalayas? It may ask you about, what kind of needs, requirements and all that kind of stuff. And so it's your AI system now. It's not an agent in there. It's not handling a transaction for you. I really don't wanna give my, Pocket book and my credit card right over to Amazon to buy everything for me. But it's your guide. Okay. And then,, you're seeing that even with, Google partnering with House Canary in our industry, where, in some test markets you can use Google to now find listings of available homes, primarily in existing home space. So you're starting to see this, this merger between the content creators or providers and, Gemini, search. It's not through Google because it is not saying go to House Canary. It's bringing House Canaries listings into a Gemini conversation about not just your house, but your lifestyle needs and every need, everything that re relates to the purchase of a home. OpenAI, which is Chat GPT, has also, connected that, data with Zillow. So, Zillow and actually HubSpot, we're talking about CRMs. They're one of the first,. Couple of companies to actually connect to open AI by feeding that data through their Connect API, application program interface. And there's all also even rumor that Open AI is looking to acquire Pinterest because Pinterest has a huge audience, has a lot of products, a lot of data, lot of visuals, a lot of, promotional stuff in there. And to be able to add a conversational element about that dress and about that lifestyle that could be, big. Don't buy the stock yet. But that's the rumor. Now what's happening, as you were alluded to earlier, the next phase of that from being just a shopping assistant is now being that shopping agent. And so OpenAI has actually not only, trying to create an assistant through, like with Zillow guiding you along, but also, using their browser with operator, you can say, Hey, look for this. And you will see the AI actually clicking on those things. What happens is if you haven't tried it on Atlas, you'll see your, screen to kind of turn into like, uh, like a Wizard of Oz with like sparkles everywhere. Magic wands kind of moving around. So basically the AI is working its magic as it's navigating through the builder's website. It's actually probably a good experience for you as a seller to actually have. Operator or chat, GPT. Go through there and shop your website.'cause you'll see this is what instead of you recording what a human is doing, you'll see how AI is shopping and the AI is even smarter than human. And if the AI is struggling, that means your site is not structured well for ai, much less you and I. And because it's also, when I say you and I, even though it's looking at data, it's also clicking on buttons and scrolling on things just like a human would. So in a sense, it is taking on human, visual,'cause it has computer vision, human visual acuity. And then, like I said, with, meta, meta just acquired Manus, which is trying to do the same thing. So we're starting to see, AI. Go down this entire customer journey and streamline the process. And if you wanna see what's going on, you will need that CRM. Maybe that's why they're connecting with HubSpot. But the other part of it, like you're saying, is if you only let the AI buyer's, assistant buyer's agent, do the shopping, it may come to your website and says, Hey, yeah, they have some good homes over here. It looks like they have a nice pool. But if you go across the street. So much better and so much better price. And let me shop for you because it's acting like a buyer's real estate agent. So what you need to do is when they come down to your site, you're. AI structure has got you into the conversation, but it hasn't curated the lead. They brought the AI buyer's assistant says, Hey, this, this builder, this community matches everything that you'd ever dreamed of. Now when it gets there, your sales assistant, just like you would have a sales assistant in your model home, needs to confirm, curate, facilitate, educate, everything that it's brought you there to expect.

Anya Chrisanthon 26:55

And I think from consumer perspective, now that we're comfortable and we're used to this sort of shopping, right? Like I just tell you what I'm looking for, I don't necessarily need to browse myself. So they're gonna be primed for that experience when they land on your website that they don't necessarily wanna go and click on the menus and this and that. They just wanna continue that conversation by asking. Do you have this kind of a floor plan or these are my needs, what kind of floor plan would work for me and you bring it to me instead of me going out there searching for it. And so that's exactly what our AI assistant does. And if you guys haven't had a chance to check it out, we already have it on a few builder websites. And we are working with some testers now. So if you have an Anewgo website already. And you wanna be one of the first to try it out, let us know. Send an email to Beth@anewgo.com and she'll be able to set you up with that. You can be one of our early testers, but John, what are your expectations with this AI assistant now and, and to next year. So right now it's able to have pretty amazing conversations, right? I mean, I was blown away, by its ability to, again, just like you're used to with chat GPT, carry out conversation, you can do open-ended conversation. It's gonna surface those things for you. So again, as it matches the floor plan, it will give you the link. So you can click on the link, open it up right there. You can start designing your new home, making it a much better, easier customer experience. But what do you see for the next year, maybe with AI Assistants? Where do you see them going?

