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125. AI Is About To Change Estate Agency Forever Ft.Giles Ellwood · The Complete Agent - The Podcast For Premium Real Estate Agents

• speaker-0: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Complete Agent Podcast, where each week we get together to talk all things a state agency. My name is James Kendall, and I'm not joined this week by David Warburton, Ian Story, or Michelle Smith. It's a tech packed episode. So who better to bring on the podcast than Mr. Tech himself? Giles Elwood of Home Search. Giles, what a pleasure to have you back. Thank you so much for joining me. speaker-1: Thank you, James. I really appreciate being here. And ⁓ we we didn't quite get into all the techie stuff last time and and I don't even know how deeply we can get into the tech stuff today, but we can certainly have a little try. ⁓ but it is a pleasure because the the pace at which things are moving is it's getting pretty frenetic. And yeah, I'd love to share what we're seeing ⁓ you know, on the front lines of that now with with all the agents out there who probably are well, I I've got some thoughts on that. So yeah. speaker-0: We've got loads of data to share with us. ⁓ is it gonna say ⁓ a a packed episode? ⁓ I mean, when it comes to things like AI, like you say, things are moving so quickly at the moment. You know, you can do things from you know, things like Claude co work, dispatch, ⁓ Chat GPT is just updated now as well. They've got Chat GPT work, which obviously they've cottoned onto this is what Claude are doing. Yeah, the AI race is Is going so fast and new information is is being inputted all the time. There was the whole scandal around ⁓ Fable. ⁓ the US government ⁓ stopped cla so if you're listening to this and going, who the hell, what on earth is Fable? Fable is Claude's kind of ⁓ it was codename Mythos, but it was ⁓ Fable is kind of the latest iteration of Claude. So you have like ChatGPT, you've got version three, three point five, et cetera, et cetera. Fable is version five of Claude and it's the most powerful version ⁓ available. And the US government basically stepped in and said it was too powerful and it would potentially cause issues from a cybersecurity point of view. So ⁓ yeah, lot lots to unpack. But before we dive into any of that, we have our weekly tradition. How's your week been? Now, seeing it's just you and I, Giles, I'm gonna go over to you first. How has your week been? Good sir. speaker-1: It's been great. It's been good. It's been hard, but it's been good. And I in fact I had a a really a great webinar yesterday ⁓ with with some some very people at the top of their game. And ⁓ it was it was actually co on coincidentally on how property search is changing. So I've actually come here armed with a few scrabbled up pieces of paper. with some fan fantastically interesting stats that I think estate agents gonna find interesting. ⁓ and I think the other thing that we spoke about on this call was that that really intersects with what you've just said about how much tech there is out there. I I think you know, if I wind back five years, pre kind of AI popularity and we we we were working with the sort of fundamentals of AI back in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. ⁓ When it wasn't cool and it wasn't everywhere. Actually it was a bit of a silly word, actually. If you use the word AI, people would look at you go, Do you mean machine learning? And you're like, Yes, I guess so. ⁓ and and and you know, it it because at that point AI hadn't ever really taken off. I mean, you know, they had visions of AI back in the forties and fifties. ⁓ and they were trying to make it happen since then. So even in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, you know, if you use the word AI, they're like, I'm sure you mean machine intelligence or machine learning because there is no actual artificial intelligence yet and and now look at it, it's everywhere and it's happening quite quickly. But when I went back five years ago, or or even four years ago, five years ago, when we when we launched our first ever product called HomeSearch Pro, ⁓ I remember thinking to myself, God, estate agents have got so many software things they have to log into every day. And that must be exhausting, right? Constantly like, ⁓ log in for this and login for that and log in for this and login for that. ⁓ actually I've ⁓ that's an interesting one. My my girlfriend is incredibly s organized and structured, right? Like in the old days, I'd just leave my toothbrush and my toothpaste by my sink and funnily enough, I'd put it down at night and ⁓ guess where it would be in the morning, right? Yeah. But but she's she loves the every place looking wonderful and beautiful. And actually I really appreciate that about her. But she does like to put things away, which means that all day I'm speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah. speaker-1: I'm sort of moving to the next zone to think, now where would the toothpaste be? Yeah. And I have to open a cupboard and then take out the toothpaste and then I find my toothbrushes there and it's very sweet. And she does it automatically and you know, she she's incredible, makes the bed like it's a hotel, and she put resets everything. And then we come back to the night. It's literally like we've had a turn down service in an amazing hotel. So I think it is a wonderful it's wonderful living with her. She's intelligent, fun, and and an incredible woman. So I'm not in any way complaining, just in case she listens to this. speaker-0: Yeah, I could say she behind you. speaker-1: Well, maybe emotionally, but yes. ⁓ she is ⁓ yeah a a very wonderful supportive woman. But the point is that every morning I have to like walk into the bathroom, it's all immaculate and I'm like, right, where is this? Okay, it's back. So I