The Reality of AI in Real Estate with Ryan Serhant

you are the guy started your namesake brokerage here very recently during covid who does that launch I know launched a reality TV show which is on Netflix now which I think is better than selling Sunset but I didn't say that in public um who whoa no and suddenly you're taking a deep dive into AI yes now real estate is notoriously slow to modernize whether it's Construction whether it's data whether it's sales every aspect of real estate is pulling itself out of the Dark Ages what's said to you now I'm doing the Deep dive on AI

my number one mission is to uh create market share right as a real estate agent whether I'm in New York City or running The Brokerage and we're in eight states at the moment we want to own as much market share as possible anywhere someone says I want to sell a home we want them to think us so so how do you do that um and I looked at the last 20 years of success all the companies that created market share over the last 20 years and they did that through through Tech enablement whether it was

figuring out how to use the internet to create better listing ads or Source greater buyer leads both domestically and internationally or create a better system for agents to try to be better um but what AI enables us to do is say I don't think market share for the next 20 years is about tech enablement now I think it's about AI empower empowerment and I think there is a mindset shift and my competitors right now are in offices in the city right now masking chat Bots and creating more screens and more buttons because that's what the

answer usually is but you want fewer screens yeah I want to be screenless I because I actually do this I actually am in real estate I actually sell I was renting apartments right across the street here for 1,500 bucks a month not that long ago on my little purple moped um and so I I know exactly what it's like to be in the weeds and I want as few screens and as few buttons as possible so that I can have the highest and best use of my time and being AI empowered versus being Tech enabled

like is just better for my life so on the ground what does that mean because we use all these high fluen terms for AI and we think okay so chat gbt is going to write your listing and that's going to make your life easier no what on a real day-to-day basis is AI doing for your agents and changing the way you do business give us an example so we created a service called Simple um because it makes work simple get it and uh what it really does is it kind of combines let's say SAS automations

with human expertise using what we've created uh we call them recipes so AI recipes we have 18 of them so far uh that replace work for salespeople and so you use the service it's kind of like instacart for work you don't really care how the work get gets done you just care that it gets done for you and for a long time uh salese not just in real estate brokerage you know Enterprise sales people at banks sdrs at IBM you know you still have to go and do the work you can have great systems in

front of you lots of screens and lots of buttons but you have to go do the work and so my mission is to say I don't need that the work gets done for you that's why you're at a brokerage that's why you're at work gets done for you all the boring work like the internet didn't replace retail right it repl boring retail and so simple for us doesn't replace work it replaces the boring work so so crms so you want a comparable market analysis right like to do a CMA to add in information to uh

uh set up showings for you to do all the backend data work the computer work which takes up for a salesperson somewhere between 60 and 70% of their day the other 30 to 40% of their day is actually selling and meeting people and networking all the things that you have to do as a as a human as an empowered human all of that now goes away because simple does it for you can it scrape neighborhoods and find clients find sellers because this is a tight market and we don't have any sellers out there because of

everything that happened with interest rates can it find sellers for you it can't convince Powell to lower the FED Benchmark rate yet uh working on that one um lead generation is a huge part of it right lead generation on the buy side the sell side a lot of that though even with all the ATT and all the AI is still personto person right it's very relationship based but it's a hard thing to do when you have to do all the busy work behind the scenes and so we want to use AI to empower our salespeople

to do what they do best and give them their time back instead of saying hey here's the thing we created it you go use it you're going to be great like I'm a big believer that sales people are already great like you're already crazy if you're in sales if you're in real estate having gone through covid having gone through in % rates having just gone through a class action lawsuit against how you make your money right and you're still saying you know what I still sign up for this I'm going to stay in real estate

I'm going to do this then you are worth it to make your life a little bit better um and the recipes do that does this then streamline sirant that you don't need that many people to employ um you know I I I don't think that the internet replaced workers didn't replace humans right it replaced humans who don't use the internet with humans who do use the internet and then created more jobs and more opportunities there were not companies that had 600,000 employees under one shingle 30 years ago so I think what this is going to

do is going to create more opportunities for more people and I I I think even much bigger like what can I use AI recipes to do to help maybe a a disabled salesperson like when was the last time you saw a real estate agent in a wheelchair or in crutches or a military amputee I I I mean I never have you know we work on our education side of the business on sell it.com we work with military veterans all day every day because getting into real estate is a low lift you know and as long

