Proptech Pulse: Cory Turnbull on Automated Contract Analysis

In this episode, you will discover how to protect your brokerage from expensive contract vulnerabilities in this insightful episode. Cory Turnbull, a veteran brokerage owner and CEO of Contre.ai, shares how pairing your real estate expertise with automated contract analysis insulates your business from operational risk. This secure approach empowers you to eliminate tracking mistakes while delivering the exceptional service your clients deserve. 

We dive deep into the legal nuances of transaction timelines, exploring the critical differences between day zero and day one contract execution. Our conversation also uncovers the hidden regulatory dangers of exposing sensitive client data to public artificial intelligence models. You will discover exactly where compliance landmines hide within dense disclosure packages and title reports. 

Cory leverages nearly seventeen years of front-line experience to help you navigate rapid technological disruption with absolute assurance. As consumer data access expands and compliance requirements tighten, sharpening your operational toolkit is essential for protecting your bottom line. Subscribe to Proptech Pulse today, connect with our community, and visit our website to support your growth. 

https://www.lwolf.com/podcast

Transcript

Kyle Hunter Welcome to the Tech Pulse podcast. Your inside look at the world of real estate technology. I'm your host, Kyle Hunter, here to guide you through the latest trends, expert insights, and game changing tech shaping the real estate world. This is your go to source for staying ahead of the ever evolving industry. Let's dive in. 

Kyle Hunter Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Proptech Pulse. Very happy today to have Corey with Contre today. And I don't know if that's how you say it, but contracts real estate kind of goes hand in hand. I like it. So Corey tell us a little bit about yourself and your company. Okay. 

Cory Turnbull Well my name is Corey Turnbull. I have been a real estate agent with a commercial focus for the better part of the last 15, 16, 17 years. I own a brokerage in Idaho, and so I have been pretty heavy in the prop tech real estate space for the better part of six years now. You know, we built some real estate proptech in the past that that was, you know, very heavy machine learning, very heavy NLP. You know, this was kind of the pre I, I world and you know, I just I just fell in love with the tech and you know, know the space real well. So just kind of been trying to build around identifying, you know, gaps in the marketplace. 

Kyle Hunter So just to make sure that we put it out there, Lone Wolf did partner with Contre as a, as a partner to kind of help with our transaction management and some of those things that you guys do on a day in and day out basis. You know, you've said Contre was born from real transaction pain. What's the specific moment that you may have realized, you know, this can't continue to be a human only process anymore? What can we do to kind of bring some new tools to to the arena? 

Cory Turnbull Yeah, I was actually talking to a friend of mine who owns multiple brokerages, and we were at a fundraising event, and she was super upset that they just came in and she had to just write a check for $10,000 for a missed seller credit on a contract. And, you know, of course, my little brain starts running, going. You know, that's not acceptable with, you know, in today's day and age. And then I was talking to another luxury broker in California, and they were in the middle of a big lawsuit over a an antique clock that was written into the contract as stays with the property. And when they went to the walkthrough, that thing was gone. And, you know, and it ended up being a very expensive piece of furniture. But, you know, it was just one of those things. It was like, you know, these you kept seeing these things getting overlooked. And then I was personally doing a deal. And there were multiple things that were overlooked in these contracts on the other agent side. And I was just going, this is this can't be real. You know, it's like there's so many tools available to help us get better at it, but obviously it has to be done responsibly and within the, you know, that kind of security measure environment. So we kind of started building towards that. 

Kyle Hunter Yeah. No that's a great point. We hear stories as well. A lot of times where the contract you have the notes, you know, the free form section where there's things that are added. And a lot of times those get overlooked. It's really just about making sure all the boxes are checked and the dates are filled. But you know, what about the extra pieces that, you know, go in there that sometimes get slipped in, obviously with the buyer broker agreements and some of the changes that have, you know, impacted the industry, we have to really be aware of that. And I know that that is an area that sometimes AI gets overused or I should say, can help supplement the human mistakes that are oftentimes, you know, found real estate professionals. There's tons of AI right now. Mean, everywhere you look, whether it's someone doing cloud code or all of the tech providers generating AI tools and things like that, what what problem did you intentionally decide not to solve? Like what did you look at and say, you know what, there's so many things out there. We're not going to try to do that. We're really going to focus on this.    

