Remember 1995? If you were of a certain age in the mid-’90s, you’ll recall what it was like when the internet barreled onto the scene, omnipresent and rapidly changing every facet of our personal and business lives—whether we wanted it to or not.
Whether you lived through the early days of the internet’s sea change or not, you now have the chance to experience—or relive—the same type of phenomenon. Only this time, it’s artificial intelligence (AI).
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by AI, you’re not alone. If you’re feeling like you don’t want to participate in AI, you’re also not alone—however, that’s probably not an option.
The good news is that AI has already been working for you in the background, unnoticed. And you don’t have to be a tech wizard to maximize the opportunities AI offers you in the foreground. AI operates—thrives—on the information you feed it, whether it’s decades of machine learning or years of expertise as an agent on the frontlines. From behind the scenes to the palm of your hand, two experts explain why AI is here to stay…and why that’s a very good thing for real estate.
Getting Hands-On With AI: Focus on the Opportunity, Not the Challenge
Michael Thorne
Host, Buffini & Company’s AI Bootcamp
Marketing Expert and AI
Visionary, TMB Real Estate Group
One of the most memorable moments of Michael Thorne’s 32-year real estate journey was when the internet made its presence known in 1995. While many real estate professionals at the time saw it as an existential threat, Thorne saw a huge opportunity. With the rapid advent of AI, Thorne believes the real estate industry is now facing the next, great opportunity, and is leading Buffini & Company’s recently launched AI Bootcamp webinar series to help agents seize the moment and capitalize on AI as it transforms real estate as we know it.
Maria Patterson: Michael, how did you become an expert in AI?
Michael Thorne: Whenever I see change, it’s about where’s the opportunity in this change? There were people in my office in 1995, who said, “I will never participate in the internet.” They couldn’t envision the opportunity. This is 1995 for AI. The difference between the internet and AI is that it will have a much bigger impact on our professional and personal lives than the internet. It’s going to happen much, much faster. This will leave agents behind, and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen.
MP: So when did you expand your real estate career to becoming an educator?
MT: I’m a coach at heart—I want to see people have the success I’ve had, and I hope they surpass me. When we started to become paperless in the late 2000s, people started knocking on my door and saying, “Hey, Michael, could you teach us how to do that?” And then when video came along, I helped build a training program for real estate agents, and that put me on the biggest stages in real estate. And so when AI came along, I think a lot of people in the industry knew that I’d be going down the rabbit hole and said, “can you help?” So it’s just a natural place where I feel very
comfortable.
MP: What has your initial experience teaching AI been like?
MT: I’ve been speaking for a couple of years on AI. Early on in my keynote I ask the audience, “Are you a beginner? Are you an intermediate?” About 30% of the audience identifies themselves as intermediates. When we get to the 75% mark of the presentation, I put up a slide that says, “Are you feeling overwhelmed?” And most of the hands go up. And then I ask, “How many people still believe they’re intermediates?” We’re down to 2% or 3% of the audience. It’s at that moment where they realize that the opportunity is much bigger than they originally thought, and that’s exciting. They also realize that they need someone to capitalize on the opportunity.
MP: So how did you come to partner with Buffini & Company on developing the AI Bootcamp?
MT: I’m a Buffini person. We’ve taken a lot of their trainings in the past. When Buffini & Company Chief Growth Officer Darin Dawson saw me speaking, he asked, “What is the No. 1 question you get asked by this line up of people that are waiting to talk to you after you speak?” I told him they ask, “Now what do I do?” And over the next couple of months, we started to talk. So that’s how it came about—the realization that agents can’t do this on their own.
MP: Your initial experience speaking about AI must have been invaluable in shaping the AI
Bootcamp…
MT: As I worked with the Buffini team, I told them this needs to be interactive because AI changes every week. We need this to be live. We need this to be Q&A. We need to give them the prompts. We need to give them the key takeaways. We need to give them the playbook. And as long as these agents show up every month, their big worry of being left behind will go away.