John Lee 28:37

Well, at least for us right now, what I first started to try to do is, enrich that customer journey. When I say enrich it, I mean I want it to be engaging. I still want to utilize all the interactive elements. I want it to be personalized, but part of that enrichment is to reduce the friction, have it your way, the way you want to navigate. And so the way we've created it is, the ai, when you come in there, you can have an open-ended question because you may just have something that's top of mind. You don't want to go through, decision tree questions. You have to ask to have that question and answer so you can ask the open-ended question. If you are new to the whole process, you may want to have, a button by button navigation way so you can go through that way. Some people just don't want to type, they just want to talk and they're on their mobile device or they're driving and you, so you can have a voice conversation. You also want to have it, you know, in a frictionless way with your own language, in the way you wanna communicate. If you wanna see, in addition to your language, if you wanna see that product, because the picture's with a thousand words, you can only describe that how so many ways and whatever. It's usher. In the sense that it can bring the product into the conversation visually, and it can also bring you to that aisle or to that page that describes more of it or allows you to design it. The other thing is we've also, given AI more human qualities. So not only can it hear you. It can relate to you. It can probably even sense, your frustrations and, so it knows when you're upset, it can calm you down or it can rationalize things, but it also has computer vision. So instead of having to go through all these floor plans with all these options and zoom in and zoom out and go to second floor and where's the home that's on the cul-de-sac or next to the lake? It can visually see all that. So imagine if you had these superpowers that you can see hundreds of floor plans. Visually read'em and then get, summaries of not only do I want a, primary bedroom on the first floor, but I want the ones in the back of the house, not in the front of the house. Well, it can look through those things. Say, oh, I found one that has in,, the back of the house. So those are kind of things that's not even possible right now without each individual going to learn how to read all those floor plans and taking all that time. So what I see what's gonna actually happen is there's gonna be two different levels of the AI shopping for you. One is, I'm gonna call it walk away shopping. And what I mean, walk away shopping is. You just tell your AI agent, this is what I'm looking for. This is my lifestyles, my needs, my wants, my constraints. I just got divorced. Or I need to have a good school system, or whatever. I don't wanna talk to anybody. I don't want to go to every biller's website. I'm gonna set it and forget it. And then when I walk away tomorrow, or 30 minutes later, it depends how far searching it now. Just finds what matches me, matches and notifies me. And so I'm not sitting there watching every click on the button, as operator is doing. It just goes out and does that. It's like, you don't need to do show and tell, just tell. And then the second part is for the ones that do match and really,, appeal to me in a conversational way.'cause I, it is gonna maybe present to me by eight o'clock tomorrow morning while I'm having breakfast. Hey, here are 10 matches. You know, which one of these appeal to you? Now I'm having a conversation with a curated results. It's learning for me, it's like, oh, oh, I didn't really realize you didn't like farmhouses. Okay, I'll keep that outta the conversation. So now the ones that, that, appeal to me, I will sit and stay and that's when I will go to your website and I will sit and stay and I will shop and maybe I'll still have the AI system there still as a guide, but I'm not just gonna let the AI buy my dream home or much less sign a million dollar check. And I think that's how it's gonna hand off because let the AI do not just the legwork, but the finger work. And then when I wanna put my fingers on it, I'll jump back into the driver's seat and it gets better and better over time. And the beautiful thing about that also is there's no more fomo. There's no fear of missing out on the, new home that just popped up, or the price drop that went on, or the new incentive that came out or whatever. So mm-hmm. Take away the pain, get all the gain.

Anya Chrisanthon 32:41

I love that. So what I think about when you were talking is it makes me think that there's gonna be a lot bigger pool of new construction buyers, because that's always been our trouble, right? Is that you.

John Lee 32:55

The way you had to get the pool 10, you had to pool

Anya Chrisanthon 32:58

exactly them.

John Lee 32:59

In

Anya Chrisanthon 33:00

know, historically it's been, you know, 10 to 20% of people who buy new construction. We know that most people are actually interested in new construction, but with SEO Google Search Needle in the haystack, most people can't find that dream home. So now with AI eliminating that as long as you can. Talk. It doesn't matter if you speak Russian or Chinese or English. You're gonna be able to be matched to that dream home of yours and notified. So there's no more fomo, which think about how many more people would be. Glad to find that home and now they see it. So you'll have hopefully a lot bigger pool of buyers for your properties that's what it makes me think. But it's very important that you do optimize your website and your content in order to be found. Right. So I think. 2025. Hopefully you guys have had the time to learn a little bit about this new shift from SEO to a IO and how you need to optimize your website. What do you need to do on your website in order to be found? Because that's gonna be probably the biggest challenge, right? Is, is the. Because

John Lee 34:08

it's the appeal to the AI's eyes because Right. One, when you're relying on manual intervention and manual effort, I mean, one, I don't even like shopping in the first place. Two, I don't have the time to do all the shopping. And so I would even garner, and of course we can't prove this shit because, um, we don't have AI everywhere. I bet a lot of people are not buying from you. Not because they don't necessarily like. Or or dislike what you have. It's just like ships passing in the me in the night.

