AI Is Taking Over Real Estate … But Are Agents Using It the Right Way?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s in every corner of the real estate industry. But with a new tool launching every day, many agents are finding themselves drowning in subscriptions rather than scaling their sales. In this episode of the Unstoppable Real Estate Agents Podcast, we strip away the hype to discuss how "smart" agents are using AI as a support system rather than a distraction. We explore the "Kitchen Appliance" analogy of business systems and identify exactly where AI wins and, where it will never replace the human touch.

Key Takeaways

• The Complexity Trap: More tools often lead to more dashboards and fragmented workflows, not more free time.
• Systems First, AI Second: AI cannot fix a broken business model. You must have the "plumbing" (systems) in place before installing the "high-end appliances" (AI).
• The Support Role: AI is a powerful assistant for first drafts and data synthesis, but it is not the lead advisor.
• The Human Moat: Trust, negotiation, and emotional guidance are the areas where AI cannot compete with a professional agent.

Resources & Links:
Real Estate OS Accelerator: https://www.kimhughes.com/real-estate-os-accelerator/

Read the Blog: https://www.kimhughes.com/ai-is-taking-over-real-estate-but-are-agents-using-it-the-right-way/

Watch the Video: https://youtu.be/w6F7UPh1oXU

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everybody, it's Kim Hughes, and today we're going to talk about how AI is taking over the real estate industry. But are agents using it the right way? Hmm, let's talk about that. Welcome to the Unstoppable Real Estate Agents Podcast. I'm your host and real estate productivity expert, Kim Hughes. Join me as we focus on real strategies and implement real solutions designed for you to achieve major success in your business and life while getting you organized. So agents that are tapping into AI, um, just curious, you know, what are you using? Is it Chat GPT? Do you pay for it? Are you using Claude? Are you using Gemini? I mean, it seems like every five minutes a new one pops up. So what we want to do when we are working with AI is make sure that you are teaching or training AI to know who you are. Meaning, they AI needs to understand how you talk. Um, it needs to understand who you are as a person, it needs to understand your thought process when it comes to your business. So you have to feed it a whole lot of stuff for it to learn who you are so that it can work with you and not against you. So take a little time, go into your AI, talk to it, ask it, tell it, say, ask me questions about me, ask me questions about my business. Because as we know, AI is everywhere in real estate. So scroll through your social media for a few minutes and see what you find. New A-I tools promising you to write new listing descriptions and social media posts and manage your emails, automate those follow-ups and analyze market data, and the list just goes on and on and on. So, yes, for many real estate agents, the reaction is the same. The curiosity is mixed in with confusion. Some agents feel that they're falling behind if they're not using AI. And others are feeling overwhelmed by the constant flood of new tools that are appearing every few minutes. Okay. So we have to think about which leads to the question agents are actively searching for. And that is right now what AI tools actually help a real estate business and what's just noise? So before we go any further, I want to kind of share with you a story that I it's about me looking at real estate. And I had found a house. We had talked about moving. Um, we're not moving now, but we had talked about it. And so I immediately, like any buyer, you know, went over and got on realtor.com and got on Zillow and and set up my criteria of what I was looking for and a property, et cetera. And everything was great. I would get listings, look at them, favorites, delete them, you know, just doing the whole buyer thing. And one day I got a listing and I was like, oh my gosh, that is such a cute contemporary home. Now, this was a home built in the 60s, ranch style, very um vintage, you know, just loved it. What I call vintage contemporary. And so I, I mean, I was like, oh, and I don't even have to landscape, I don't have to do anything. I can just I enjoy it and just move in. So I called the realtor. Well, I called my realtor and said, hey, I found a property I'd like to look at. Do you know anything about it? I'm gonna send it over. I gave her the MLS number. She gave it, you know, she called me back and said, Kim, she said, what you're seeing is really not the true look of that home. And I was like, what are you talking about? And she said, Well, they have enhanced the images so much that it's really not what you see is not what you're getting. And I was like, okay, I gotta see this. So she sent me pictures of the way that home looked prior to them enhancing it. It had no landscaping. I mean, like literally zero. But the image that they put out there was beautifully landscaped, yard. Oh my gosh, it was so pretty. Um, when you got in the house, you know, the house was decorated through enhancements that were way more than they should have been. And it was so frustrating because when I was very excited about that house and thought, oh, this could be it. It was in the right area. It had all it checked all the boxes. And did it bother me that it didn't have landscaping already? No, I can landscape. I know how to do that. I love doing that. That's my therapy. But it was misleading and showing me what this property actually offered. So if I had driven up to that home to look at it without my agent telling me what had happened, I would have been furious, furious about this. And I probably would have said something to the listing agent, how that was just not the cool thing to do. So the reason why I'm sharing you with this is because when you are using AI to enhance your images, make sure that they're not enhanced so much that they don't represent the true quality of the property. That