It doesn't feel like I've been in real estate a long time, but I guess 27 years is a while. I do remember when the beach area did not have an MLS, and we would load The Real Estate Connection floppy disk into our only computer for our monthly update. The data was the same all month until the new book came out. If you didn't advertise in the book, your listings were not in the database. My dad remembers before computers when agents would drive to all the real estate offices and hand flyers to all the receptionists. Then, we joined the MLS and had monthly books delivered with black and white photos. Then, we got to use a dial-up connection to load our data through a DOS program in a daily dump. Also, before lockboxes, agents would schedule showings with the various office receptionists who were the keeper of the keys. Before showing property, you had to drive to every real estate office to pick up keys, and if you didn't bring them back promptly, you got a tongue lashing from the keeper. 

Each change we made in the industry was scary. We could not imagine doing what we do differently. Then, we adapted and would wonder how we used to get work done without our current technology. We are obviously extremely more efficient today than years past. But, we are not done yet!

Have any of you dabbled in AI yet? I have not, but we will have to soon. I am making myself research it although I do not want to do it. However, some of the AI benefits for real estate seem very promising and even our Bellator tools have some integration with it. Here is a short list:

• Summarizing key themes of purchase agreements and listings (huge time saver)
• Scanning the MLS data to refine searches beyond the typical MLS inputs (for example: take a deep dive into hundreds of condo listings to find the ones that generate a 10% gross return, i.e., gross rentals / asking price)
• For commercial applications, brokers could load certain requirement criteria of a developer (traffic counts, demographics, population, distance to hospitals and schools, price point, lot size, etc.) and pop out locations that qualify for a particular franchise in whatever geographic area that was requested. AI would could comb through "unstructured data" (census, tax records, MLS data, etc.) and quickly deliver the results. 
• AI can assist with writing marketing copy (but keep your Equal Housing guidelines in mind when generating)

This does even scratch the surface of the thousands of benefits AI will bring to the real estate industry. Real estate is so data driven, and anywhere there is data, AI will be useful. We have more data than many industries, but the real estate business is famous for being late to the innovation party. I don't know where to start to give AI a shot and don't know many people that are using it. Reading this article was a big help to even figure out what it could do for our real estate business:

Click Here to Read Article

There is no doubt AI will be hot topic in our future.  You can not listen or read any business news without hearing a mention of AI.   In 2023, Big Tech invested $117 billion in the technology research, certainly more to come in 2024.  We can either go back to reading our MLS books, or continue to adapt and learn.  It actually sounds kind of fun, but the scariest part is getting started, it is probably time for us to take our first step.