open the cupboard, get the toothpaste, toothbrush out and like brush my teeth, but they're done. Then I have to find the next item, which is probably put neatly away in some box somewhere else. The point is I was thinking to myself, that must be what it's like to be an estate agent because you've You you're like, right, I've got to store these contacts in my CRM, right? Okay, I'm open my CRM. Right, I've got to now prospect this thing, right, open another thing, where's the login? Sort that out. Now I've got to create a report for this, right, do another log into this sort of software. And it's constantly opening the next box to do the next task. And that must be so exhausting. So this is what I thought back five years ago. Now what I'm seeing is that agents are getting pitched left, right, and center by everybody. telling them about their latest new AI that's gonna revolutionize their business. And you know, I can see there's an increasing amount of fatigue there as well. ⁓ and I think that you've made a really good point there. Fable, this new clawed Fable model, Fable five. And actually Mythos is slightly further ahead than Fable. They both use the same architecture, as you said. Yeah, but Mythos is like the the guy sort of speaker-0: Architecture kind of thing. speaker-1: Yeah, it's the angry serial killer version of it and it it can do some really crazy things. Now if any of you have used Clawed Fable Five, dare you even put it on high mode or max mode. The output of it it's it's genuinely it's bewildering as a human being because it no longer makes those mistakes. You know, I'm sure you've all used AI at some point and you've probably told it to do something and it and it it it comes up with the answer and you're like Okay, no, that's not what I meant. I still get that sometimes, but speaker-0: You know, when you're totally wrong. When it's like ChatGPT is your surgeon and it's like he's like, ⁓ you've just you just ⁓ you just removed my liver and it's like ⁓ good catch and you're right to push back on that and it's like that that is like totally we've all been there, right? Yeah. speaker-1: O one one of the one of the things I have to tell my AIs not to do is put in these ⁓ dramatic contrarian statements. ⁓ and and I didn't even know it was a dramatic contrarian statement until I told him, Can you please stop saying it's not that it's this, it's they drive me nuts. And I and then I said, Look, can you please stop saying this? It said, Can you be clear about what you mean? I'm like, Yeah, every time you say speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. speaker-1: It's not that it's that, it's this. And it says, ⁓ you mean dramatic contrarian statements? Okay, I won't do those anymore. Yeah. ⁓ which is so funny. ⁓ so right, we've we've gone off track already. The point I was making is that these services now are getting so good that it truly does just take a relatively tech savvy person. I mean, and I'm talking about like a nineteen year old that's you know, in between school and uni. ⁓ with his ⁓ you know six year old MacBook or whatever it might be. He can just sit in his bedroom and go, I wanna make a business selling this to them. It will do this, this and that. Can you please make me a site that will allow ⁓ voice AI to do this and that? And it will do it in an hour. And then it'll say, Okay, well I'm gonna need to charge for this. So yep, don't worry, I've plugged in Stripe and I've connected it all. You'll no longer you'll be able to take credit card payments. Great, I need to host it somewhere. Okay. I've hosted it somewhere, you're literally ready to go. Do you want me to write you a go to market strategy? Do you want me to produce all the marketing? In fact I can just start smashing it out on LinkedIn already. Yeah. And and that nineteen year old at at sort of minute sixty eight has just, you know, spent say two years building a business. speaker-0: And that that's vive coding for you, right? So for anyone listening to this, like it's you've got diff different ⁓ platforms like so just you know, while we're talking about Claude, ⁓ one of the things that I have absolutely been blown away by, 'cause I mean, a lot of people have used Chat GPT image generation, a lot of people have used nano banana, but Claude design used correctly is just incredible. speaker-1: Online. Online. speaker-0: It's it's completely transformed. I mean, we so I've vibe coded a couple of different bits and pieces that I've got, which I'll maybe talk about in another episode because I'm conscious of time. ⁓ but I'm currently in the midst of setting up automations in my business with when it comes to design. You know, we've got things like brand guidelines that we paid a lot of money for. We, you know, we we worked as a really good designer for a lot of stuff. ⁓ but what that's enabled us to do because we've invested that money in the framework, is that using Claude design, we're now able to put out v very, very high quality pieces of marketing ⁓ via Claude ⁓ now. And some of the things it's producing for us at the moment, I mean, it it's just things that we've paid a designer to work three months on, it's produced in a day. and it does burn through tokens. You know, I I'll full disclosure, you know, if you've got a twenty pound a month plan You're gonna burn through tokens in about an hour. If that yeah speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, if you're using claw design, yeah, you're right. Yeah. speaker-0: ⁓ it w the the thing is with design, again, this isn't ⁓ a clawed design podcast, but ⁓ what you have to remember ⁓ and realize it again. I'm one of the things that we're actually talking about at the complete agent at the moment is me putting together ⁓ a short sort of AI presentation and a course, a small course for our members. ⁓ but just just on this when you're using clawed design, it's