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Individual agents and brokerages alike are gradually incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their everyday business practices more and more, changing the nature of competition within the industry, SERHANT. founder and CEO Ryan Serhant said at the CNBC Evolve AI Opportunity Summit in New York City last week.
With AI able to automate many tasks for agents, efficiency alone will not differentiate them in the marketplace, Serhant argued, meaning that an agent’s relationship skills will grow in importance.
“If we are all using AI and have the same level of expertise, who wins?” Serhant asked. “It’s the game of attention.”
By leveraging AI, agents have the ability to spend more time giving their clients more personalized service, Serhant told the summit’s attendees.
“The product in sales is no longer just the skill set,” Serhant continued. “It’s the attention to the skill set.”
Serhant also discussed his firm’s new AI platform, S.MPLE, which he first teased at Inman Connect New York and recently shared exclusive details of with Inman. The productivity platform can help agents take care of tasks that would typically take up about 60 percent of their time, Serhant said.
S.MPLE and other AI tools are able to help agents streamline lead generation, automate marketing campaigns, create listing agreements and other time-saving tasks, but those tools are still unable to wholly replace the agent in the transaction, Serhant argued. For those agents who embrace AI, however, it can serve to strengthen client relationships, the CEO said.
AI may also help agents from smaller, boutique firms gain more equal footing with agents from larger firms with more resources, Serhant added. “There is a trust factor in sales … It isn’t about who is the largest, but who is the most empowered,” he said.
And more accessible AI tools with greater capabilities also stands to benefit consumers, who will gain a wider pool of empowered agents with more personalized services.
The typical agent is still only in the beginning stages of adopting AI for use in their business, but as capabilities and knowledge of the tool grow, AI is poised to significantly impact agents’ way of doing business.
According to a JLL Technologies 2023 survey on Global Real Estate Technology, generative AI was ranked as one of the top three technologies expected to have the greatest impact on the industry by investors, developers and corporate occupiers. That survey also found that agents had a relatively low understanding of AI compared to other technologies.
AI’s advancements also create risks, unfortunately, opening up more possibilities for scammers to dupe consumers, particularly through wire fraud, which saw a surge in 2023, according to the FBI.
Serhant said he was confident that real estate professionals would adapt to meet the new risks inherent in AI, as they have done in the past with the evolution of digital listings.
“With every advancement in technology, greater rules get put into place that can help stop those fakes,” Serhant said.