as they are empowered and educated it can be a great career for them because real estate is not going away um and so I think that's what it does right I think agents that understand how to be empowered using AI instead of just enabled using more Tech and screens and buttons like all of our competitors create um uh are going to have an immense amount of opportunity over the next 20 years to take incredible market share so I still want to get an an example and understand what one of these recipes is because you know

we see virtual tours we've seen a lot you know during Co I was telling you you saw the iPad with the agent roaming on a robot around the house so that they didn't have to be there in person so we've tried that kind of I did that on an episode of Million Dollar Listing yeah yeah and then it got made fun of a modern family um but what is one example of a recipe that is going to save one of your agents time and get them out in the field instead so um my phone is

I could show it to you on my phone but my phone is with my vlogger and I don't know where he is but um uh so for example I would meet you right and I would just I would just say to it I just met Diana I'm on stage right now um I think she lives in DC could you find her house could you price it for me could you find her email because I think it's probably public could you email her set up a time for me to talk to her tomorrow because I'm totally

going to forget and then send me all the comps send me also a show plan one of the recipes is called show plan because if I convince her to sell her house then she's probably going to need to buy a place also I think I want to dangle a West Village condo up to $2 million in front of um her family so help me with that too and like that's just I don't know I just Wing that right there that's an example it can also do you know your monthly newsletter it'll also do all of

your Social for you which takes tons of time and help with content creation it'll also help you with email like we have agents now that aren't in their inbox because it's helping them with that which like is a godsent but you're supposed to know what I want and you just said about four different things that I don't want now I realize you're not using AI yeah but West Village is no um sorry I'm an upper east side girl um so so real estate is a personal business it is everybody's single larg not everyone's but most

people single largest investment yeah and to them it is incredibly emotional they want that person to person they want and you as an agent you Pride yourselves on knowing your clients on understanding what they want on helping them find what they want helping them sell the way they want to and move in that is the agent's job all of this automation though doesn't that kind of pull away from the the personto person relationship that's so important in real estate no I think the consolidation is needed I think it enables me to have more time with

those clients so I can give them more personal attention you know the like I don't want to talk to a screen I want to talk to the doctor about that tightness in my chest um and so it enables the salespeople to do more of what they do best which is creating those relationships which is talking to you a little bit longer to know that ah she wants the Upper East Side I don't right I was just kidding no nobody want and uh and that's listen that's a really really exciting thing for us and I think

five years from now I mean even two years from now we're going to look back at a time when all of this just used to feel like it was manual because it had to be and I don't think it has to be I think finding as much work optional tasks to be replaced um is a pretty amazing thing and so I think it's important to get ahead of that as quickly as you possibly can because it's not like it's not already happening um looking Beyond Simple and all the things that it's going to do for

sirant and out into the broader landscape of real estate when all the brokerages start using Ai and it becomes everything they do what are some of the dangers some of the fraud that you might worry that could come up as with any business that AI could create you know fake listings fake sales we've already seen you know people lose their deposits because the money gets drafted somewhere else because of all sorts of fake Bots and whatever what are the dangers I mean there's lots of dangers and now all that happens right now I mean there's

fake listings now I think I was telling you on our prep call one of the trainings I was given uh in 2008 was hey it's really hard to get listings as a new real estate agent so just take photos of apartments in Chicago put them on Craigslist say it's Central Park West and that's what real estate brokerages in New York used to do but then different websites were created and different regulations were put into place and then you couldn't do that anymore and so with every kind of advancement in technology or in AI right if

that's what we're talking about I think greater rules get put into place that can help stop those fakes and I think you're going to also look more and more to the person so if we're all using AI then we're all incredibly smart so how do you differentiate expertise if we all have the same level of expertise who who wins I think it's then a game of attention I think the only reason I've been successful as I am to this day is like 10 years ago I saw that the product in sales was no longer the

skill set the product was the attention for the skill set and so I started making property tours on YouTube when it was just kids playing with slime and everyone in the city made fun of me um until I outsold everyone forever because I was able to sell attention for properties when they were still trying to print flyers on the corner and it's not that I was better at it it's not that I like worked that much harder although I do think I outwork everybody um uh it was that I saw that the future was the

attention for the skill set and I think that's what we're seeing now it's just a it's a mindset shift um and I think that there will be policing on fakes there will be policing on fake agents um and I think everything will eventually be okay