is so important. But the reality is that the artificial intelligence or AI can absolutely help agents work faster. You can, they can help you work more efficiently, but without the structure, AI often creates more problems than it will solve for you. So the pain point is that technology overload is real, is the technology overload in real estate. Technology has always played a role in real estate, but the pace of change right now is unlike anything in the industry that it has experienced. So we want to make sure that when we are looking at AI platforms, that they are launching legit and they do the right things for you. I mean, it's literally every day I'm getting an email, I'm subscribed to all these AI platforms and newsletters and techie people, and it's crazy how much is coming out. And so you got to be really, really careful because one of the other things that AI will do is that it will take what you have fed it and then distribute it. So, in other words, if I go in there and and I do do this, I will go in and I will write out my blog, I'll set it up in in um Chat GPT and ask it to, you know, look for typos. Did it, does it speak from me and you know, enhance it a little bit, clean it up because I can ramble. I know I can. And so um I, you know, I want to make sure I get my point across. And so AI helps me with that. But with all the new platforms, what it's going, what it could do is take what I have written and put it into its search engine. And then when other people are looking for certain information, mine will come up. It's not gonna tell you it's from me, but it's going to show you the results that I got when I put it in there. And this happened to me again because I'm in AI all the time. I'm learning every as much as I can possibly do on a daily basis. But what I did the other day is I went into Chat GPT and I said, I would like, you know, to write an article on this topic, you know, da-da-da-da-da. Get fed it everything it needed. And it spit out a blog that I wrote about six months ago, similar to the topic. I mean, it was about the same topic, and the content was so identical. I was like telling, I got mad at Chat GPT and was telling it, do not share my information, do not use mine. I pay for Chat GPT, so they should not be doing that. But somehow it got in there. Now, are they going to respond to me? No. But, you know, so you got to be careful, you know, and make sure that you're not taking people's content, you know. So don't feed something into AI and then take it and then use it. You can feed it into feed the idea, tell it to ask you questions, and then when it spits out everything that you think you like, then print it out and read it and then enhance it again based in your, you know, your terms or your voice and and let it go from there. So we want to make sure that, you know, we're just using it the right way, because the last thing you want to do is have a buyer like me call you up or send you a text or an email calling you out on what you have done. If you if you are using images and enhancing them to where the home does not even look like the the original home, then you need to do something about that. Um, I know that those enhancements make that home look beautiful. And people just want to ride over there and look at it. But I'm gonna tell you right now, if they got there and they saw what I had seen, I would have thrown a live and fit and I probably would have reported them. You know, I mean, I'm just gonna be that person. So my time and money, my time is worth money, and so don't make me drive an hour to look at a piece of property that doesn't even look like what it's supposed to, I mean, what it looks like in the images instead of the real photo. Now, could you take a photo originally of the front of the house and then enhance it with landscaping? So, like that image, what she should have done is put, here's the before, but here's the possibility, you know. So she could have done that. And that I would have understood, and I would have been excited about that because then my creative side would have been really excited about, oh, I hadn't thought of that. So just make sure you're doing it right and do your buyers, I mean your uh sellers right by doing that. So, you know, every AI is going to promise you how to simplify your work and it's going to help you grow your business. But agents are finally, they're suddenly finding themselves experimenting and you're having it write listings and create email newsletters, generating your social media um posts, and it's going to help you respond to leads automatically. It's going to help you analyze the market stats. I talked about this in another podcast that I did where take your market stats, upload it to AI, and tell it to analyze the market data, look at the market trends, and then form an opinion based on these notes that I'm going to feed you. So I'm going to give it the market stats that I have. Um, I'm going to tell it like some bullets about things that I have an opinion on. And then I'm going to say, write me um 500 words on this or something like that. And then tweak it to your personality because it's going to give you ideas. It's going to help you maybe put your words together better, maybe um give you out, you know, tips that you hadn't even thought about. So that's a good way to use it to analyze your market trends. And then it's going to help you design marketing campaigns. Now, with that, I don't use it for that. I use my Canva account to do design work. But you can certainly use AI. I just prefer not to. Now, at first, I know you're going to get all excited because you're thinking, oh my gosh, it's going to save so much time for me in my day by doing all of these wonderful things. But something interesting starts happening when instead in happening when you instead of um simplifying everything, agents end up with subscriptions galore, more dashboards, more complicated workflows. Um, before long, you're juggling multiple tools and trying to remember which platforms does what. Then the irony is that the technology met um and the technology meets