04.24.2024 PropStream
Ever since its public release in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. The free chatbot can understand and generate a wide variety of written text in a human-like fashion. What sets it apart from other chatbots is the massive amount of data it is trained on—countless books, articles, and other publicly available text. In fact, part of the reason ChatGPT is available for free is so that its developers can collect user feedback with which to continually improve the software.
You can use ChatGPT to scale your business as a real estate agent. Signing up is free and only takes a few seconds. However, to get the most out of the tool, you must learn how to use it effectively. So here are the top seven ways agents can use ChatGPT:
1. Write Listing Descriptions
Writing listing descriptions from scratch can be time-consuming. It requires a lot of creativity, and you’re usually limited to a strict word count. But with the help of ChatGPT, you can write listing descriptions in a fraction of the time. Here’s how:
Start by gathering all the relevant property information from your client. This includes the property’s address, square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, recent updates, nearby amenities, and so on. Then ask ChatGPT to use that information to write a listing description and tweak it to your liking.
A compelling listing description could make all the difference between a potential buyer contacting you to learn more about a property or moving on to other listings.
2. Outline Marketing Videos
Real estate agents often run a one-person show. They may be responsible for their business’s marketing, sales, growth, and everything else. Creating regular marketing videos for platforms like YouTube and Instagram can be especially time-consuming. But ChatGPT can help speed up the process.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT to write a video outline on why people should consider moving to a major city in your target market or what mistakes to avoid as a first-time homebuyer. You can then use the outline as a guide for what to say during the video. Just remember to keep it short and to the point—especially for short-form videos.
3. Create Blog Content and Website Copy
Another time-consuming task that many agents perform is writing content for their business websites or blogs. But again, ChatGPT can help.
For example, you can use it to generate blog article topics. Simply ask it to give you some blog post ideas related to buying a house in Phoenix, AZ, for example, or selling a house during the winter season. ChatGPT will quickly generate blog post ideas, from which you can choose your favorite(s). From there, you can have the chatbot generate an outline for the blog post or even write a first draft. The same goes for landing pages.
That said, avoid publishing content copied straight from ChatGPT. Instead, use it as a springboard to get your creative juices flowing and eliminate any writer’s block.
4. Draft Marketing Emails
Marketing emails are similar to website content, except that they tend to target a narrower audience. For example, agents might have separate drip campaigns for prospective buyers vs. prospective sellers so that they can tailor their communication to each. ChatGPT can make crafting these emails easier.
Start by telling ChatGPT who you want your email to target. Then ask for an eye-catching subject line on a topic that would interest your audience, such as what first-time buyers should look for in a real estate agent or when’s the best time to sell a home in Miami, Florida.
You can also use ChatGPT to draft the email body or respond to individual messages. The goal is to have it do the heavy lifting so you can write more emails faster.
5. Generate Prospecting Scripts
Cold calling can be intimidating and tiresome. But it can also be a great source of business. ChatGPT can make the job easier by generating effective scripts. That way, you have a set framework for what to say, making it easier to exude confidence and address common objections.
For example, you could ask ChatGPT to give you a prospecting script for expired listing leads. Experiment with scripts for different types of leads and situations until you find those that are most effective.
6. Write Social Media Posts and Captions
These days, it’s hard to be a successful agent without an online presence. According to one study, 80% of recent sellers contacted only one agent before finding the right agent they worked with to sell their home, and 67% of buyers interviewed only one real estate agent during their home search. So if you’re not one of the first agents to appear on your prospect’s radar, you have little chance of working with them.
One way to boost your online presence as an agent is to be active on social media. It lets you connect with leads directly and at scale. However, keeping up with regular posts can be challenging. This is where ChatGPT comes in. It can help you write captivating posts or captions for images and videos.
If posts on the social media platform have a character limit (as Twitter does, for example), you can include that criterion in your prompt to ChatGPT. You can also ask it to include hashtags to categorize the post and maximize its visibility to the right audience.
7. Calculate Mortgage Payments
ChatGPT isn’t just good at writing. It can also perform complex math. As a real estate agent, this can come in handy when you need to estimate mortgage payments for clients on the fly.
All you have to do is give ChatGPT the relevant details, such as mortgage type (30- or 15-year), sales price, interest rate, down payment amount, property tax rate, and so on. Then it’ll spit out how much your buyer client can expect to pay in monthly mortgage payments. You can make similar calculations for clients interested in seller financing.
Using ChatGPT to perform complex math on the go can take much of the guesswork out of potential real estate deals so your clients can know what to expect.
Tips on Writing Prompts for ChatGPT
Now that you know the different ways you can use ChatGPT as an agent, let’s go over how to get good results. This starts with good prompts. You can’t expect to get decent output if the input is bad (aka garbage in, garbage out). So here are some tips on how to craft effective ChatGPT prompts:
Provide context. The more specific the prompt, the more tailored ChatGPT’s output will be. For example, instead of asking, “Write a marketing email for a real estate agent,” tell ChatGPT, “I’m a seasoned real estate agent who has worked in the San Antonio, TX market for over 20 years. Write me a marketing email about the top things first-time homebuyers must know about buying a house in this area. Include a strong call to action to visit my website at [blank] to learn more.”
Iterate. ChatGPT’s first output will rarely be exactly what you want. So it helps to iterate and refine your prompts until you get a satisfactory response. For example, you may want to ask ChatGPT to condense its response or correct a factual error. Or you may simply want to ask for a different variation of the same answer.
Request different tones of voice. It’s easy for ChatGPT outputs to sound canned. However, you can make them sound more authentic by requesting that it rewrite the same response in a different tone of voice. For example, you can ask it to write in a professional, conversational, or humorous tone. You can even tell it to write in the tone of a well-known person, such as Barbara Corcoran or Josh Altman.
Translate into other languages. Use ChatGPT to reach more people by having it generate content in other languages. For example, if you want to break into a predominantly Spanish-speaking market, you can tell ChatGPT to translate your English content into Spanish.
The Limitations of ChatGPT
It’s important to note that despite its many capabilities, ChatGPT also has some significant limitations. These include:
- Knowledge cut-off date. ChatGPT may be unaware of events that happened after September 2021. Consequently, it may provide outdated information.
- Potential bias. Because ChatGPT is trained on texts that may be biased and unreliable, it may generate biased information itself.
- Ability to produce inaccurate information. ChatGPT can occasionally generate inaccurate information due to limitations in its training data, ambiguous prompts, user input errors, and technical limitations.
- Lack of human touch. Though there is much you can do to humanize ChatGPT responses, it will never have the human touch that a live agent has.
- Potential for duplication. Since other users may have received the same output from ChatGPT, the content it provides may not always be original.
- Usage limits. ChatGPT may sometimes be unavailable due to its servers overloading from high demand, scheduled maintenance, updates, or other usage limits.
Ultimately, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for agents to have in their toolkits. It’s unlikely to replace agents altogether, but those who don’t embrace it may fall behind those that do. So start experimenting with ChatGPT today to work smarter, not harder.