Cory Turnbull Yeah, we're we made sure to you know, we're not focusing on the lead generation, the, you know, the CRM kind of stuff. That's not our. It's like our wheelhouse is analyzing contracts and identifying, you know, compliance issues is risks. You know, creating timelines based on the day zero versus day one. Because I've seen that, you know, that issue just comes up so much, you know, with things like earnest money and stuff are based off of a, you know, off of the execution date or, you know, like in the contract, sometimes it'll be written agreement date and then you realize that, you know, if the seller signs or the buyer signs on the 15th and the seller signs on the 17th, then technically the 18th is day one of the contract. And so, you know, we kind of start to address that problem. And then we just kept hearing from more people that, you know, like in states like California, stuff that are heavy disclosures, you know, it could be 100 plus pages. And, you know, we're not sitting at the table with our clients like we used to and sitting down and going through the documents saying, hey, here's what this means. Sign here. Here's what this contract means. You sign here. You know, it's kind of just that dock you sign and figure it out. You know, sometimes it's 100 pages and then, you know, kind of in those secondary documents is where a lot of the landmines lie, you know, things like the title reports and the hose. And there seems to just be a bunch of gray area of, you know, who's responsible for reading the whole and, you know, and relaying those things is that, is that the, the client's responsibility or is that the agent, you know, kind of varies per state. And so we kind of made sure that to focus directly on that portion of, of contract analysis and, you know, just just providing more transparency up front significantly helps reduce issues down the road.    

Kyle Hunter Yeah. And I think, you know, to your point, Corey, this is why a lot of times folks will get worried about AI or technology or, you know, someone coming in and disrupting and displacing agents as the representative of buyers and sellers. And I think what you just highlighted really points out why that's just so far from being, you know, from happening when buyers and sellers that don't do this on a day in, day out basis go to make one of their biggest transactions ever, in many cases their biggest of their lifetime, there's too many potential potholes that can really impact that decision and that process. And so having the agent and relying on someone who understands and knows the industry is important. But at the same time, you know, some of those agents, even if they're a veteran agent, you know, sometimes they're not catching everything. And there's mistakes, you know, to your point, that are getting in there and having some sort of tool to help you catch that before it gets to a bigger issue is super valuable. And I think something that is really ripe for, for, for making some good changes right now in the industry. So, you know, kudos to identifying that and and using that. You know, speaking of that, you've spent years inside of brokerage operations. What are some of the biggest risks that are underestimated today, whether it be by changes that are happening or, you know, new things that are being added in to the way real estate transacted?    

Cory Turnbull I think there's a couple pieces on this is I think number one is that clients have more data and more access to data than they've had in their entire lives. I mean, you know, you can you can say whatever you want about the Zillow estimates and the realtor things. But if you go to, you know, three sites and you get evaluation of your property going in, and then you come in with an idea, you know, say you just pick the median like, and an agent comes in and they'll do their own CMA. And, you know, it's kind of like this, this balance of, you know, these clients, they're more prepared than they've ever been. You know, it's just the data is there. I think that's a big issue. So then, you know, that kind of opens up this thing of, you know, maximum transparency, I think is owed at this at this point in technology is, you know, you should be able to tell them, you know, here's the here's the ten things in your home that could be concerning, you know, here's here's what these title reports mean. This easement is, you know, this one doesn't really mean that much. This one's a little bit more significant. You know, just those kind of things. And I can say 100% honest that, you know, there's multiple deals. I just you know, it's just been like fingers crossed that, you know, no landmine shows up or you know, that this doesn't matter, you know, but it's like, you know, you look at some of these hoes, they're 107 pages, that kind of stuff. And I think this whole, process of, you know, all the companies, all the consolidation in the real estate market is giving agents like a half million agents or whatever it is now, more access to technology and more access to tools that a brokerage my size or a brokerage of 100 or 200 agent has a really hard time spending that kind of money to get this technology. And so that was kind of what we built was to to help them get the technology that the big guys offer for, you know, the price of a cup of coffee, you know.    

