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Despite its near 70-year existence, artificial intelligence (AI) has become all the rage in the last year. Given its growing social presence, how best can real estate adopt the revolutionary technology?
In the eyes of Seth Watts, co-founder and chief revenue officer at CampaignAgent, real estate needs to begin discussing AI’s deficiencies as a “really important first step”.
“Because, once you recognise the challenges, you can start to solve them,” Mr Watts said on a recent episode of REB’s Proptech Pulse.
Dating AI back to the 1950s, Mr Watts explained the technology has gone through “three distinct phases – all of which have failed”. He believes the fourth phase of AI, born at the back end of last year with the development and popularisation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI, is the version of the technology initially conceived 70 years ago.
He said AI’s most recent iteration is “the first time where computers appear to understand us. It’s the first time where computers appear to be able to think in creative ways and do things that we honestly thought were only ever possible by not just humans, but really smart, creative, humans”.
If the possibilities seem endless and exciting, it’s because they are. But Mr Watts also warned there’s an “inherent danger” in AI’s potential.
For the real estate industry, he noted the adoption of AI into business operations will be an arduous and friction-inducing process, especially when it comes to toeing the line between incorporating the technology into the business and ensuring current employees understand their retained value.
Even with AI’s capacity to increase productivity and efficiency, he reckons the industry is struggling to have a supportive conversation when it comes to ensuring employees feel safe in their job and incorporating technology into their role.
“If you’re a leader of a business or you’re a leader, as an agent you need to have a conversation with people and say, ‘Hey, listen. I need you more than ever. I need you to help me drive this technology. Things are going to change, but change doesn’t mean you’re going to lose your job.’”
He added: “It’s about output, and it’s about quality of output and how we can partner together.”
“You can’t fire 20 per cent of your staff if you only have 12 people in your business. You’re going to keep everybody. The question is, can you make them do 10 times as much? And technology is going to allow that.”
Without putting “lipstick on the pig”, Mr Watts unravelled the thread of benefits that AI presents the real estate industry.
As we enter a world where “property managers are getting more and more expensive, the number of properties they’re managing is increasing, the return on the portfolio is decreasing”, he pointed out one thing – property managers “don’t have time”.
“And because they don’t have time, delivering really high-quality service is difficult.”
In steps ChatGPT, which he described as a “natural fit for that cohort”. He believes it makes “an awful lot of sense” for property managers to employ ChatGPT into their day-to-day professional lives, especially given “they’re dealing with complaints, high emotion situations, [and] tense situations”.
He suggested property managers should utilise the resource to create “really empathetic, long form, beautiful responses to deal with tenant or landlord problems”.
Mr Watts also detailed how sales agents can adopt ChatGPT, particularly for listing presentations, prospecting and marketing, amongst other tasks. Utilising AI will allow agents to “focus on what sales agents do [and] focus on revenue first”.
Moreover, as buyers continue to demand more of their agents, he implored agents to “get ChatGPT to do your buyer management” because it’ll make them “look like a hero”.
“Treat buyers the way they want to be treated, but not suck up your time,” he concluded.
Listen to the full conversation here.
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