‘We have to market ourselves’
Gillespie started his real estate career in 2017 and quickly discovered how his background as a musician and marketer fit into the real estate world.
“In 2004, we used automation and AI for my band,” he says. “We programmed bots in MySpace that would automatically post my band’s music to famous people’s pages in the comments section. I quickly realized that when I got into real estate, it was a lot like being in a band – because what are we supposed to do? We have to market ourselves.
“Most of us are great agents, but we are bad marketers, we are bad accountants and we are bad administrative assistants. And this is where I don’t think AI will take over our jobs as agents – because we are still a very relationship-driven and very subjective business, especially when it comes to pricing homes.”
When ChatGPT launched for broad public use in November 2022, Gillespie knew the time had come.
He earned multiple certifications in machine learning, large language models, and rapid engineering.
“I brought all that back into my real estate business and started implementing it everywhere I could, to take some of the heavy lifting on the administrative side,” he said. “Now I rely heavily on AI as my partner in my business.”
From zoning plans to personality profiling
Gillespie emphasized that using AI isn’t just about glitzy marketing – it can solve real transactional obstacles.
He described a case where a property’s zoning had shifted, putting the deal in jeopardy.
“I used AI to collect the zoning manuals for the county I was in,” he said. “Then I wrote a nice little email with my AI, sent it to the appraiser and they said, ‘Oh, you’re right,’ turned around and appraised the deal. We brought her to the closing table.”
He also uses AI to improve negotiation strategy and relationships through personality profiling.
“My favorite thing is collecting personality profile metrics for the agents I work with and then using the AI to adjust my negotiation strategies based on their DISC profile,” he said. “I started creating a lot more partnerships with other agents and getting a lot more things done for my clients. It ended that competitive stigma in real estate.”
Stimulating adoption at team and broker level
Real estate coach Darryl Davis highlighted the role of broker-owners and team leaders in driving AI adoption.
“I think it’s still pretty new for officers to figure out how to use it,” he said. “The majority of agents using it are using it for property descriptions. There’s so much more that AI can do that agents across the country haven’t really taken advantage of yet.”
“Any time something is adopted quickly, it doesn’t stick well. What gradually makes its way into society are the things that last. For example, as adoption grows, you see exponential adoption. One agent in the office starts using it, then maybe two, and before you know it, the whole office is using it.”
Setting measurable goals while striking a balance between adoption promoted by leaders and letting word-of-mouth grow naturally is paramount, Davis said.
“If a broker or manager wants the office to adopt, they should keep pushing until they get 80% adoption,” he said. “Once they get 55% adoption in their office, the other 25 will happen naturally.”
Davis has even created his own ‘Digital Darryl’, an AI clone of himself.
“We’re actually the only real estate coach that has created an AI coach like this,” he said. “We uploaded all my audio programs, my books, my blog posts. It became a brain of mine.” Officers can replay training sessions or ask for pep talks if they’re feeling a little down.”
Supplier control, governance, transparency
Sharon Love-Bates, director of emerging technology at the National Association of Real Estate Agentsthis adoption must always be accompanied by ethical standards, regulatory alignment and supplier assessment.
She recommended several checkpoints.
“You want to make sure that the [AI or app] The company itself has a good reputation,” Love-Bates said. ‘How long has that company been in business? If someone just started yesterday, I’m not sure you’d want to trust them with your data. You really want to understand what privacy and guardrails they have in place for their solution.
“Can you implement your own governance and policies for your brokerage? Does it integrate well with your current technologies, your CRM, and your lead management tools?”
In the area of ethics and customer trust, Love-Bates warned of an increase in AI hallucinations and other cases where the information output should not be taken for granted.
“While you use a tool, you as an agent or broker are ultimately responsible for the information and data you provide to that provider,” she said. “You need to make sure you don’t violate customer privacy and that you have the right rules and governance in place.”
She noted that regulatory frameworks for AI are still catching up, making internal policies more important than ever.
“AI tools are great and can certainly improve efficiency, but you have to use common sense – validate the information, protect customer privacy and protect the business,” Love-Bates said.
Agentic AI, AGI and human benefit
Gillespie, Davis and Love-Bates all see the next wave of technology as autonomous “agentic AI” systems – but they agree that the human agent remains essential. Agentic AI systems automatically execute tasks and systems.
“We are definitely entering the age of agents,” he said. “I think a lot of people are afraid of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, but I think we’re still a long way from that. By the mid-2030s, AGI may come, but with the subjectivity of real estate, we’re still a long way from AI taking all our jobs.”
Love-Bates said the next big thing on her radar is autonomous workflows.
“You go from co-pilot to autopilot. You can automate your marketing, define the audience, publish to multiple channels, analyze results and improve over time,” she says. “But even then, you still have to be the human watching everything. You have to review, approve and validate what it’s doing.”
Davis reiterated the idea that AI in its current form should be seen as a partner and not a threat.
“What ChatGPT or any AI should be is a support tool, not a replacement tool,” he said. “ChatGPT isn’t going to show the property, it’s not going to set up a listing appointment, it’s not going to coach buyers and sellers. Agents should use it to strengthen their client relationships.
The experts also agreed that an exact future roadmap for AI in real estate or any sector for that matter is difficult to determine.
“I don’t know if I can even imagine what it’s going to be like in five years,” Davis said. “The technology is advancing exponentially: one plus one is two, two plus two is four, four plus four is eight. This thing is like a boulder coming down a hill and catching snow. Even in two years, it will be astronomical.”
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