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How to Build an AI-Ready Real Estate Listing · Elite Agent - The Edit

• 0:00
  58% of vendors say that marketing strategy played a role in deciding who they chose to sell their property.
• 0:07
  We were circling a newspaper 20 years ago and then wasting a Saturday, but now we're just looking online and still wasting a Saturday.
• 0:15
  holding information back is a thing of the past.
• 0:18
  Buyers expect the information and if anything, they're frustrated by the lack of it.
• 0:22
  But gone are the days of selecting bed, bath, car and a price guide.
• 0:25
  You're able to talk to AI and ask exactly what you're looking for.
• 0:30
  What's on the spec sheet for that home that AI needs to know?
• 0:45
  Welcome everyone to another episode of The Edit.
• 0:48
  I'm Samantha McLean.
• 0:49
  Today we're looking at what buyers and vendors actually expect from property marketing right now and why AI is changing the rules faster than many agents realize.
• 1:00
  My guest today is Alex Warren, Country Manager, Australia at Deercrit.com.
• 1:05
  Alex has spent many years championing immersive property marketing and Deacrit recently worked with Stone Real Estate to ask buyers and vendors what drives engagement, trust and agent choice.
• 1:18
  So we're going to unpack some of the myths, the research challenges, what listing completeness really means in an AI first search environment.
• 1:26
  and what agents can change right now.
• 1:28
  So, Alex, welcome to the show.
• 1:30
  Thanks for having me, Sam.
• 1:31
  Well, it's amazing to have you.
• 1:33
  And just quickly, for anyone who's been living under a rock for the last decade, tell us a little bit about Deacrit and your role there.
• 1:40
  I'm Country Manager at Deacrit.
• 1:43
  I oversee the operations of the business here in Australia,
• 1:46
  Decrypt didn't originate in Australia, it originated in the Nordics.
• 1:50
  We still have a significant market share in the Nordics, but we started as a 2D floor plan company in Scandinavia or Sweden specifically.
• 1:59
  And over the last 25 years, we've moved into different parts of the world and built a business far greater than floor plans.
• 2:06
  We believe in two things and everything we do centers around these two things.
• 2:11
  We believe that the
• 2:13
  path to purchase or selling real estate should be more informative and more engaging.
• 2:17
  And we want to help agents stand out in their marketplace.
• 2:20
  So pretty much everything we do is centered around those two things.
• 2:24
  Many Australian agents might not realize how large you are.
• 2:26
  Like I've actually visited the Deacrit office in Bangkok one day with Dick.
• 2:32
  There was just people doing all of these interesting things like everywhere.
• 2:36
  I mean, we had Swedish meatballs and all sorts of other
• 2:41
  It has gone particularly post-COVID.
• 2:43
  I mean, changing our business from producers sitting in an office, which is the office you've been in, to then being remote was such a game changer for us.
• 2:51
  It has actually, consequently, because of COVID, has allowed us to become bigger and scale even further, having people be able to work remotely.
• 3:00
  So from a production point of view.
• 3:01
  But yes, our office is a very impressive job.
• 3:03
  A lot of people in Australia actually do know you, like you're quite a well-known person within the real estate industry.
• 3:09
  How did you get to Deacrit and what is it that you love about that job?
• 3:14
  I have always worked in real estate as an industry and have built a great network of friends and colleagues and clients having worked in the industry for such a long time.
• 3:23
  I started at the ripe old age of 22 at News Corp, helping agents in print media and how best to brand and market themselves in print.
• 3:31
  And then News Corp bought Deacrit globally.
• 3:33
  And that's how I became part of the Deacrit family here in Australia.
• 3:36
  You've actually been championing what I'd call immersive property marketing for years.
• 3:42
  Why do you feel like now is the right time to survey buyers and vendors and, you know, and also in partnership with Stone Real Estate?
• 3:50
  One, we'd never done a research piece directly with buyers and vendors who had sold or bought in the last six months.
• 3:56
  We'd done small little research pieces, but not to that scale.
• 3:59
  And the reason back then when we first started talking about it was that we wanted to almost myth bust some of the myths that...
• 4:06
  we could see just don't go away in the industry.
• 4:09
  And I'm sure we'll touch on some of those in a minute.
• 4:11
  But now we've got this AI space, right?
• 4:14
  And everything about AI and what does being AI ready mean?
