CNN
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If you recently saw a four bedroom, 3.5 bathroom home listed for sale on a quiet cul-de-sac in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you probably wouldn’t think twice.it includes typical real estate Descriptions like “ideal for entertaining” and “plenty of room to relax”.
but The home’s real estate agent, JJ Johannes, created the description in less than five seconds by typing a few keywords into ChatGPT, a new viral AI chatbot tool that responds to user prompts. Detailed response. It was an assignment, he said, that would otherwise have taken him an hour or more to write on his own.
“It saved me a lot of time,” Johannes told CNN, noting that he tweaked and edited ChatGPT’s work a bit before releasing it. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a good place to start. My background is technology, and it takes time to write something eloquent. It makes things a lot easier.”
Johannes is one of the realtors Try ChatGPT Since its public release in late November. Some residential and business agents told CNN they have changed the way they work, from writing listings and social media posts to drafting legal documents. It can also be used to automate repetitive tasks, such as answering common questions and performing complex calculations.
ChatGPT is trained on a fixed amount of online data to generate responses to user prompts. It has fooled some scientists with original articles, stories, lyrics and abstracts of research papers. Some CEOs use it to write emails or do accounting. It even passed the Ivy League. (However, it has raised concerns among some because it could lead to cheating and inaccuracy.)
In less than two months, ChatGPT sparked discussions about its potential to disrupt industries ranging from publishing to law. But it has had such a real impact on the way many realtors across the country work — much of which paperwork can be formulaic and time-consuming — that some can no longer imagine working without it.
“I’ve been using it for over a month, and I can’t remember the last time it wowed me so much,” says Andres Assion, a broker with Miami Real Estate Group.
Recently, a customer contacted Asion with a question: the lady Moved into a home that was under construction and couldn’t open the windows. She has been trying to contact the developer for months, but has received no response. Asion ran a copy of one of her emails through ChatGPT, asking it to rewrite it and highlight the liability implications.
“ChatGPT wrote it up as a legal issue, and all of a sudden, the developers showed up at her house,” he said.
Asion also uses the tool to draft legally binding addendums and other documents and send them to attorneys for approval. “I use ChatGPT to fine-tune various drafts,” he said. “Sometimes I tell it to make it shorter or more interesting, and it gives you a lot of samples to pick and edit.”
ChatGPT is currently free, but OpenAI, The company behind it is reportedly considering charging monthly $42. Asion says “it’s not even a problem” and he’ll pay for access. “I could easily pay $100 or $200 a year for something like this,” he said. “I’m going crazy.”
Frank Trelles, a commercial real estate broker with State Street Realty in Miami, said he also pays to continue using the tool, which has impacted the way he does business. “As soon as I tried it, I was sold,” he said. “I went and signed up for a plan, thinking it would cost at least $100 a month, and was surprised that it was free. Nothing in this world is free though — it made me a little nervous.”
Trelles said he uses ChatGPT to look up allowable uses for certain lands and areas in Miami-Dade County and to calculate how much a client might have to pay on a mortgage or return on investment, which often involves formulas and mortgage calculators.
“I can sit in the car with clients when they ask me what their mortgage might be,” Trelles said. “I can ask ChatGPT what is a mortgage on a $14 million purchase amortized over 25 years at 7.2% with two starting points at closing and it will give me that information in two seconds . It also explains how it got its answer. It’s amazing.”
However, there are some limitations. For example, the tool has struggled with some basic math before. Trelles says this helps with approximations on the go, rather than exact numbers.
Some use cases for ChatGPT are better than others, said Serge Reda, a commercial real estate executive and adjunct professor at the Fordham Real Estate Institute. ChatGPT can help brokers save time when composing listings or responses, but automating customer responses may not be the best strategy since lead generation and closing deals often require a personalized approach.
“Everyone can use it now because it’s free and they can experience how this powerful tool works. But there are definitely significant limitations,” he said.
While ChatGPT has generated a wave of interest among realtors, The incorporation of artificial intelligence into the real estate market is not entirely new. For example, listing site Zillow has used AI for 3D mapping, creating automated floor plans, and its Zestimate tool, which scans pictures to see if a home has hardwood floors or stainless steel appliances, so its price estimates better reflect market conditions. Earlier this week, Zillow rolled out an artificial intelligence feature that lets potential buyers search in a more natural language (a language Google has long mastered).
Matt Kreamer, a spokesman for Zillow, said the real estate industry has been slow to innovate, but “I think we’re going to see more progress soon.” He said Zilo Agents have no apparent concerns about using ChatGPT to help streamline the work they already do and save time.
“We’re not promoting or being wary of ChatGPT, but rather interested in how it’s used and observed,” he said.
While it’s too early to say whether the tool will become a mainstay in real estate, Johannes, a real estate agent, believes artificial intelligence in general will change his business. Industrial and others.
“ChatGPT probably won’t,” he said, “but I believe some form of artificial intelligence like this is going to be an important part of our work and our lives.”