very important that you You have to get your prompting right in the beginning and you have to do all of your detail before you start going into it. Because what happens is is that every time you make an iteration, it starts from the beginning and that's what burns through all of your tokens. So you you know, something that you could planned correctly, ⁓ y you can probably do in, you know, maybe one or two turns. But if you don't and you're iteratively prompting like you would in something like Lovable, for example, which is another vibe coding platform. ⁓ can end up costing you like well, I mean you you said if you saw the guy from the financial institution that built a ⁓ a game and he burned through a million quids worth of tokens in the in in the business. It's very easily done. Very, very easily done. speaker-1: Yeah, I I think it is getting better at that because I think that, you know, they they're always thinking about their customer and when the customer gets an unexpected bill, they don't want that's not good PR in any way. And ⁓ there was a a guy in Korea who ⁓ left his his Fable Five ⁓ running in the background and then got an unexpected bill for sixteen million dollars. which is yeah, but they they they they let they let him off that parking ticket. ⁓ anyway, but the thing is I think just speaker-0: How do you want ⁓ speaker-1: Just to bring it back down to sort of ⁓ you know, ⁓ semi normal ground. I think it's if you've gone from the twenty quid subscription to the hundred and fifty quid subscription, I mean I've built multiple sites, presentations, RAM documents, marketing docs, ⁓ pictures presentations, kind of thinking docs, and I'm still only a third or a half way through it. And so maybe that's the difference between having a relatively straightforward approach to the prompting. Yes. ⁓ but I think let's you know, some of the some of the bits that came out of this this ⁓ podcast yesterday, ⁓ or the or the webinar was we've got to find ways to help agents find practical ways that they can navigate this mad minefield or maze of AI at the moment because I know what it's like and ⁓ you know, I'm I'm a I'm a bit of a tech nerd like you and and I can't help it. I was programming when I was like nine years old. ⁓ and and and that was a long time ago, right? It's like nearly forty years ago. Yeah, no, I yeah, yeah. Maybe metabolically speaking, twenty years ago, but but but according to my passport, I'm forty seven, which is insane. ⁓ anyway, I I I I do get that there are people out there that are like, look, I hear this AI stuff is cool, I I hear it's it's making a a big difference for my competitors, and that's an additionally terrifying concept. speaker-0: Maybe ⁓ speaker-1: How can I, as an estate agent, like use this stuff? Like, for God's sake, someone tell me. And I think that you know, we we need I I if w you know, I I'm I I think if we can find a way to help agents navigate this to minefield. I think, you know, for for you and I, JK, who are, you know, technologically kind of fluent, you know, it would be good if we can try and find summarized ways to help agents use this technology better. And yeah, I'm not pushing my own agenda here, by the way. So I I would I what I think we should could talk about quickly is just some things that we don't even sell. You know, I I've got no vested interest in this except for making sure that agents aren't so bombarded with bad stuff ⁓ and also have an idea of what they should be using. I think the first things first is be careful. ⁓ be careful. Don't just think the first person who comes up with something i is is gonna be good because there are some important warnings we have to give people, right? ⁓ you spoke about the idea of having a 20 quid Claude or 20 quid ⁓ ChatGPT subscription. Like that's a good first start. But I think what I would highly recommend not doing is using the free versions. If you use the free versions of of ChatGPT Clawed and stuff like that, you've got a lot less control over what happens with your information, your ideas, your data and stuff like that. And so I'd just say please, although it's easy, just Take get your card out and pay the 20 quid. Because at least at that point, you can get into the settings. And by the way, you're not completely safe at that point. What you need to then do is go into the settings and and make sure you find the sometimes hidden button that says, do not share my data for training the model. Because what happens is if you leave that button unchecked, then everything you're writing and sending in there. will effectively be you know fair game for those huge AI companies to ingest. And believe me, you could talk to it forever telling your most intimate secrets and everything and they could ingest that data in a nanosecond. I mean literally a nanosecond. And ⁓ you know they they actually the some of these big, you know, AI servers can probably ⁓ shift the entire world's written internet from one server to another server in probably a few minutes, I'm guessing. Mm-hmm. Just think about that for a second. It's crazy. So so so when it can that's the you know all the written words on the internet. You know, it it the amount of information they can move a t from here to there to anywhere, it you know, even they probably become a little complacent with, ⁓ yeah, it's just all of our users' data. Just stick it over there. ⁓ and so I think just make sure you push that button. to to you know ⁓ say don't use my data and don't use my my history to to retrain the models. I think that'd be first step. Yeah. ⁓ but again, when I think about helping agents because of how easy it is for anybody with no experience and no maybe industry experience or knowledge to to s spin something up in their bedroom and then flog it as actually an extremely polished piece of work. Like the website will look incredible. The ⁓ the