Most people call a real estate agent when selling a home. Stuart Thompson called up a chatbot.
A technology reporter for the New York Times, Thompson thought he’d give artificial intelligence a whirl to sell his upstate New York home. He went from listing the spread to an accepted offer in five days and walked away with a nice $90,000 profit.
“It granted me access to a way of thinking, a posture for navigating a nuanced and high-stakes interaction, that would normally be reserved for people with innate talent or lots of earned experience,” Thompson chronicled in the Times.
When Thompson and his wife looked to sell their three-bedroom, two-bathroom range in the Hudson Valley, they initially talked to some real estate agents, he wrote.
But the agents weren’t optimistic about the pricing and Thompson didn’t want to pay a 3% commission to his agent — and another 3% to the buyer’s agent — to “take a loss on my house,” he wrote.
Instead, Thompson used Google’s chatbot, Gemini, to craft a listing for his dwelling. He and his wife thought they could get $550,000 for the house, based on “pure guesswork,” Thompson wrote.
Gemini costs $7.50 a month, but Thompson had an account established through work. He paid $200 to publish his listing on Homecoin.
Gemini became Thompson’s consigliere, recommending local photographers, providing staging advice and explaining real estate jargon.
The chatbot made one significant mistake regarding the expected commission he would have to pay to the buyer’s agent. Gemini suggested Thompson list that he was offering 0% commission, which is not allowed.
Gemini came to the rescue when Thompson was hit with a “flurry of bookings.” It helped him manage the appointments and make sense of complicated emails.
Gemini moved away from its “yes-man” behavior at one point.
Thompson typed: “Do i need to address anything like ‘im not playing games’ or ‘im not trying to leverage your offer’ or anytihng?”
Gemini responded, “Whatever you do, do not say ‘I’m not playing games’ or ‘I’m not trying to leverage your offer,’” he said. “In negotiation, as soon as someone says ‘I’m not playing games,’ the other party immediately thinks, ‘They are definitely playing games.’ It creates a defensive vibe and makes you look like an amateur who feels guilty about wanting more money.”
AI was able to assuage Thompson’s anxiety over getting too much interest in his house.
“It offered some needed reassurance, saying that by pricing low, I had stumbled into an ‘accidental strategy’ that could result in multiple offers,” Thompson wrote.
The reporter thought AI would be a better version of him, but it became a replacement, he said.
What it lacked, however, was “human empathy,” Thompson realized, though comfort from a friend and advice from his wife filled the gap.
By Thompson’s deadline he got three offers, and all were over the asking price. Once agin, AI saved the day. He popped them all into the chatbot and it indicated, the “offer with the most certainty was the winner, even if the price was a smidgen lower than the highest.” He and his wife agreed.
Looking to sweeten the deal, Thompson got support from Gemini when he asked it about approaching the buyers to pay their own agent a 2% commission rather than him. The buyers agreed.
Thompson and his wife accepted an offer for just over $600,000, netting them more than $90,000 including the premium over the asking price and $36,000 in fees he avoided.
He hired a human lawyer to handle the closing.
One real estate agent told Thompson he potentially left $225,000 on the table by listing too low and accepting an offer so quickly. But selling the home for $605,000 without agent fees generated the same amount of cash as a $643,000 sale with all of the normal fees, Thompson determined.
Thompson’s not the first to successfully use AI in real estate.
In Miami, a father of three used ChatGPT to sell his family home in less than a week.