Kyle Hunter Enjoying the Proptech Pulse podcast. Don't miss a beat. Hit the subscribe button and stay in the loop with all of our latest episodes. And hey, if you're loving the content, leave us a review! It really helps us grow and reach more real estate pros like you. Also, don't forget to follow us on our social channels. We're sharing tips, trends, and behind the scenes content you won't want to miss. Find us on all the social platforms at Get Off!    

Cory Turnbull no.    

Kyle Hunter And I love that point. I mean, bringing it obviously large conglomerates, large, large companies have tools and things that they offer. And that's kind of their value prop, where a lot of the other agents and smaller individuals still need to be able to compete. And having something that kind of fits into their market. I want to go back to something you said, though, consumers having greater tools at their hands, because, again, I know we all went through the time frame of Zillow and the Zestimate and, you know, the seller is going to know or have some sort of idea whether wrong or right on what they feel that their properties worth without having the full information packed with AI, with most users or, you know, a lot of consumers nowadays going into llms and creating and doing a lot of research on their own, how has that changed? How agents and brokers today approach the process when they're dealing with them? Or what kind of advice would you have for agents that are trying to tackle that?    

Cory Turnbull Well, I think a lot of it is, you know, it's I hate to say this, but there's a lot of false confidence that you get from, like, traditional AI models. And, you know, if you're going to a ChatGPT and you're just saying, you know, what's the average home price of a 3000 square foot home in Dallas, Texas? You know, it's going to give you a bunch of numbers, but it's you know, it's are they completely accurate? Probably not. You know, it's like it's just a amalgamation of data that might not be recent. It might not be relevant, it might not fit the experience. But there's so much security risk in these using these traditional AI models as a sounding board, you know, like California. And I know some other states are getting ready to pass legislation on it too, that, you know, uploading a contract with personal information of a client is is subject to a heavy fine. And, you know, so if you go in there and you upload a purchasing sale, a contract and just say, hey, just summarize this for me and, you know, give me some deadlines, it'll be able to summarize it for you, but to expect an LLM to go in and be able to do the logic of, you know, day zero versus day one and then find, you know, the 7 or 8 dates in there is it's a big ask. They still hallucinate a lot. You know, they'll obviously get better. But then that information that you just put into the system is now becomes training data for these LLM models. So you know, who knows what they do with it. But it it opens your clients up to, you know, some unnecessary privacy risks.    

Kyle Hunter Yeah. No, I think you're right about that. And again, it goes back to why agents you know, agents know their market. They should be the the me in whatever market that they're in. And that's really why buyers and sellers are going to continue to work with them because they know about the individual properties. In many cases, they've been in them. They understand the neighborhoods in the markets. And that's part of the ability to guide, you know, customers to the right properties that meet their criterion. So, you know, certainly feel that it has. On the flip side, though, when it comes to the actual AI accountability from an agent, you know what? I feel like there's a lot of agents that are using it and they're taking things sometimes slop, they're taking things and just running with it. What is your suggestion for preventing agents from actually, you know, putting out their stuff without going in and making sure that what they're putting out there is accurate and to the standards that they should be holding them selves.    