pitch will look incredible. You you may even find that the the numbers look compelling, but in reality it's all been generated by AI. And and that the the the person who's actually controlling where your information's moving and what happens next and maybe even the future billing cycles, right? So a lot of people are making the mistake of spinning this up in their bedroom using these incredible tools, selling them as services speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: at a price. And then the models change and the model prices go up because, you know, electricity is more expensive and you know that it's using too much water and all this stuff. ⁓ and then all of a sudden they don't realise it, but the cost to provide you with that service has gone up by eighty percent. They're not going to sit there and say, ⁓ don't worry, it's fine, I'll cover the rest. They're going to have to come back to you and you after you've embedded it in your whole agency, they're going to have to say, ⁓ I'm so sorry. I actually totally misjudged how much it's going to cost to run this. And Either I have to kick you out or I need to double or triple your prices. That's what's happening in some places. So I think, you know, just be mindful of of who you're working with when when you get a maybe too good to be true pitch. I think that's probably a good bit of advice for every business at the moment because I'm hearing other entrepreneurs and CEOs hearing this in other industries as well. So speaker-0: What do you think, ⁓ in terms of ⁓ 'cause it's there's always this kind of dystopian thing that's put out there with AI. ⁓ do you think AI is gonna swallow up jobs? speaker-1: That's a really difficult one to answer. I have got lots of thoughts about this. I which jobs I think is the first question I'd ask. ⁓ because I think it's gonna create new jobs in each speaker-0: Do you also think though that the governments will will step in at some point and they'll put actual ⁓ laws on what can be replaced by AI or how many people can be replaced replaced by AI? Because, you know, ultimately, you know, you we c we we'd we both know AI well enough, right? That we could sit here and go, you know, AI in when AGI I mean AGI is probably here, we just don't know about it yet, but you know, when AGI is i is is here in the mainstream quote unquote. You know, it it could replace a hell of a lot of jobs, ⁓ menial jobs, you know, and it's the biggest obstacle AI has to for replacing a lot of jobs is is hardware because the software ⁓ capabilities are gonna be there. It's just the hardware to be able to, you know, the physical, like for example, to put it into context, you know, set the the self checkouts of the world. You know, that that's in ⁓ you know AI can't build a house at the moment. It can tell you how to build a house and it can tell you how many bricks you're gonna need, but AI physically can't go over to the house and go, you know, and start putting bricks up. Well it well, it can because there are machines in China, but there it's it's an untested and unknown quantity at the moment where, you know, Dave the builder, who's got a gang of seven bricklayers, isn't gonna go, All right, lads, I've just bought this thing from China. It's gonna work. And then see his business go up and smoke because it's not tested. You know, so speaker-1: That is probably gonna happen. That is gonna happen. I mean actually they made a i ⁓ a a company yesterday, ironically, ⁓ raised ⁓ fifteen million seed investment to build ⁓ robotic bricklayers. That's a strange coincidence. That was yesterday I don't know if that's why you're saying that. No no. speaker-0: I didn't see it, no, it just it just came into my mind. speaker-1: Look, I think ten years before we are today, AI companies were starting to witness the emergence of this technology in in in the labs. And sorry earlier than that, but ⁓ when they when Google, I think, created the Transformer architecture, which is the T in GPT. ⁓ when they did that, they started seeing it. Now, unfortunately ⁓ but we did of course didn't see it 'til twenty twenty two, twenty three, right, when GPT brought out their first ⁓ basic model and and ⁓ in those days it was very unreliable and very slow. ⁓ and but look how quickly it moved. Okay. So if we think about if you use GPT two point five or three back in twenty two, twenty-three, you'll remember asking it a question and sitting with bated breath, like someone's told me this is gonna do something cool. What's it gonna do? And just say thinking, thinking. And then it would start typing the words. I think you are asking me. Do you remember those days? And then a few months later you y and it's I think you're asking me if it's a you're like, wow, that's speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. The pages. speaker-1: And now of course, now look what we get just a few years later. Now, so if ten years ago they were working on that technology I have to tell you that for the last five people like NVIDIA have who are the leading hardware provider of AI, have been working on robotics and ⁓ like ⁓ the sort of intelligence that AI needs to understand the world for five years. And so I think that China are now saying they think there could be a billion robots by twenty forty. I think that's the number. I I'm pretty sure it's not. I think you know but Look at what Tesla is doing, look at other companies, they're building robots like mad. So I think that it is going to change. I think we're going way off piste here. And I know we don't have that long. And I think, you know, but it is a really fascinating again, this is another one of those discussions that we can have to talk for everything. But I think that to answer your real question, is it gonna cause jobs? I think look, like right now, going back to my point about bringing it making it as practical as