to save time starts creating more complexity. And then there's another problem, and then it becomes really clear, and that is the issue that isn't artificial intelligence. The issue is a lack of structure in the business itself, right? So AI alone doesn't fix a real estate business. It can't. I mean, it's not, it's not, it can, it can help and it can be a great sidekick, but don't depend on it to be that automatic. It's going to solve all my problems because it's not. It's going to help you figure out what you need to do to fix that problem. So think of your AI tools like maybe high-end appliances, like a kitchen, you have your refrigerator, your stove, your dishwasher, your garbage disposal. You have all of those things, and they are very specific in what they do. So then you have AIs that are very specific in what they do. So like Claude is more of like a project management AI system, where Chat GPT is more of an overall, right? Um you can have it. I mean, I've got it trained. I've got ChatGPT trained so that I mean it knows everything about me. And when I go in there to talk about it, it's bringing up, okay, well, this is going to help with this program or this product or this service. If I have a problem that, like I have a client that came to me and said, I would like to double my transactions from last year. I said, okay, great, let's do it, you know? And so we sat down and we built out a strategy for him. Um every, I mean, it was very detailed. And I told him, I said, if you will do exactly what's on this list, you will double your transactions from last year. But if you don't, then it's not going to work. And so, but did so I told him, I said, now take this and put it into AI based on your personality. AI is going to help you put together the communication, the technology, you know, the the every day that you need to do things, it's going to help you. Now, where AI can save time, this is it, you know. So I will take everything like I've taken my systems and I've put them in there. And um, and I've said, take a look at the system and then give me, tell me anything that I have missed, any um holes, any gaps that I need to fill in, and ask me any questions to help me finish this out. So AI will do that, you know. So one of the things that I don't know if you know this, but here's a great tip on how to use AI is think about your database. Where is it? You don't know. It's all over the place. It's in your phone, it's on your laptop, it's in the MLS, it's in, you know, um your CRM. If you have one, it's on a spreadsheet, it's on pieces of paper. If you have a database that's on a Excel spreadsheet, and you can download it from iCloud and all of that, and you upload it to your AI, and then I did this with ChatGPT, and I what I did was I uploaded the database and I said, I first want you to look for any duplicates in this database and then separate them into a separate spreadsheet. Sure enough, it did that. Then I said, separate all of my past clients. It separated all my past clients. And then I said, now that I have my past clients separated, I want you to help me create a system based on A, B, and C of what I'm doing with this, what I would like to do mark to market to my past clients. I'm gonna tell AI, this is what I want to do, help me create a structure so I don't get overwhelmed, I don't get stressed out, and help me create reminders. And it will do all of that for you. But the the database thing is a game changer. It if you tell it what to do, exactly what to do with that database, it will organize your database. So if you have a database, let's say, that's just, you know, got every lead since you've been in business. And let's just say it's 4,000 people, AI can separate all of that and organize it for you based on what you tell it, right? So that's where I think a lot of people get a little frustrated with AI and expect more of it than it can actually do because everybody's out there going, oh, it's gonna replace your job. It's gonna take your job. And it's really not. I mean, yes, it could in some areas, but for a real estate agent, it's not gonna take over your business. There's no way. AI does not do any kind of um engagement with their client with the client. It doesn't know how to have that warm, fuzzy feeling and how to nurture and all of that. What AI is gonna do for the real estate agent is going to help you be more productive and more systemized and automated. So that's where I want you to look at it is, you know, like if you have a listing, you can upload that listing into Chat GPT and tell it to write you a property description, but you're still gonna have to tweak it because it's not gonna be 100%. And then you've got to look at it like, okay, did it sound robotic? Okay, don't want that. You got to put personality into it. And, you know, so look at it that it's a it's like an assistant that's helping you do better in your business. Okay. That's when AI becomes a support tool, not a distraction. Okay. So where AI actually helps the real estate agent, which what we've just kind of been through, but when it's used correctly, it can significantly improve your productivity in several areas. One of the biggest is your marketing content creation. Agents do not like to write content. If you do, you're very rare. But agents, for the most part, are not gonna sit down and write content. That is to them, that is not money making, okay? But it really is, it's just long term. It's not gonna be instant gratification. But used to agents would spend hours trying to figure out their content, um, descriptions, their blog, their social media. These are the tools that AI can help you with. They can help you create newsletters, they can help you create your social media and blogs. I mean, if you don't have a blog, you need to get on AI and have it write blogs for you based on the information you feed it, because it will be phenomenal, phenomenal for you. So then AI tools can generate the first drafts, like I've said, and then you just kind of go in and tweak it. This is going to help you move from an idea to a finished product. Okay. Another