Cory Turnbull I think I think it revolves around a lot of training. You know, I think there's I think there's a lack of training with this. You know, this technology has just come on like a freight train, you know, it's everybody tries to compare it to the.com era. I think it's, you know, it's it's significantly faster and it's it's got a lot more consequence when you go out there and you know, like you type into something in ChatGPT and it'll, it'll give you some numbers, you copy and paste that, you put it on your social media and then you realize it might be wrong. And so there's, there's different there's better ways to do it. You know, like you can you can train agents and you can do all these different things. It takes time and it takes knowledge to learn these things. I'm not saying that you can't do it. And it's it can be incredible. But they I think they need to learn to do it correctly. You know, this is hundreds of hours of, you know, watching YouTube videos and learning how to train your agents to do, to do the things that they need to do or, you know, bringing in experts to kind of inform them of, number one, the risk. Because if you're out there putting out incorrect materials, you're going to look like an idiot. You know, it's just it's as simple as that. And a lot of people will blow over it. But then all it takes is one person that understands you're incorrect and and, you know, you're kind of shot yourself in the foot there.    

Kyle Hunter Yeah. No. Absolutely. I you know, I think everyone kind of gets caught up in that. And, you know, I know that AI does a lot of work for you and it helps out. And there's a lot of good that it can do. But to try to just trust it and just go all in, I feel like there's always that human element at this point that you need to verify. Make sure that what you're putting out there is quality, and to make sure that, you know, there's some sort of oversight in what you are, you know, putting your name on. So I know that's super important. I want to pivot a bit to some of the reactions that you see from brokers. You know, you're working with brokers that are, you know, in many cases maybe less tech forward than some of the to the point of large companies that have done this and built a lot of things. What's some of the first reactions, like when you are showing them and they're experiencing what they see with what your solution can do? Is it fear? Is it excitement? Are they skeptical of it? Like what's some of the feedback that you've got after you've shown some of these brokerages what it can do for them?    

Cory Turnbull A lot of the times we're getting a lot of the feedback that'll be like, you know, well, our agents are already you know, we're already using jet, GPT or we're using Claude for some of these workflows already. And you know that to me it's just terrifying. It's like, all right, you know, it's great. It's certain things. But number one, a client does not want an email written to them by AI. Like as an agent, there's some very specific things. Like you can send out market reports, you can send out some other stuff. But the emails, the text, they need to be personalized. It just sounds it sounds lazy when you just send out an AI thing that, you know, you send it to 50 of your clients that says, you know, it's the same thing, but just like a tiny personalization in there. But a lot of the brokers, you know, there's there's a bit of trepidation still in a lot of what they do, you know, oh, we don't you know, we don't we have a compliance team or we, you know, we offer top notch service to our clients. And then you you give them a transaction and they have one of their agents send out just a report like, you know, we do all every document as a one page report. And then we have a full document. But if they just send them a single document that says, you know, here's your here's your responsibilities, you know, here's your timeline of what you need to do. Here's a quick summary of the document. Here's what you're responsible for paying those kind of things. You know, all that stuff is in the purchase and sale contract. But it kind of you just go it through real quick. You know, it's checkbox, you're on a digital sign, you're checking and you're moving, and then you get it to the clients. And the clients are going, well, this is pretty cool. You know, I've never had anyone give me a list of, you know, and then some of the top agents that we've chatted with in the country, you know, like those, the top 5%, you know, they have an assistant that'll go do build a sheet like this. You know, it takes them an hour or two hours. You know, our system, it takes a couple of minutes. And this, you know, it's a personalized report. It's got your logo, you're heading all that kind of stuff. And so it's exciting to see from the brokers perspective, you know, learning what the real problems are. Because, you know, we've come across you know, it's all of them have a different need at this point. You know, it's like we have some of them that are, you know, that love the concept of the initials, the signatures and the dates being verified on every single document. You know, it's just a that's a quick thing that we do. And then other ones want to know specific stuff about, you know, make sure the commission level is above 1% or above $1,000 flat fee or $2,000 flat fee. And if it's not, notify us instantly. And so we've kind of just been making sure that we build the tools around what we're seeing these issues are on the front lines from these brokers.    

