Why These REALTORS® Are Sold on ChatGPT

ChatGPT only launched a little under a year ago, but savvy REALTORS® are already putting the app’s artificial intelligence to work IRL. Here’s how.

By Josh Sherman | 4 minute read

Realtor JJ Johannes swears by ChatGPT.

OpenAI’s popular chatbot — which many people across a wide range of industries, from gardeners to lawyers, use to answer questions or generate content by feeding the software prompts — has become a valuable aid for the real estate professional. Specifically, Johannes is among the REALTORS® who have started harnessing artificial intelligence to draft property listings. “It saved me so much time,” Johannes told CNN. While it used to take him up to an hour to write a listing, now, he says, he’s able to generate listings in a matter of seconds.

Johannes’s use case is a relatively new but increasingly common example of how real estate agents are tapping into ChatGPT to work smarter as technology revolutionizes the broader industry. Doing so, one expert suggests, has become even more important in a cooler housing market in which REALTORS® need to grind out each sale and find efficiencies wherever they can. “Any REALTOR® who’s not leveraging it for something like that (listings) is probably just wasting a little time,” says Serge Reda, an adjunct professor at the Fordham Real Estate Institute and co-founder of the startup AlphaRithm AI. “As an efficiency tool, I think it’s valuable,” he tells Wahi.

More ​​Ways Realtors Can Use ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s potential usefulness extends beyond listings. Social media is another area where REALTORS® are finding success with the chatbot. While a social media presence is critical for top-performing REALTORS®, brainstorming ideas for content to post — and then creating the content itself — can be a real time suck. However, some users say that ChatGPT can help with both. “I use it more for outlining marketing ideas, podcasting, and blog posts,” Mark Savel, a salesperson at Sage Real Estate Ltd. and co-creator of the Toronto Livings Real Estate Podcast, tells Wahi. “It’s like an espresso. It gets the juices flowing and allows me to add my own creativity to it.”

A second REALTOR® told CNN that he uses the app to draft legally binding paperwork, which he then hands off to lawyers for final approval. “I fine-tune all kinds of drafts with ChatGPT,” Andres Asion, a Miami-based broker, told the network. “Sometimes I’ll tell it to make it shorter or funnier, and it gives you so many samples to pick and edit from.”

How to Use ChatGPT Effectively  

To get the most out of ChatGPT, experts say it’s important to focus on the prompts. “Writing good prompts is easy to pick up, but it’s difficult to master. Getting the AI to do what you want it to do takes trial and error,” Anna Bernstein, a literal prompt engineer, recently told Business Insider.

A couple of things to consider when preparing prompts for ChatGPT, according to Bernstein:

• Each prompt should include a verb that shows your intent, so instead of asking ChatGPT to “rewrite this to be shorter,” she suggests entering, “condense this.”
• If you aren’t getting the desired results, take a stab at rephrasing or finding synonyms for certain words or even changing the tense of the request.

Other tips for writing ChatGPT prompts:

• When it comes to prompts, the more specific the better. “A general prompt is going to be far more off-target than a much more refined prompt, which could require a lot more writing,” says Reda.
• Provide additional context for the content you’re trying to generate (who you are, what kind of audience it is geared towards, where the content is going to be published).
• Include a relevant example of another piece of content that is similar to what you’re trying to accomplish.
• If the initial result isn’t quite right, provide feedback about exactly what you want changed.

Proceed With Caution 

ChatGPT can be an effective aid, but experts including Reda warn against relying too heavily on the nascent technology. Illustrating the risks, earlier this year Microsoft came under fire for publishing an Ottawa travel guide that recommended visiting the city’s food bank.

Microsoft, which states that it didn’t use a large language model such as ChatGPT but rather various “algorithmic techniques” to generate the content, chalked the misstep up to human error, the Verge reports. Somebody is supposed to edit the content before publication, according to Microsoft. That’s a valuable lesson for any REALTORS® thinking of beefing up their blog with AI-generated copy.

For his AI-generated listings, Johannes says there’s still a human element. The Iowa-based REALTOR® edits the listings by hand before posting. “It’s not perfect but it was a great starting point. My background is in technology and writing something eloquent takes time. This made it so much easier,” he adds. (As with any content you’re creating, it’s important to fact-check any information you’re providing to ensure it’s up to date and accurate.) “It has to be reviewed,” Reda agrees. One big shortcoming of ChatGPT for REALTORS® comes down to numbers and calculations, warns Reda. Although ChatGPT is no longer limited to data predating September 2021, its strength is not in crunching numbers. “Any kind of numbers, statistics, or any sort of quantity assumption is absolutely going to be wrong — and possibly very wrong,” says Reda. “That is the key limitation, and in real estate we can’t be wrong about that.”