powerful use is um, like I'm, I mean, you know, we've talked about listings, but instead of sharing a blank screen trying to write a property description, AI can generate a well-structured starting point using the property details. So, you know, you could upload your MLS sheet, you know, and feed it some extra details, like, oh, this house has a swimming pool in the backyard, it's got um a cabana, an outdoor kitchen, all of that stuff. And you feed it all of that property description and information, it's going to create for you a well-structured starting point using the property details. Okay. Now you can also refine the content. You can add, I mean, you can just do all kinds of stuff because what I have found. So if I'm sitting there and I'm talking to Chat GPT and I'm telling it what I'm trying to come up with, I'm having a conversation. So sometimes AI will come back and say to me, you know, did you think about this? No, I didn't. What a great idea, you know. So it is going to help you generate those ideas as well. You don't have to come up with all of them on your own. AI will help you. It's working with you. It's like you and I being on a telephone, you know, generating ideas and creating some content and deciding how to use that content. That's basically what it is. And so, no, it doesn't replace me. So nobody can replace me. And um, so this allows the agent to spend less time doing the research and and coming up with content and thinking about what they need to write about and being frustrated because that's not where they want to be. So, what I will also say is that AI will never replace the agent. I've already said that. So, despite the excitement of Around the R the AI, it's important to remember one thing that real estate is still a relationship business. It cannot, AI cannot replace the human skills that truly drive success in this industry. Technology can assist with these tasks, but it's not going to replace the trust that you build with clients, the skilled negotiations, the local market knowledge. More importantly, it's not going to be the hand-holding person when you are helping your clients make emotional decisions. And it's not going to help you build long-term relationships. You know, it's very automatic, robotic. It has no feelings. So remember that when you're doing this. So clients still want a knowledgeable, professional, guiding, you know, a real estate agent taking them through the entire process. AI can't do that. It's not going to hold your hand, right? So AI may support the work behind the scenes, but the agent is remaining the trusted advisor. Avoiding the AI distraction trap. One of the biggest dangers agents face right now is getting distracted by the technology. Instead of focusing on the business fundamentals, it's easy to spend all of these hours in AI. You can go down a rabbit hole so fast. I mean, if if you're into AI, you can. You can go down there that hole real, real quick. But, you know, the things that we want to talk about is we don't want you to get distracted by any of the technology, but instead focus on the business fundamentals. It's easy to spend hours exploring the new platforms, watching the tutorials, and experimenting with all the tools. But technology alone doesn't grow a real estate business. The most successful agents evaluate the tools based on a simple principle. Does this tool save me time and improve my results? And if the answer is yes, then it may be worth integrating. But if not, then don't do it. If you are not gonna, you know, don't go to the next shiny object thinking that it's going to be the solution to all your problems. Because technology works best inside of a system. AI becomes fully powerful when it supports a structured business, when marketing plans, lead pipelines, and client communication systems are already organized. AI can accelerate those processes dramatically. It's helping agents move faster. It helps them improve consistency. It allows the business to scale back, which increases the workload. But without the framework, AI just becomes another tool, another shiny object. So, you know, make sure you know what you're getting and making sure that that AI does what it what you need it to do. Bringing AI into your business the smart way. Okay. So you don't need dozens of AI tools to succeed. What you they what you need is clarity on how technology supports the business. And inside the Real Estate OS Accelerator, this is where I'm going to help you build the foundational systems that your business needs. We're going to include your marketing processes, how to do client follow-up, how to create that framework, those systems. And once they're in place, I show you how to integrate the technology using AI in ways that actually improve the efficiency of your business. Okay. So you can come into the group with wherever you are. Everybody comes where they sit, not everybody's learning at the same time, the same thing. We're working on different things, but we're learning from each other. And the goal is to build the business with technology works for you. Okay. Because when AI is used correctly, it becomes exactly what it should be: a powerful assistant, helping you run a smarter, more organized real estate business. I hope you will take a look at the real estate OS Accelerator because this is a game changer for real estate agents. There's nothing like it out there. It's new to the industry. So come on over, take a look at it, and join us and let's get your business set up and running so smooth so that you can be successful all year long without having to stumble from what's going around in your head. So we will see you next time. Bye. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if you know someone, and I bet you do, who would appreciate this podcast, please share it with them. As a reminder, this podcast can be delivered directly to your favorite device by using the subscribe links you can find in the show notes below or over at unstoppable realestateagents.com. Remember, it takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. Have a great day.