Real Estate Has the Worst PR, and So Does AI

Why does the word make a room tense?

AI has a PR problem. Bring it up at a college graduation and the room tightens a little, and that happens well before anybody has asked what it would actually do for them. The reaction is to the word.

What is it already doing that nobody notices?

This is the part I keep coming back to. That same room has been flying on autopilot for years, and autopilot is AI. The thing that decides which calls are worth showing you is AI. So is the car that holds its own lane on the highway. Nobody thinks twice about any of it, because nobody stuck a label on it. It's all in how you use it, which has been true of every tool anyone has ever picked up.

None of those things arrived with an announcement either. Each one showed up inside something people already wanted, did its job, and quietly stopped being a topic. That tends to be how a tool stops being frightening. Not an argument, just a few months of it working.

Where should it show up in a transaction?

Real estate carries a reputation problem of its own, which is the part I find funny, because the agents carrying it are the best at the job. That's why we're betting on the agent rather than looking for ways around one.

So the question was never whether AI belongs in a transaction. It's which half of the job it takes. My answer is the quiet half: the fourth follow-up on a signature, the paperwork, the chasing that has to happen before anybody gets paid. That's where the money quietly leaks out of a deal, and it's the half that keeps pulling an agent out of the room where they're actually useful.

An assistant is patient at six on a Friday in a way a person can't be asked to be. It doesn't get bored of the fourth follow-up. That's a narrow talent, and it happens to line up exactly with the part of this job nobody chose the career for.

Put two underrated things next to each other and they turn out to fit.