possible for agents, I would say you know, they asked yesterday what do we think the, you know, if you could only say one thing. to agents of what would help them right now in this kind of AI madness, you know, cloud of just everything. ⁓ I just said, look, don't don't change everything all at once. Just have a little quiet moment with yourself. If you're a you know a manager or a director or an owner of the business and and ask yourself, where are we causing friction for our customers? And, you know, what can we do to make that easier? And I mean, for instance, if if you've got an answer phone on your phone, And and 'cause we all work, don't we? Like agents I've always wondered this. We all work nine to five or eight till six or sometimes four till ten, the the long edge of that. and and so our customers work the same hours. So it's I know and if you're really busy, sometimes you can't get round to calling the agent until you finish work, by which time the agents finish work. Yeah. If they call you and they just get a ringing phone, worst case, or semi worst case, an aunt's phone, but they may not necessarily leave a message and get a call back. That's a lot of friction. And that means they're going to call another agent who's going to have another service and then they'll you'll lose out to them. Because they may be looking for a valuation on their own home. And that could be a misinstruction. So I think if you've got a situation like that, please, please put in a smart answering service. Like now voice AI is so good now. I mean when I call up to book a restaurant or something, some you know, going somewhere and I call a restaurant and it rings and it rings and it rings. I'm like, okay, screw it. I can't risk getting there with an important client or, you know, ⁓ a wonderful girlfriend to find that we don't have a table because it's full and we have to then hustle and bustle outside trying to find another place. So I'm like, I've got to find somewhere I can guarantee myself the s a seat. And so I then call the next place and it says, Hi, I'm you know, whatever, ⁓ Bella, the you know, the AI voice thing for the you know, wherever. what are you looking for? Book a table. Okay, you want to book a table? Cool. What time? Today. Okay, great. I'm booking that for whatever, nineteenth of May. ⁓ actually it's sixteenth of July today. Time. Yeah, do you w do you want any ⁓ any specifyth yes. ⁓ it's for an important client, idea qu and a not not too noisy a seat at a quiet table. And it's like great, okay, I'm gonna book you a quiet table tonight at eight o'clock ⁓ and like, wow, that was so smooth. And it sends me immediately a a a note. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I think if if agents can start figuring out where they're going to get good tech from that, and you know, in many cases, by the way, your CRM might well provide you those services. I wouldn't go off and try and go shopping in the market. Find out what your CRM are offering you. I think that's a good start. And if they're not fine, if they don't, if your CRM doesn't currently have like a really deeply integrated voice AI, then just find one that will easily integrate with your CRM. Because if you can capture that business out of hours. Great. Like that's really cool. I think the next step from that would be maybe getting ⁓ an AI-powered WhatsApp as well, because you know, reduce that friction, meet your customers where they are, and they are on WhatsApp. And so ⁓ you know, that's that I think is a really powerful way of doing it. If you've ever interacted on WhatsApp with a a a really clever AI, it's so cool. So yeah, ⁓ I I'd start with those points. If if if you know, if you and I talked about kind of transformer technology and robots eating all the humans ⁓ for the next ten minutes. If if there's just one bit of kind of sensible advice, it's that. ⁓ I think the safety advice would be please don't just jump at the first thing. And if it's too too good to be true or too cheap to be true, ⁓ just ask why. You know, okay, it's free now, but what will it be later? And and you know, ⁓ just just I think I I I know everyone knows this stuff, but sometimes you can get quite blinded by it all and AI drunk as well as a phrase I keep hearing, AI drunk, where you you just think, ⁓ yeah, that looks good. ⁓ and then look at have another look later and you realise that was rubbish. ⁓ sorry Jay. speaker-0: So let's go down let's go down the ⁓ the home search rabbit hole for a second. ⁓ appreciate obviously time and and pe I think people have got a little bit out ⁓ quite a lot out of this already anyway, in terms of what's what. I feel like we could probably do a three hour special one on but ⁓ you know, so in terms of where you're at and where things are going and how you see the future of property search, for example. I know we've we kinda we talked about that on a previous episode. speaker-1: Yeah, we could, yeah. speaker-0: ⁓ and what what Halo is doing, how Halo works, and also where things are moving in the future. So obviously we last talked ⁓ six months ago, ⁓ around that sort of time. Well and we were talking about it it well exact and that and that is gonna be my next question. So from where we were then and we were talking about, you know, and and just give to give people to I wanna give you the maximum sort of time to go through everything possible. speaker-1: It's changed. speaker-0: But just to kind of give a sort of succinct version of where we were last time on on Halo, ⁓ for people listening, Halo enriches the listings ⁓ that you have online already and allows them to be found on platforms like Chat GPT, Gemini, where you know, pi people's search behaviors are changing. You know, what once you used to go to Google for ⁓ it is now being ⁓ is now happening on ⁓ on various AI. So, you know, someone would go into Google and say, ⁓ house is in Canterbury. ⁓ and, you know, Google would then provide, you know, listing results. So for example, you right move may come up at the top and say, you know, house price or house prices in Canterbury or house listings in Canterbury. ⁓ but, you know, even again, I don't want to go too deep down this other rabbit hole, but Google is is is now changing the way Google works and that Google's first Port of call is is Gemini, which is their own AI. ⁓ so search results immediately are being served to you via AI ⁓ via Google as well. And so I think they've recognised that you know search behaviours are changing. So ⁓ that's really okay, really in a nutshell for people. So for example, your listings go online on your website. ⁓ Halo ⁓ can either get them directly from your CRM or can get them from your website. Is that correct? speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, it can. speaker-0: Enriches the listings. and basic basically what it does, if you imagine it's kind of it's not a translator, but it but what I mean is it it you know you it picks up the data, for example, from a website and what it then does is it tells AIs how to find that data. And basically it's kind of like if you know if you're familiar with SEO, it's kind of enriching listings. for AI is the kind of that almost I'm probably doing it a disservice calling it SEO but I'm just trying to really compartment contextualize it for people listening that aren't technical. ⁓ that this is what it is and it's helping people find your listings in a way that ⁓ you know the the new era is you know going on right move yes people go on right move but also equally people don't just go to right move people go to Google people go are going to speaker-1: Like this. speaker-0: You know, when we spoke six months ago, the American stat, which again I'm sure you've got updated stats now, we we we're talking about before. The stat in America was, you know, with with Zillow and obviously Zillow ⁓ pivoted, but I think a third of searches six months ago were starting on an an on AI. ⁓ now I'm guessing that's massively changed. Let let me hand hand the mic over to you, Giles, and you you can fill us in on where we're at with generative search and and what that all looks like. speaker-1: Thank you. I think look, we launched Halo, which is is is a cool name but it it means something. It's the home search AI listing optimizer. ⁓ and the reason we launched Halo was because firstly, we realised that AI is an incredible, powerful sort of service that consumers are going to use ⁓ increasingly. ⁓ but we recognize there is a structural problem for those AIs to find real time data. So real time live listings. Okay. So ⁓ and we can cover that in a bit more in a minute. But I think for for I read a really elegant statement that sort of sums up the difference. And it said, for twenty-five years, humans have been learning how to search on the internet. You know, scrolling through Google's links, scrolling through portal listings, scrolling through, you know, I do my filter, I do my keyword search, and then I have a huge amount of information and I've learned over the last twenty five years, how do I filter this information down to what I'm really looking for? And the the next part of that elegant statement said AI is the first technology that is learning how consumers think. And I I think the point is it's not just quick to search for stuff. It's because it's actually not. It's it's it's actually its goal is to try and help it because it thinks a bit like a human, right? It's it's built on the same ⁓ neural networks that our brains work on. ⁓ and ⁓ just on carbon. instead of silic ⁓ in non silicone instead of carbon intelligence. But I think that the key point is that those AIs are very, very, very smart about what they've already learnt. So the way way way A AIs are built is you they get trained on all the information they can and all of the intelligence they can and then they they pack it up into what sort of model and then they release it. And we were just now talking about how Claude has released their new model called Fable. Right. So that's the latest model came out. couple of weeks ago here, ⁓ well a couple of months ago, but technically in the UK it was released last week, or a few weeks ago. And ⁓ ChatGPT brought out five point six, which I think came out last Thursday. Yeah. And ⁓ the point is that those models were finished. They finished training, they finished learning from information two, three months ago. I think they've got what's called a knowledge cutoff. So just imagine you're training a little robot and you're gonna send him off. And you've got to teach him as much stuff as you can, because once you put him on the boat to send him to the island, he will no longer be able to learn more information, but he'll be able to answer any question about anything he's been trained on. And just imagine that little robot makes it to the island. And if ever someone asks him who is the Prime Minister, and they'll say, Right, well, when I was when I left, it was this person. But if you want me to find out now, I'm gonna have to call home. And then they call home and it's called a search, right? But that calling home is expensive for AIs. So They're very good at what they've learned, but they have to then do a basic web search to then figure out new stuff. Which means that if you say I'm looking for a specific home, they then actually have to go and do a classical web search. Yeah. But for those AIs, there's not like a human that can just look at a load of stuff. Actually we do, we look at a load of stuff and it gets exhausting, doesn't it? It's exactly the same process because we're it we get exhausted looking at three hundred listings because we're trying to figure out which one's got the big garden or which one's close to this. Which one can I do up? Which