Editor’s note: this is the first of a two-part series on AI recommendations for agents. Look for part two in the coming days.
When a prospective buyer asks someone they trust who is the best real estate agent to help them transact, you want your name to be the first one mentioned.
What happens when that trustworthy source is an AI?
As consumers are increasingly relying on ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or other general-purpose LLMs for everyday advice, many in the industry say that getting your name in AI queries is vital to grow your business. Some companies and consultants promise they have the secret sauce that (for a price) will make sure you get recommended by AI every time.
But with how new and fast-moving these technologies are, is it really possible to parse out the process of becoming AI’s favorite agent? And maybe just as importantly, is it really all that helpful or necessary, when so many agents build their business off referrals, and consumers continue to rely on more human networks (especially when the stakes are high)?
RISMedia asked multiple AI models to recommend the top agent in particular markets that are currently rated as “hot.” Our journalists then reached out to these agents and asked how they managed to earn those recommendations, and to find out whether the recommendations had any measurable impact on their business.
Persistence pays off
Mark Siwiec leads Elysian Homes by Mark Siwiec & Associates, in Rochester, New York. AI searches produce his name at the top of most lists. He finds it amusing considering how he’s tried to gain social media traction.
“What’s really funny is I had always thought that it was important to have an online presence so that you would derive clients through Google searches, through search engine optimization,” he says. “We got a website and would pay somebody $10,000 a year so that on page one of a Google search somebody would see my name or my brokerage.”
Siwiec noted that the results were just okay. A subsequent Facebook presence didn’t produce much traction. But feeling that he was on the right track, a social media coordinator was hired.
“Reels were created for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube,” he says. “I’ve also got my own YouTube channel. On top of that, I’ve got a blog that I write once a month and mail out to a database of about 40,000 people. It appears on our website. Additionally, it’s in the Rochester Business Journal once a month.
“I was doing these things trying to have a presence on the internet. But it turns out that all these things were providing very, very little ROI. But it turns out that they were exactly the recipe that one needs to be the number one person that different LLMs (Large Language Models) or AIs are actually spitting out and spitting back when consumers are looking for the best agent in Rochester, New York.”
Siwiec notes that once a week he gets a call from somebody saying, “Hey, I’d like for you to list my property. I’d like you to come over and I want to interview you.” He thinks that if not for internet searches that produce his name it would be more like once every two weeks, three weeks or even a month.
“My executive assistant takes all the incoming calls; he is responsible for taking in all of our leads,” says Siwiec. “And we ask very purposefully, ‘How did you find out about Mark?’ Oftentimes it’s, ‘He was referred to me by my friend or my aunt or my sister.’ Every once in a while it would be through a Google search. But now once a week it’s through ChatGPT.”
Going about your business
Darin Greear, a real estate agent with Long & Foster Blacksburg, VA – Realty, serving the western Virginia region and boasting a range of specialties from first-time homebuyers to historic homes. Greear has won numerous accolades for his work, including recently ranking as the No. 2 Long & Foster agent in 2025—and, according to ChatGPT, Gemini, and CoPilot, he is the No. 1 agent to go to if you’re looking to buy in the Blacksburg metro area.
The AIs cited Greear’s 2025 numbers, specifically 150 closed sides and about 48 million in sales volume, which he corroborated as at least “generally correct” in conversation with RISMedia. Greear also says he is “not surprised” these AIs named him as the top agent in Blacksburg, but that doesn’t mean he’s been focusing on finding leads through high AI rankings.
“Most of my business is referral-based,” Greear explains. “A lot of people refer me because I take care of all my clients and whether it’s a $100,000 house or a million dollar house, I take care of all of them or try to. So I mean, that’s just the way it is.”
“A lot of my clients will, I’m sure, give me reviews online and that probably helps. And then the sales data help with the New River Valley Association of Realtors probably has that out there on who sells what,” Greear says, talking about his own approach to digital outreach. “And it’s probably all off of numbers is the main thing I would think, don’t you imagine?”
Greear embraces AI as a “good tool”—“Everybody is using (AI) and I use it as well, it’s going to get more popular too the more we go along. And it’s going to hurt some people’s jobs of course, but it’s good in real estate in certain circumstances for sure. And yeah, you can get some good recommendations, but it’s not always correct. I mean, just like anybody’s not always correct.”
However, he also strikes a more hesitant tone on the idea of relying on AI for everything, or that an AI can offer accurate information to the same extent a real estate professional can.
“A lot of people were even talking about asking AI how to make an offer on a house,” Greear claims. “(AI) just talk in general terms. They don’t know specifics enough to know if a seller needs to sell quickly, how long the house has been on the market and get more information from the buyers, the listing agent or whatever.”
Jesse Williams contributed to this reporting.
