Real estate agents, realtors, brokers… you love them or hate them. If you're reading this, it's likely that you are one yourself.

My aunt was an agent for years and at Opsansa I've been fortunate to work with award-winning brokerages, but today I'm not writing about the past… I'm writing about the future. We'll be using the word "estate agents" and "realtors" interchangeably, please don't hate me for that… I grew up in the UK.

There's one reason you're reading this — what technologies have emerged for realtors during the AI boom that began in the "roaring 20's"?

AI for listing generation & enhancement

You're busy, I'm busy… let me rattle off what I've seen from being a heartbeat away from frontier AI in real estate. We've seen ChatGPT applied everywhere over the last 3 years and that meant tools like ListAssist could write listings for you to convey all the important information to your customers.

Within a year image generation advancements began leading the AI space, giving estate agents the ability to stage properties, modify the weather and save costs on photography.

It was clear that these things are valuable, however they are nominal costs for brokerages and the underbelly of the industry is engaging with deals and closing them… not promoting for promotion sake.

AI for admin tasks

As programmers gave realtors a headache from being inundated with generative AI products (believe me, I built our own image studio using complex pipelines in 2023) we started to see the real pain. Most of us white-collar workers have a shared problem… admin tasks that eat away our daily hours.

What's worse than dying?

Being alive but not feeling it. For many of the top brokerages the average realtor was burnt out and a handful of staff made up most of the revenue. A job we all know is torn between email, calls, texts and remembering who you need to meet, where and when.

Tools like Fyxer AI emerged (and do really well) at reducing these burdens and letting us focus on the relationships themselves… but a lot of trust is placed in "replacing email".

For an industry that is "by people" and "for people" this isn't a trend in the right direction. Standard AI email assistants strip away the human touch and lack the industry-specific tools for realtors — tooling like Follow Up Boss and other CRMs.

AI for lead generation

Many organisations (across estate agency and beyond) funnel the online web's data into AI systems to try and derive insights around intent. Offerings like MeetMore became an opportunity for realtors to uncover new prospects on their patch and win deals… this "top of funnel" can be a large contributor to a brokerages revenue.

There's just one thing that matters more than "potential revenue". It's cold and hard. It comes in dollars, pounds, euros and many other forms… and most importantly… it can pay for your lunch.

That's deals closed.

Time will tell whether using "lead generation" tools is worthwhile for realtors.

What's the biggest AI lever for real estate agents moving forward?

We've seen that marketing, sales and other aspects all contribute to the most successful brokers. You need to show your heart.

Yes, there's 100 cold emails to you about their new "Voice AI", but you already have a voice? Right?

At Opsansa we're betting on the voice. We're betting on humanity.

The people buying, renting and selling with you don't want to feel like you've put them aside. Using personal memory layers and multiagent systems, everyone gets a dedicated support agent.

This kind of concierge service was until recently reserved for the ultra-wealthy. As more customers grow fond of working with great brokerages, one thing will stand out… how dense is the agencies network? how much do we understand about the people dealing with our business every day?

AI will improve. Though it won't change the decisions customers make. It won't make your bed. It won't change how you like your coffee in the morning. It may however, give you more time to enjoy that coffee…

By building on our system to operate the administrative and operational part of updating your CRM, following up with cold contacts, updating your calendar and engaging leads across multiple timezones for multiple properties in multiple languages.

The early real estate brokers using Opsansa don't care about AI. They don't care that they can pay $100 to a dev shop in India for a robotic voice to call their buyers. They trust that understanding every relationship they're forming across channels will be the thing that wins their region (and beyond) as the years continue.

It's only by having deep roots do strong trees survive centuries.

Thanks,
Rowan (Founder)