one's a good deal? Which one am I not gonna lose money on? Which one is in the catchment area? And it's exhausting for our brains to figure this out. It's exactly the same for an AI. It goes off and it it has to understand every word it reads. Now, it can't do that across reading all of the estate agents' websites because it's just too much information, believe it or not. Like they're all in different formats, they all use animations, which is very hard for AI to get its head round. And it's just not possible for it to in real time see all the agents' listings. It then tries to go to the portals, but as we can understand, there's a bit of a conflict of interest there because the economics of that it doesn't work. The portals really want to keep the traffic on their website. They want you to look at 300 listings so they can filter it down to the 30. But the AI can do that for you. And so there's a bit of a economical kind of mis ⁓ alignment. So the AIs then get blocked from doing that. in its entirety. So they'll see a bit, but then y they'll say, look, I can see some and some bit might be out of date. You're going to need to go to the portal to see the rest. Right? But there is an option where those AIs can l can read real-time listing data straight from agents. And that's what we've done. So you just imagine you've got the impossible challenge of the AIs looking at hundreds of websites, thousands of pages, millions of words, and the challenge of trying to get that data from ⁓ you know a license source like a portal put part those a away from each other and then there's a thing right in the middle and it's a real-time AI optimized database of the estate agent's listings directly. And it's it's not private data, it's all the data you've already put on the internet. But instead of trying to block the eyes from looking at it, we're actually actively saying, look, I want to get these listings from JK's agency in your face AI. And make it as easy as possible for you. Look, he's got this many listings in this area, they're all this price, they've got these things, these are the gardens, these are the locations, this is what here are the pictures, here are the descriptions. Feel free to search it and and present these to your users. And if the user wants more information, send them straight to JK's website. Right? Our goal is to be this transparent layer that allows those people searching on AI. To come straight to this state agent. And I think that's probably something that's kind of misunderstood. People hear the word op listing optimizer and they're like, are you going to change my listings? Are you going to change the words in our description? That's scary. What if you're going to get it wrong? AI gets things wrong. I know they get things wrong. We're not changing anything. We are just structuring your listings so that AIs can find them in real time. So it's like, I could look on portals, I'm going to get blocked, and I'm only going to see some old stuff and I'm going to have to then send the user away. to then get caught in a kind of maze of ⁓ you know classical aggregator maze. Or I can try and look at a couple of agents, but I know I'm not giving them the full picture. Or I can look at this one source that will have all agents listings. Our goal is to have every single agent's listing on there, all in one place, so that if anyone does any search on AI, they'll immediately get themselves to the correct estate agent. That's our goal. So Should we talk about how many people are doing it? Yeah, let's talk about stats. Here's a really crazy one to start with. Last week a company called Cloudflare, which is you probably have seen, you go on a website sometimes and it says Cloudflare is checking your connection because it thinks you're ⁓ not a real human. ⁓ Cloudflare is one of the coolest companies that nobody knows about because what it does is it protects the internet and it keeps websites safe. It stops people from attacking your site and things like that. And speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: They came out with a stat last week. So they basically see what's happening. They see all the traffic that happens on the internet. They came out with a stat last week that has said, for the first time in history, non human traffic is greater than human traffic on the internet. Let's just break that down for a second. Human traffic is now forty seven percent of the traffic that moves across the internet. Fifty three percent of the traffic now speaker-0: ⁓ wow. speaker-1: is automated traffic from bots, from training bots, from search engines, from AI searches. That means that is such an o like if if if anyone's missing the point there, it the the world is moving to automation, the the internet is moving to robots searching it. And if you're not getting your listing seen in a way those robots want to eat it, then you're not gonna they'll just go to another website that is. And I think that's that's the important key there. ⁓ but but let's talk about adoption in the UK of of AI. When when we launched Halo in August last year, the stat we were giving was I think it was thirty nine percent in America, thirty nine percent of people started their search for a property on AI. Thirty nine percent. This is a year ago nearly. Yeah. And in the UK it was three percent, I think. And a year before that, by the way, it was zero point zero six or something very small. So it went from almost nothing to three percent. Yeah. What is it now? And I think that's the interesting question. I I I'm pretty sure I've got the exact numbers here, so let me just pull them up. Or I can actually I'm I can get them from memory anyway. So it's according to Ofcom, I think, it said something like either nearly fifty or just over fifty. So let's just say half of adults are now regularly using AI on a weekly basis. Right? That's