AI tools are becoming a helping hand for some brokerages and teams to compete against larger or better-resourced peers. Image by Techa Tungateja | iStock illustration
Many Realtors use artificial intelligence regularly. But for some Boston-area brokerages and teams, it’s also become a helping hand against larger competitors.
The majority of American Realtors are using AI, according to a recent National Association of Realtors survey. Out of the respondents, 23 percent said they used it daily while another 25 percent used it on a weekly basis. Writing listing descriptions is what the overwhelming majority of Realtors use AI for, according to NAR.
For larger brokerages affiliated with well-known names, AI is already intertwined with the tools they use. After the acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate by Compass, Coldwell Banker agents received AI tools from Compass’ tech stack to aid the work that they do, said Coldwell Banker Wellesley and Weston branch manager Chantelle Persac.
“We always put in some keywords to help us showcase the listing, but we always 100 percent tweak what the AI comes back to us with because it’s not the full vision that we want of that home,” said Lara O’Rourke, one half of the Coldwell Banker-affiliated Lara & Chelsea Collaborative agent team. “Because AI doesn’t walk through the home, we can evoke different feelings with our own voice, and we just use AI to complement it.”
Uses: From Visioning…
Working with luxury buyers in the MetroWest market, O’Rourke said she can use AI to visually model a new front porch on a home or an indoor golf simulator for clients within minutes.
“Before we had those tools, we couldn’t,” O’Rourke said. “We could do some sort of photoshopping in our listings if we wanted to add blue skies and remove things but it’s much easier now with the AI tools that we have to just simply take a picture, upload it to AI, and say, ‘Please lay out this yard.’”
With these tools, she said, buyers no longer have to imagine what a home will look like with various additions. Buyers can get an actual visual representation of what these changes will look like, which can increase their confidence in purchasing a home. It can also help homes stick out among competition in high-demand markets.
Stoughton-based Zander Realty Group also AI it to help when working with distressed properties according to CEO Kyle Zene-Moore.
But the group tries to shy away from “frivolous” editing of what homes look like, Zene-Moore said. By editing images of distressed properties, the independent brokerage’s agents can help buyers understand what a home can become once repairs or upgrades are made, he said.
…to Training Tools
The technology can also be used for back-office needs such as constructing standard operating procedures, said Persac.
Beyond administrative automation, common across corporate America, brokerages use AI to onboard and train new personnel, said Sven Andersen of the Keller-Williams-affiliated Andersen Realty Group. Several of his agents at the Winchester-based team use large language models for interactive role-playing exercises to practice navigating buyer and seller scenarios.
“They are a newer agent, and they ask me what is it that we should say at open houses,” Andersen said. “Leveraging AI, it created a response back for them so that they could use what AI would say to a consumer at an open house that they’re new to.”
A recent National Association of Realtors survey found most members who use AI regularly – around 58 percent – use it most often to write listing descriptions. Image by Techa Tungateja | iStock illustration
The Winchester-based team even hired a college student to build a tool in Anthropic’s Claude chatbot to help Anderson find expired listings, for-sale-by-owner listings, and canceled listings.
“Leveraging the AI prompts the right way, he found that if you connected it to different tools, it could uncover addresses of those people,” Andersen said. “It could find phone numbers and put it all into a spreadsheet so that we could follow up and call these people and connect with them and find out if there’s a new opportunity that we could leverage.”
Low Cost Aids Ease of Access
For large brokerages with affiliations with major companies, it’s often no lift at all to pay for AI tools. Offices simply receive the technology baked into from the platforms provided by the brokerage brand they’re affiliated with.
For smaller teams or independent brokerages, the cost can sometimes fall on the individual office, but the monthly bill can be surprisingly low.
Zene-Moore uses Google Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT. He estimated that ChatGPT and Claude cost around $20 a month while he receives Gemini through Google’s email service for free. A Google AI Pro plan costs $19.99 a month and comes with 5 terabytes of storage. Zander Realty Group also uses Lovable AI for one of its websites, which costs $30 a month.
Between the marketing director’s salary and AI costs, Zene-Moore estimated Zander Realty spends about $2,300 a month.
Andersen, the Winthrop-based Keller Williams team leader, has purchased Claude for his entire team. The cost is based on usage and per seat rather than one overarching price. He has three “super users” and has paid for an annual plan. Claude’s “team” plans cost $20 a month per seat and $100 per month for a premium seat with higher usage capabilities.
“I prepaid for Claude for the year for my team,” Andersen said. “Is that unusual? Maybe it is, but I know what the tool is and how it can work, and I just need to have my team leverage it so that they can take advantage of this technology.”
Sam Lattof
A Helping Hand Opening Doors
These AI tools are letting teams and independent brokerages improve their marketing and in ways it never could access otherwise.
“I use Claude to code different modules on the website,” Zene-Moore said. “So, some of that is stuff that we probably would not have been doing without AI.”
The ability to track down expired or for-sale-by-owner listings is another ability that his team wouldn’t have without AI, Andersen said.
“I think I didn’t have those opportunities before. I could do it manually, but it would take so much longer,” he said. “With the [AI] tool, it streamlined the business approach so that I could actually focus my attention, time and energy on what matters most, which is talking to people.”
The tool led to $4 million in “unseen opportunities” that Anderson didn’t have before, he said.
As they add services they otherwise couldn’t access, both Zene-Moore and Anderson say their businesses are getting a helping hand from AI, even if they have to pay for it.
“I would say the cost is definitely well worth it,” Zene-Moore said. “Just in terms of an ROI, we get a lot done faster and a lot done quicker.”