MP: Tell us about the logistics of the AI Bootcamp. How does the whole thing work?
MT: You sign up for a year. It’s a monthly training webinar coming to you live. We’ve got structure in how the episodes are going to roll out, but we want to leave enough freedom to also adapt because AI is going to continue to move fast. We want it to be heavy on the Q&A, heavy on the interaction. We’re going to be listening to the feedback in between trainings so that we’re addressing the most relevant and meaningful concerns and wishes of the audience. We’re going to have every training build off the knowledge of the previous month. Those people that are not tech-forward will not be left behind. Those people that want to take what they learn and do more advanced things will also have the opportunity to do that.
We’re going to be really methodical, giving everyone the prompts, the workbooks, the key takeaways to implement. The training recordings will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so people can go back and rewatch—so that they can play and pause and implement. And we’re going to bring real-world real estate examples to people and then give them the knowledge to customize it. I’m so excited to see how someone takes the skill and then applies it to their business. Agents will think of things I never dreamt of
before.
MP: What do you ultimately want attendees to walk away with?
MT: First of all, I want you to thrive in today’s constantly changing real estate market. We’re moving into real estate 3.0, in my opinion. AI is going to be there to do the things that you might fall short on or you might not be a complete expert on. It’s really a cheat code. AI will transform your business when learned and used properly.
MP: What is the general feeling about AI among real estate agents currently?
MT: I think the biggest misconception is the size of the opportunity. One of my biggest fears is that AI is happening extremely fast and it’s apathetic. It’s going to move forward with or without you. Another misconception is when people say, “I know that was written by AI.” I can guarantee you it’s because it was written by someone who’s not leveraging custom instructions. Really, really good AI in almost every application is when you don’t notice it’s there.
MP: What about agents who choose not to get involved with AI?
MT: I believe wholeheartedly that there are two losers and one winner when it comes to AI and real estate. The first loser is the agent who ignores it. Your ability to opt out of AI and still build a meaningful business is off the table, much like the internet. There are no agents who are still around and say, “I will not participate in the internet.”
The next loser, in my opinion, are agents that are putting this technology between them and their consumer, the agents that are listening to “experts” on stage telling them to make a digital avatar to communicate with their clients. Anytime an agent puts this technology between them and the human on the other side of the transaction, those agents, in my opinion, will lose.
The winners are those agents that are putting this technology behind them—streamlining their business planning, their doc prep, their time management, their content creation…freeing up two hours every day to spend more time sitting across the table from a nervous first-time homebuyer. Agents who use this technology to be more human and not less will win. And that’s why Buffini and I see eye to eye.
MP: What do you say to those who see AI as something that could make real estate agents defunct?
MT: It’s the agent that willingly hands over the human connection to AI that’s going to be the most disrupted. The transaction is far more complicated today than ever before, and buyers and sellers need a local expert who sits across the table. As we become more digital, those human moments will become larger and more valuable.
MP: Many real estate professionals are intimidated by AI. Why shouldn’t they be?
MT: The reason why AI has grown so fast is because there’s no need to be intimidated by it. If you were to sit across the table from a website coder and you knew nothing about coding, you would realize all you have to do is articulate what you want in a website, and that professional can then interpret it. We don’t need to be experts in AI. We just need to be able to articulate what we want. I think a lot of people see AI as a tool, but they need to see this as a teammate.
MP: Is AI for everyone, no matter your age?
MT: Absolutely. There’s no barrier to entry on just being human. Whether you’re 25 or 65, it’s new for everybody, and the opportunities are the same for everybody.
MP: I know the possibilities are limitless, but can you give us an example of what AI can do?
MT: A really good use case is deep research. AI can do in 35 minutes what would take us a week or so to do. And now you take that research and say, okay, create a marketing campaign or a business strategy or email drip campaigns that address these pain points. When you start showing people these sorts of opportunities, it’s exciting.