a big number. But the eighteen to twenty four year olds, that number shoots up to around seventy five percent. So this kind of incoming generation, they are AI first, basically, in their way they're doing things. And if agents want to start preparing for those guys and those guys are also influencing other people in their family as well, ⁓ no, don't do it that way, do it this way. So yeah. So AI's gone ⁓ Ofcom I think said that there are one point eight billion searches done using AI at the first half of twenty twenty five. I mean like can you imagine what the number is now? Chat GPT now has nine hundred million users. But let's let's bring it down to what about in the UK that is in the UK by the way, the fifty percent and the seventy five percent, according to Ofcom. speaker-0: Teach your mum and dad how to do it. speaker-1: Let's talk about what property search people are doing. ⁓ because a survey was done just very recently of 500 completions, and they asked them the question about it was entirely about AI. And it said, here's some of the stats. I read this the other day. ⁓ 26% believe AI will be more important than ⁓ I'm just gonna say portals ⁓ for finding homes. That was quite an interesting number. A further twenty two percent think that. AI will become equally important, which basically you you know, you add those up and it's effectively forty eight percent think it's either more important or equally important. Half of those five hundred completions that just happened said that that. ⁓ they they said ⁓ you know forty seven, forty eight percent, it was most useful for directing them to the relevant property listings. Thirty two percent of them used AI to narrow down to the area they were they they needed to live in. ⁓ and there were some other there were some other interesting stats as well. I've done quite well they were and annoyingly I've I've I've got so many notes here but I can't but those those those particular stats I think are telling the story now. But people are using it to figure out where to where to move. Then they're using ⁓ yeah, that was it. They were using it to compare listings. So they were basically saying, I've got this listing and I've got this listing, which one's gonna suit my needs better? ⁓ and so Effectively AI is doing that stats that information. If it doesn't have all the data, can you imagine they've compared one listing that's been fully optimised for AI, it knows it's got a garden, it knows it's good space, it knows it's in a conservation area, it knows it's this and that, and then they compare one that doesn't, the the person who's got the well optimized listing is probably gonna get the business or get the sale. So ⁓ I think that's worth saying. JK, I realise we have talked quite butts off. We have. speaker-0: We've we've ⁓ we've we've got to call it this one a day, but I ⁓ there's gotta be a part two. So maybe maybe in a week or so's time we can get this together and we we can cap this. Maybe we need an hour and a half special ⁓ to really go through it all and and and unpack all of it. But but I do feel like we've had we've shared a hell of a lot of value already. And if there is anyone that is interested in learning more about this, ⁓ I know we have listenership every week of about three hundred to four hundred agents and suppliers that listen to this podcast. ⁓ if anybody is interested in in learning more and you know would like a maybe AI specific podcast or workshop, like please do get in touch and let us know. ⁓ but either way, ⁓ we will be sorry, go on Charles. speaker-1: I've just realized that we didn't give you the update you were after. In in in under sixty seconds, would you believe this? We now are optimizing listings in eighty-nine percent of the postcode districts in the UK. We've now got over three hundred thousand listings a day from agents. A day. Like we are on on track for a meaningful percentage of the entire country's listings optimized for AI. We've gone from zero to fifteen percent of citations in all AIs. And we've actually displaced some of the really big ones. We've now jumped up ahead of all 100 of the top estate agents' own listing sites. So you think of the really huge agencies that have got like 10,000 listing stuff. We're of course way above that because there's 300,000. ⁓ we've also jumped ahead of every single non-portal AI listing sort of provider and another non-portal kind of listing site. And we are, and this is a wild stat. Is we think we are on track to have more listings than the biggest one we all know by the end of this year. Which at that point, where now I can say, Okay, in that one source I've got more listings than anywhere else on the internet. They're fully optimised for AI. They've been to provided by the estate agent, so I know they're credible, and I'm gonna be able to take the user straight to the estate agent's website. That creates a perfect storm of AI is coming to help estate agents sell more homes. So Yeah. Which we didn't we didn't talk about that, did we? Yeah. I can't drop my mic, it's attached to my shirt, but if I could, I would, man. speaker-0: That's a bit of a micro. Don't fall on the floor. Don't fall on the floor. Right, Giles, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming back and ⁓ talking tech and AI with me. I'm sure our listeners have got loads out of this. And we will definitely do well, this is this is kind of part two. We'll definitely book into part three and get that booked in. ⁓ yeah, pleasure. Thank you so much for your time, guys. Make sure you check out Halo Home Search. Giles, you can find Giles on LinkedIn. yeah, check out. ⁓ Halo for home search and I'm sure you'll be very impressed with what they've got to offer. ⁓ thanks everyone for listening. Giles, thank you again and we will see you next week. speaker-1: Thanks for listening everyone. Thank you. Have a good day.