How one Philly area real estate agent uses ChatGPT to help sell homes

Right after the Super Bowl is an unofficial start of the spring housing market, one of the busiest times for real estate agents and current and potential clients.

Agents are always looking for ways to be more efficient and connect with home buyers and sellers. They try to figure out how best to use their resources and which tools to pull out of their tool belts.

One new tool growing in popularity across fields is the chatbot ChatGPT, which uses artificial intelligence to respond to prompts in a conversational way. It has made headlines for accomplishing such feats as passing a Wharton professor’s MBA exam.

» READ MORE: ChatGPT: What you need to know about the AI chatbot

The technology is not yet widely used in the real estate industry, but some tech-savvy agents are trying it out.

Michael Severns, principal listing specialist and broker of record at a Redfin office based in Wayne, shared how he uses ChatGPT.

Showing homes to clients and negotiating on their behalf are time-consuming tasks for real estate agents. At the same time, agents also have to constantly work to make connections and develop leads to bring in new clients.

“I’m inherently lazy, so I try to find the easiest way to do things,” Severns said. “This tool is fantastic for somebody like me.”

He uses ChatGPT to generate social media and blog posts. And he has another app that schedules his social media posts across his accounts.

He posts on Medium.com and asks the chatbot to act as an editor. It cleans up his writing and makes his comments more succinct. He can even ask it to add some humor into a blog post.

“I’m not that great of a writer,” he said. “That’s why I love ChatGPT.”

He recently posted about 10 things potential buyers should check when they tour a home. He fed ChatGPT a checklist he gives to buyers and asked it to act as a real estate agent and explain why the 10 items on the list are so important.

He feeds ChatGPT industry news and asks it to rephrase the information from the point of view of a real estate agent.

“The capabilities and the things it can do are phenomenal,” he said.

It’s one way he stays in front of possible home buyers and sellers. In between scheduled posts, he throws in some personal ones — and lately, posts about the Eagles — to further connect with people.

Severns uses ChatGPT to keep track of the topics of the day.

He asks it questions such as “What are 10 social media post topics I should do as a real estate agent?”

Severns is 45 and acknowledges that he doesn’t know everything the youngest home buyers are into. He said artificial intelligence helps him connect with different demographics.

“I can say, ‘Act as an advertiser and rewrite this article to engage with 18- to 35-year-olds,’ and it will do that,” he said.

ChatGPT is far from perfect. Sometimes the chatbot gives Severns wrong information, so he makes sure to double-check what ChatGPT comes up with.

He doesn’t have the chatbot do everything. Descriptions of homes in listings, for example, are written by a “really phenomenal” listing coordinator at Redfin, he said.

He has talked to other real estate agents who are afraid of the technology and don’t want to learn to use it, but Severns said he’s enjoying the perks.

“It’s just another tool that we can use in our toolbox,” he said.