MP: So AI is a technology that you can control and decide how to use…
MT: We’re going to teach you how to build a custom GPT. A new user might build two or three meaningful ones and transform their business. An advanced user is going to build 12 or 20 of them, and transform their business. So the more advanced people will take the opportunity and implement it in a more sophisticated way. Newer people will start slowly, and then they will build and become more comfortable and they’ll start to see the opportunities. It just becomes this snowball where you see opportunities all around.
MP: Is there a scenario where a real estate professional can succeed in the future without AI?
MT: No. Could you look at your client and say, “I’m doing the best possible job for you, leveraging every tool, and I’m not using the internet?” You can’t say that to your client. There’s AI all around us, and the best AI—especially in a real estate application—is the one where your clients don’t notice it’s happening.
For more information, please visit buffini.com/aibootcamp.
AI Behind the Scenes: How Data Is Powering AI Solutions
Kevin Greene
SVP, GM,
Real Estate Solutions, Cotality
As the senior vice president and general manager of Real Estate Solutions for Cotality (formerly CoreLogic), Kevin Greene spearheads the company’s product and go-to-market vision, strategy and client relationships with an emphasis on amplifying Cotality’s commitment to MLS clients as they serve the needs of 1.5M real estate agents in North America. With two decades of real estate experience, including a career that started as a successful agent, and then broker/owner, Greene is passionate about using AI to increase the agent’s value proposition and help them forge stronger relationships with buyers and sellers—all without agents having to ever lift a finger.
MP: While AI is still somewhat of a new concept in the residential real estate space, Cotality—then CoreLogic—has been utilizing its power for many years, correct?
Kevin Greene: We’ve been innovating with AI for well over 40 years. As a technology company, what do you need to really power AI? Data. We’re the largest provider and aggregator of property-record data in the United States, and so taking all of that data and being able to use it in different models to create that artificial intelligence—from weather and hazard risks to the valuation of properties to other opportunities—we’ve been doing it for quite some time.
MP: There’s a certain amount of fear out there about AI. So it’s great to be able to say, “Hey, relax everybody. We’ve been dealing with AI successfully for a long time.”
KG: Absolutely. AI is the buzzword of the day, but there’s bad AI and there’s good AI. Good AI is fueled by good, clean data. Cotality provides good, clean data. We spend a lot of time, money and effort on accumulating and aggregating it in a format that can be easily digested and then put into models and tools that everybody can use.
MP: Tell us about some of your new product offerings for real estate professionals that are driven by AI.
KG: I could go on and on, but I’ll focus on three. For starters, nowadays, time is money and being able to quickly get a listing presentation or a listing into an MLS system easily is really important, as is doing it in a way that is accurate and that reaches a multilingual audience. Now you can use your phone to scan a room and it’ll take the pictures, but it’ll also get you the room dimensions. We’re providing those room dimensions as well as a floor plan within 10 minutes of scanning that room.
Utilizing AI and photo imagery, we can give a brief description about that room and caption those images as well. Not just to be able to view it, but also from a compliance standpoint, being able to have it read out loud to understand what’s in those images.
And the last piece, how awesome would it be to take that description then ask to have it translated into Spanish or French or any other language? That’s something we’re going to be debuting shortly—by the time this article is out.
MP: Are these new products or features built into existing Cotality products that agents are already using?
KG: It will be a new offering within products that they’re currently using. We have our Matrix ecosystem, which is the primary MLS system utilized by over 1 million agents in both the U.S. and Canada. We have our Realist property-record database, which is available in the U.S. We have OneHome, which is our client collaboration tool. And then we have our MLS-Touch mobile app—that’s where listing agents will be able to utilize their mobile app to scan rooms and automatically upload into Matrix, where they can take advantage of those additional features that we talked about. Ultimately, it powers OneHome, where consumers get the benefit of that rich listing data.
MP: So obviously, these AI-powered features will help real estate professionals save time. How else will AI help an agent do their job?