Kyle Hunter great point. I mean, I want to get back to one thing you just mentioned because it's pretty it sounds cool. Do you think that consumers will eventually expect AI generated transaction summaries or transaction summaries similar to what you guys produce? Because that sounds pretty cool. I mean, the ability to do just kind of a, you know, here is your update buyer or seller on what's going on, and they can rely that, okay, this is something that is generated and I know what's going on, because I think a lot of the surveys talk about that's kind of some of the complaints is, you know, a lot of times in this process, buyers and sellers are feel a bit lost on what's actually going on. You know, I know it's been a few years since I've made a transaction, but you know, just constantly having to track down, wait, is this inspection going on? What's going on. What's the next step? What's what's happening? So tell me how you feel about that.    

Cory Turnbull I think it's going to be I think it's going to be almost expected here soon because you know, like if you have broker or you have agent A and agent B and agent A gets the contract done, says, okay, you know, get your inspection signed. And, you know, they check back in in a couple of weeks. Hey, how's the inspection going? You know, that's that's pretty minimal. But then also if you're giving them a report that says, okay, here's, you know, like we have a full report that regenerates after every document. So it cross checks everything, you know, dates, addresses, signatures and then looks for conflicting reports within each document. So it'll tell you, you know, here's a one page summary. Here's a quick summary of the title report. You want to look into that. Here's some host of you know, maybe the reserves are are are subpar. But you know, if you're comparing apples and apples, you know, it's like I'm big on this issue of transparency now, you know, the clients deserve more. And they're going to get more like if the agents don't start doing more. I know people that are building tech to replace agents and replace transaction coordinators, you know, through offering all these scenarios of, you know, maximum transparency. Here's what every contract means. Here's what it here's what it says, here's what it does, those kind of things. So I think it's I do definitely think that it's the way that we will be moving forward as a, as a real estate profession.    

Kyle Hunter So that's a great question. Leads me into my last question, which in five years, what do you feel the industry is going to look like and how does Contre actually fit into that? How do you feel like it's going to change where the industry is going?    

Cory Turnbull Yeah, it man, I, I have to give an honest answer. But you know, I think that I think a lot of the lower level agents are going to be in trouble. You know, it's the really good agents are really good for a reason. And then, you know, this, you've got this. The people that come in get a real estate license, you know, we're going to sell 2 or 3, four houses a year. We're going to do all this stuff. They really don't know what they're doing. You know. They don't know what to look for in a title report because real estate training is, you know, like up here, it's a couple months or it's a couple of weeks and you can have a real estate license and there's not like there's no real education to be able to understand what an says. What what do these disclosures mean? What is you know, what are these, what do water rights mean. All these different things. And so I think the lower level agents, I think are going to be in trouble, you know, just because the way technology is evolving, you know, you see, Claude put out new tools every couple of weeks that almost destroy an entire industry, you know, finance and insurance and law and that kind of stuff. And I think, you know, I think the agents and brokers have to really sharpen their pencils a lot here and try to get, you know, dig their heels and figure out exactly what their clients want and be able to provide that and more and give them complete transparency, because like Nasdaq did a study a couple of years or within the last year or two, and it was like 33% or 32.6% of home buyers are overwhelmed with with paperwork. And it's like, you know, you go into a contract or you go into a transaction overwhelmed, you know, you're kind of looking for ways out. You're looking for anything that gives you an excuse to bounce. You know, it's like, you know, if you get one of those crazy ex-girlfriends, you know.    

Kyle Hunter You're.    

Cory Turnbull Like, well, this is pretty, but she's a little nuts. And yeah, I think, I think this is my exit strategy. So, you know, it's probably the best analogy, but yeah.    

Kyle Hunter Well Corey, appreciate you joining us today. Thank you for the partnership with Lone Wolf. And yeah we look forward to what's to come in the future.    

Cory Turnbull All right man thank you very much for your time.    

Kyle Hunter Thanks for tuning in to the Prop Tech Pulse podcast. Looking to take your real estate game to the next level? Check out our cutting edge tools. Visit Al wolf.com to learn more and see how we can help you succeed. I'm your host, Kyle Hunter, and I'll catch you next time as we continue exploring the future of real estate together. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and stay connected. Until then, keep innovating and thriving in the world of real estate.