Anya Chrisanthon 34:37

Mm-hmm.

John Lee 34:37

You didn't see each other. So when you offer something they want, they weren't there to find it. And Wow. That's like not going to the bar at the right night, that you're your, that your dream spouse that's gonna show up. And so we just missed each other.

Anya Chrisanthon 34:52

Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully this will open your audience to a much bigger audience, which means bigger opportunity, bigger opportunity to optimize your offering and hopefully have higher returns. So I think on that front, it's all positive, but that does mean that we need to start shifting our marketing. And our marketing mind and dollars away from SEO the old school to now how do we optimize for AIO So that's one thing I definitely wanna leave you with guys. But now going forward, you said the word of 2026 is gonna be commerce. So let's spend next few minutes talking about what do you think needs to happen or what do you expect is going to be happening with AI over the next year that we actually do get to now transacting.

John Lee 35:41

Most of the AI that we've been doing is very singular and very isolated, to, a particular person's needs or particular use case. If you want to get to commerce. We have to move down the entire customer journey. And the way that customer journey is it actually may encompass a variety of agents. With SEO we had Google that dominated the market. You know, you start off with a Google search and, they own everything with now everybody having their own favorite AI platform. So you don't miss out in on the audience that, all those ais need to. All hear the same message and they all need to be in sync, so nobody's missing out. So what has happened is the major ais have agreed to, they call it MCP Model context Protocol. So when you speak to Claude. Open AI understands, and Gemini understands. So, you know, when you make A-A-A-A-P-B All Points bulletin that I need this, all of them are working on behalf of you. And I've actually tested that out because, one of the things when we create our AI assistant, it's not just having AI as a technology, but you need to train your ai. And so we created, I call it a four A university, but it's actually spelled, F-O-U-R-A i.ai for ais. And so what happens is. People don't realize this, but all these ais are not the same. You know, some are better at creating visuals. Some are great at talking, some are great at deep thought, some are great at searching and pulling out current information. Some are great at conversations. Some are great with a certain style. So I use the four major ais. I use, Chat GPT, Claude, perplexity, and Gemini. And so what happens is they all work in concert under one voice that speaks to. That consumer. And so they are in a sense using this, shared, connection. And, and brain. So what that concept of an individual AI assistant utilizing four different ais to get the message across, will probably be, expanded at a marketplace level so that when whoever you're shopping with, we'll be able to shop that entire store, and now to make it a customer journey. You have to be able to, take that data and make it horizontally integrated like I'm talking about, regardless of which AI and which channel they are all speaking the same language. Okay? So it needs to be horizontally integrated, but it also needs to be vertically integrated because the vertical integration, each customer is gonna shop for their own product, their own way. Their own time with their own restraints and requirements. And so that vertical integration is gonna require the seller. That's why, open AI can't do this without Pinterest or Google can't do this without house Canary or, So what we wanna do with the new home industry is be able to, allow that vertical integration. So all your products, your warranties, and the other thing that we go beyond, what AI can do is AI only scrapes your website. Obviously there's a lot of other information beyond your website, like your warranties, your incentive programs and all that stuff that, that doesn't need to be all over your website, but it needs to be able to be, Retrieved, it could be videos, it could be images. So be able to vertically integrate that. But you need someone that's gonna data structure that data, take that data, take that, create it, multim modally, and have it, um, available in real time, bidirectionally in that conversation to, for the AI to synthesize. So you will need someone here that represents the sellers to be able to put that AI content. In a usable format. And I know this is very complex, so I'm gonna try to put it in a way that maybe other people can understand. Hopefully all of us have taken biology classes, but the way to do this is all this data that's the lifeblood of, e-commerce. Data is like DNA, it, defines who that person is or what that animal is or plant. But what happens is. With vertical and horizontal integration, you're gonna create data chains. Just like DNA is actually a chain of different proteins or amino acid chains. That chain is unique to each buyer's shopping behavior. So what's gonna happen is we have to connect all those chains and then when you initiate it, I'm call it a chain reaction. All these bits of datas are connected together and depending on,, what. Your desire is as a customer, it's gonna cause a different chain of reaction for the ais to, give you the results. So the next stage is not just to put all this data out there, but it needs to be connected. And that's, that's something that we, we are building and actually open AI is also building a AI app store for developers to build into that.

Anya Chrisanthon 40:22

Mm-hmm.

John Lee 40:23

Data change.