KG: For an MLS, getting those ADA requirements met and ensuring accessibility to all listings—for an agent to be able to get leads—that makes a big impact. Also, AI being able to increase speed to market is big. But the intelligence piece is key. Cotality has three main focuses: mortgage, insurance and real estate. Being able to understand the different hazard and climate-related risks, and giving that knowledge to real estate professionals so they can share it with their clients, is very important. It makes agents far more knowledgeable about their neighborhood and the properties they’re either promoting or helping a consumer purchase.
MP: In your case, it sounds like you don’t have to convince real estate agents about the value of AI because they’re not really aware that it’s AI—it’s just an enhancement to the product. Is that fair to say?
KG: That’s fair, yes. When that app tells you, “Hey, Kevin’s searching for homes that are four bedrooms, three baths in Greensboro, North Carolina, you may want to contact them,”—that’s AI. Agents may not realize it, but AI is already behind many of the tools they’ve been using for some time.
MP: What are some of the misconceptions real estate professionals have about AI?
KG: I think the biggest misconception is that agents feel like AI is going to take their job and their ability to help consumers buy and sell property, when in all honesty, that human touch and the human part of the equation is so important—to reassure and walk that person through the ins and outs of the process. There’s no easy transaction, and each property is unique. As much as ever, consumers still want a licensed professional helping them through it.
MP: Is there anybody else out there doing what you guys do when it comes to AI?
KG: There are bits and pieces that companies do, and that’s great. From an overall comprehensive stance, Cotality is the leader, and what makes us that leader is the data we have and the aggregation we’ve done. We spent seven years creating basically a Social Security number for all residential properties in the U.S. We’ve assigned that number, which we call CLIP, to every piece of data that we’ve aggregated for every single property. That unified data is used by over 125 Cotality data scientists, with 47 of them having PhDs, to create data models and hyperlocal property analytics that really set us apart.
MP: We know specifically how Cotality’s AI offerings can help real estate professionals, but how can AI, in general, help real estate agents do their job?
KG: Well, one, it can help them save time. Agents need to work their leads, so being able to have quick access to AI tools to finish projects and move on to working with their prospects and clients is 100% time-saving. The other part is being able to help with lead management…to have something that’s telling you, “Hey, you probably should call Kevin Greene, he’s interested in purchasing a property,” is very important. That saves you time to be able to go do other tasks, avoiding those looky-loos you’re driving around on a Saturday or Sunday when you could be working with somebody that truly is in the market to purchase a home.
MP: And there’s a consumer component as well…AI can help real estate agents help their clients in the home-search process, right?
KG: We really have a great product in OneHome that’s by agent-invite only. We’re currently adding the ability to reimagine spaces, for example, take all the furniture out of a home and put your own in. How awesome is that? How many times have you seen people wonder, “What would this house look like with different colored walls or different furniture?” You can actually visualize new decor, pick out furniture, purchase it and put it in the home. If somebody’s taking the time to visualize things, change the furniture, change the walls, move things around, I think they’re a pretty serious buyer.
A lot of these AI data elements and capabilities that we put into OneHome, they’re powerful differentiators for agents to offer their clients, to keep engagement and collaboration high. That’s the power of AI.
MP: Is there a learning curve when it comes to AI tools?
KG: I think the first answer to that is what we said earlier: People have been using AI tools for a long time and not even realizing it. So let’s not be scared of it. Number two, that’s part of our job here at Cotality—our product leaders and product managers make sure that AI is seamlessly integrated into agent workflows so it’s intuitive and easy. The other thing we’re debuting is a partnership with Pendo, which offers in-app messaging, helping agents walk through how to take advantage of some of these features. We want to make it a little bit easier and take that fear factor away.
MP: Is there a future where a real estate professional can be successful without really embracing AI?
KG: I hate to say it, but no. But the interesting thing is, they’ve been using it and don’t realize it, and I think that’s the important part.
For more information on preparing for an AI-driven future, Cotality offers a real estate AI eBook. Visit cotality.com/ai-in-real-estate.
