Exploring the Disruptive Potential of ChatGPT in Real Estate: 4 Use Cases

The viral artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has made waves globally with its conversational AI abilities to “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests.”

Ever since its launch in November, social media has been abuzz with discussions around the possibilities—and risks—of this new innovation in different industries, like computing, considering the Chat’s ability to debug code, and media, given its potential to create automated content.

We sat down with our fellows real estate agents and brainstormed how this tool can be used in commercial real estate, too. We all agreed that ChatGPT has enormous potential for property professionals, such as answering common questions about property listings, penning emails and writing property descriptions. But let’s talk about this in more detail.

1. Writing Property Listings

Chat GPT can be a real time-saver when it comes to generating property descriptions based on some basic information about a property, such as its location, number of people it can accommodate, and other key features. You just feed this information into the chatbot, and its AI brains highlight the property’s strengths pretty much as any human would have done it.

If you haven’t yet been exposed to content-generating intelligence of ChatGPT, google it now, create an account, and start your conversation, say, by asking the AI brains to write a listing for a full floor office in central Dallas. You will be amazed how quickly the tool will spit out an elegantly worded description for you to be able to successfully market your commercial property. Here’s what the AI generated for me just in 10 seconds:

“Welcome to your new office! This office space is located on a high floor of a modern commercial building in the heart of downtown Dallas. With approximately 25,000 square feet of open plan office space, it can accommodate more than 150 people comfortably. The space is well-lit with plenty of natural light and offers breathtaking views of the city skyline.

The open-plan workspace is designed to encourage collaboration and creativity among employees, with modern workstations equipped with ergonomic chairs and ample desk space. There is also a spacious break room with a fully-stocked kitchenette, perfect for grabbing a quick snack or taking a coffee break.”

Just curious, how long would it take you or your content manager to come up with a similar copy?

Additionally, ChatGPT can provide language suggestions to make your descriptions more engaging, create multiple versions to appeal to different audiences, and if coupled with other tools for CRE agents, can help you save time and effort.

2. Creating Tinned Email & Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Just as it is a great listing description writer, the chatbot can create engaging email marketing journeys for your commercial real estate leads. The trick is the same: you input some bits of information you already know about the client, e.g., date of their lease expiration, type of property they’re interested in, or any other details you would like to highlight in the email, and the AI will take it over from there.

Along with that, ChatGPT can assist commercial real estate agents in:

• Brainstorming ideas for effective subject lines that will grab the reader’s attention and increase open rates.
• Reviewing and editing the email to ensure that it is error-free, concise, and easy to read.
• Suggesting ways to incorporate personalization and segmentation into the email, such as using the recipient’s name or targeting specific demographics.
• Offering guidance on creating effective calls-to-action that encourage the reader to take the desired next step, whether that’s scheduling a consultation or checking out a new property listing.
• Staying up to date on the latest email marketing trends and best practices to ensure that emails are as effective as possible.

The same can be applied to your social media posting if you have any. If not, it is a great timing to start on your social media endeavors as you can delegate much of copywriting to ChatGPT at least as long as it is totally free.

The creators of the artificial intelligence chatbot have already released a paid version for 20 USD / month, which is still a very fair price for such a breakthrough in AI technology. But who knows how their pricing strategy will evolve over time, as many are more than happy to commit to higher price tags to be able to access the tool.

“I would easily pay $100 or $200 a year for something like this,” he told CNN. “I’d be crazy not to.”, said Miami broker Andres Asion to CNN (source).

3. Drafting Legal Documents

With its natural language processing capabilities and vast knowledge base, ChatGPT can assist commercial real estate agents in generating various types of legal documents, such as contracts, tenancy agreements, and policies, saving you time and effort.

For example, in response to my prompt “draft me a tenancy agreement” the chatbot generated a fairly convincing-looking contract:

Example of lease agreement created by ChatGPT

However, while ChatGPT works great for initial drafting, any copy it generates must be ultimately reviewed by a legal professional to ensure that the copy is legally binding, accurately reflects your intentions, and provides adequate protection for your interests.

Still, any kind of legal proofreading takes much less time than crafting a contract from scratch.

4. Simple Coding to Fix Bugs and Create Algorithms

One of the most exciting (and handy!) applications of ChatGPT in real estate is debugging of real estate software, like loan origination systems, and creating algorithms for automated actions, e.g., generating comprehensive and accurate valuations for properties.

Speaking of AVMs, ChatGPT can generate a quick estimate of a property’s value if provided with property details, such as size, condition, age, as well as recent sales data and local market trends. For example:

Example of Property Estimation Generated By ChatGPT

The more detailed statistical data you feed into the AI engine, the more accurate property value you will arrive at.

The only thing I wish ChatGPT did better in this regard is providing more up-to-date information as sometimes it seems that the knowledge base is seriously lagging behind.

I am sure that this will come with time, further enhancements and of course at a possibly higher price tag.

In the meantime, real estate agents and appraisers across the world can already employ ChatGPT-generated AVMs to provide quick estimates of property values for real estate transactions, property tax assessments, and mortgage lending.

Can ChatGPT Edge Out Some Real Estate Professions?

Although ChatGPT in some very creative ways is changing the way business is done, it is too soon to say if the conventional AI can actually substitute any profession in real estate. I believe too many augmentations will be needed until the tool can replace any job at all.

However, just considering how quickly Open AI, the company behind the renowned chatbot, is growing and establishing some of the most revolutionary collaborations, these augmentations might not take long to take place.

Just look at the recent news about Salesforce’s intentions to incorporate ChatGPT enterprise-grade AI technology into one of their flagship products – Einstein – to allow users to ask natural-language prompts (i.e., conversational questions) directly within Salesforce CRM (source).

The same announcement followed from Microsoft, who have already confirmed a $10 billion investment into ChatGPT.

Just looking at these movements in the tech industry, I can say for sure that ChatGPT has set a trend for natural-language capabilities, which means that:

1. We will be seeing more partnerships with Open AI, and soon incorporating natural-language AI capabilities will become an industry standard for most enterprise software, real estate technology is no exception.
2. Some professions and their responsibilities will need to be recalibrated to reflect the new industry normal, e.g., real estate content managers (professionals who look after listing websites, a company’s social media accounts, etc.) might act rather as ChatGPT content managers and will possibly need to master the new ways of generating content thought AI. This will surely take their pay down as less human effort will be needed.

Overall, it’s clear that the trend towards natural-language AI capabilities is here to stay and will have a significant impact on the real estate tech industry and beyond. As businesses and professionals adapt to this new normal, we can expect to see new opportunities emerge, as well as new challenges to overcome.

Who Are We?

We, Ascendix, are a team of innovators dedicated to helping commercial real estate agencies embrace innovation.

Over 16+ years in real estate, we have witnessed many industry breakthroughs and developments, and have developed indispensable expertise that positions us as the right leader to help your company choose the right CRM software, migrate from your legacy system to Salesforce, and more.

Contact us if you need:

• A technology partner who is sensitive to your commercial real estate problems – we have been providing stellar technology help to the most renowned industry incumbents like JLL and Colliers for almost 2 decades. Check our case studies to learn more about these collaborations.
• An expert audit of your current technology, whether it be a dated CRM or listing platform, to spot the reasons for underperformance and room for improvement.
• An external development partner to help you build whatever solution you have in mind for real estate – as product developers with 5 offices across the world, we have the right product buildout expertise and technology resources to bring your ideas to life.

Contact us to find out how we can help you succeed in commercial real estate.