Anya Chrisanthon 40:24

So you remember how a few years back we kept preaching, digitizing your sales process, digitizing your sales process, digitizing your sales process was whole point was for ai, right? Because one of the problems with AI is when you do only part of your sales process. Online, visible to AI and everything else. Like say you take them off for the end part because it's in person, and then you do it on a piece of paper and it goes in a drawer. AI cannot connect that customer experience, customer journey, right? So digitizing your customer experience, again from start to finish, so AI can make those connections that, ah. Person who came in and looked at the greenhouse first, in fact, is the buyer not the one that looked at the red house? Right? It can make all those connections over time learn, if this, then that, right? It can give recommendations on all those things. So again, goes back to bringing everything online Again. Online does not mean not in person, but just digitizing that end to end so that.

John Lee 41:30

Yeah, and the way you're describing it as connections, I mean, those are kind of like the links in the chain that I'm describing, you know, the buyer. Sees one bit of information, be the product, but how they react to that is now, and this goes even goes to blockchain if you guys really wanna get into techie. But how they interact with that creates another link in another chain, and everybody's gonna have a different DNA at the end of all that. And AI is, is probably the only technology or ai, platform. That can read those chain reactions. Mm-hmm. And then based on all those chain reactions at a macro level, we say, oh, well people that like this will probably like that. And people that don't like that will probably not like that. So now you're gonna help the buyer achieve their goals much quicker and, efficiently Than any human can do. So they're being curated. And what's gonna happen at the bottom of this customer journey?'cause I'll say at the top, the big LLMs large language models are all working in concert. But at the bottom, particularly if you're buying that new house, you're not just buying the house. You need to buy insurance. You need to buy mortgage, you need to buy, utilities. What happens is now at the bottom, the AI agent that got you to buy the house will also be the one that connects you with the AI agents from these other industries, insurance, mortgages, and whatever, so that you can shop for the best thing that matches your specific needs for your loan amount and your, house to now facilitate that transaction.

Anya Chrisanthon 43:01

And this may seem a little far fetched right now, but you guys think about this, we're talking from 2022 where we've come so far in the last three years. So I think these are actually pretty conservative estimates, I think, right? Like everything we've talked about is, is happening now. So. John, before we wrap up, is there anything particular you wanna leave our listeners with? If I'm a home builder listening to this, like maybe what are my priorities for 2026? How do I get my house in order to get ready for this?

John Lee 43:33

Well, surely really should've been doing this in 2023 or four, but, I think you almost need to go back and look at your data structure and on your data structure is probably the way it's structured for your websites. Your websites need to. Be AI enabled, if not AI native. And I know that's a whole, maybe we'll say that for next session, what the difference is. But to be AI enabled is so that the AI can quickly find what it's looking for. Not just in your place, but in comparison to your competitors because it's not just shopping you, it's shopping everyone like you. So if your house only talks to a certain audience and it doesn't talk to all the, potential, buyers that you want, then you may be cutting yourself outta the conversation purely because you didn't. Ra, raise your hand. So those, those traditional, very generic, marketing presentations, very generic and static that you saying, Hey, I want to appeal to everyone. You actually, you're not gonna appeal to anyone because what's gonna happen with ai, it's much discerning. It's not looking at, Hey, you qualify as a top 100 websites because you mentioned this. No, I, I need to have. The top three or four, and I am paid by the buyer because they paid a subscription and they're utilizing me over Gemini. And if I don't do a good job, they're gonna switch. They're gonna work on behalf of the buyer. They're not gonna work on whoever pays me the most to put at the top of a ranking that nobody's clicking on anymore. It's a totally different game. It's a buyer-centric, customer driven, personalized, privatized. The other advantage of having your own AI sales assistant too, not only do you get to sell your message, but you get to keep the data if, if you are only gonna let the buyer's agent and the browser dictate that as a seller, you may be selling things or not selling things, and you won't know the difference of when, where, why, and how and who you lost.

Anya Chrisanthon 45:38

Exactly. So. Two things, right? So how are you being found? Make sure you are being found. And then once they find you, what kind of experience is it and where is this interaction being captured? So that's very important that that data stays with you, your data, and you're able to use that data in the future as we build towards that next chapter, that commerce,

John Lee 46:05

yes.

Anya Chrisanthon 46:06

All right. Well, that wraps up this month's AI brief,, home building edition. If there's one takeaway, it's this AI isn't coming for home building. It's already here quietly shaping how buyers discover, evaluate, and choose their next home. Our goal with this segment is simple, help you stay informed, stay grounded, and stay ahead without chasing every headline. If you found this helpful, make sure you subscribe to the in Anewgo of New Home Sales podcast so you don't miss next month's update. And as always, we'll keep sharing what we're seeing, what we're learning, and where we believe the industry is headed. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next month.

John Lee 46:51

Bye guys.

Anya Chrisanthon 46:51

Bye for now.