• 4:19
  And that's something that I'm super passionate about for the reason that everything that we do and have done for the last 10 years, which is content and immersive engaging content
• 4:28
  means more than it ever has done before so the report has actually probably gone to two two birds with one stone sort of thing um excuse the pun we have also worked with stone on this uh we've also worked with yeah good one
• 4:43
  We've also worked with Stone on this.
• 4:45
  Stone have been a partner of ours since we launched here in Australia.
• 4:49
  And for anyone that doesn't know, they have a centralised database.
• 4:52
  So it was easy to do and kindly they gave their database to us to survey.
• 4:57
  So it was a really nice collaboration with a partner that we've been very close to for a long time.
• 5:02
  Who did you survey and why did you choose that approach?
• 5:06
  So we surveyed buyers and sellers who had bought or sold in the last six months.
• 5:10
  And the reason why we surveyed those people were because it was fresh in their mind.
• 5:15
  It wasn't asking them to recall something that had happened 12 or 24 months ago.
• 5:20
  We really wanted to talk to those who had just come out of it.
• 5:24
  or who may not have actually yet bought but were still buyers on Stone's database.
• 5:28
  I'm sure many of them could be still looking for a home, sadly.
• 5:32
  So yes, just for accuracy and quality of data, Sam, really, was why we were focused on that.
• 5:38
  This report is sort of built around busting myths.
• 5:42
  What was the biggest myth in property marketing that you guys set out to challenge with this survey?
• 5:48
  There are a number of myths.
• 5:49
  The two biggest myths I would say were around price, that vendors aren't willing to pay for marketing.
• 5:56
  We're really fortunate here in Australia that we have VPA.
• 5:59
  When we look at how marketing has evolved in Australia, and I'll focus just on Australia, it actually hasn't.
• 6:06
  Since print and we've been more on portals or more on marketplaces, it hasn't really moved far from just photos and floor plans.
• 6:13
  And so in a lot of cases, which I'm really passionate about, there's not really much difference there, but they're not establishing a strong point of difference for themselves.
• 6:22
  And buyers are expecting more.
• 6:23
  I know you and I have had previous conversations where you get more content, more engaging content and more content when you go and buy a pair of shoes.
• 6:31
  We need to really start to evolve what we give buyers.
• 6:35
  So that's the first thing is that vendors are absolutely willing to pay more if they can see a direct correlation between a return on investment.
• 6:43
  And I don't think agents are grasping that, particularly if they're only using photos and floor plans.
• 6:48
  The second myth we wanted to bust was around virtual tours.
• 6:51
  you know, they are a thing of the past or they were only good in COVID.
• 6:55
  You know, I've had many conversations with people in my network in the portal space where they will say they see a huge difference by the result of a campaign where there's a virtual tour included.
• 7:05
  And we just don't have enough agencies using them to be able to
• 7:09
  you know, show that and prove that.
• 7:11
  So we've gone directly to buyers.
• 7:13
  And, you know, when we go through, if you download the research piece, you'll see how valuable virtual tours are in the path to a buyer making a decision to move forward in purchasing a property.
• 7:24
  You're right, it hasn't evolved much because we were thinking about moving just a couple of months ago.
• 7:31
  I mean, it never happened.
• 7:32
  But we were still wasting like half a Saturday or two-thirds of a Saturday with, I have to confess, sad dogs at home because we had tomming them.
• 7:45
  Yeah, but it's sort of, it's interesting that it makes you reflect that, you know, that we were circling a newspaper 20 years ago and then wasting a Saturday, but now we're just looking online and still wasting a Saturday.
• 7:57
  Absolutely.
• 7:58
  And sorry, that is another myth.
• 8:00
  Actually, there are a few myths in here.
• 8:02
  Holding information back was another, we constantly, you know, have to work with agents or help them understand that information,
• 8:10
  Holding information back is a thing of the past.
• 8:13
  Buyers expect the information and if anything, they're frustrated by the lack of it.
• 8:17
  You know, some of the questions in the survey were about what they found most challenging.
• 8:21
  And if agents just circled some of those things and remove those challenges, buyers are their pipeline at vendors.
• 8:28
  And there's so much passion.
• 8:29
  power and opportunity within this report, I think if I were an agent, I'd be like, what things can I actually change today?
• 8:35
  Because you will be an agent of the future.
• 8:37
  So making it easy and understanding which properties I want to actually go to and not walk in and walk back out again.
• 8:43
  I want to see qualified buyers.
• 8:45
  Yeah, yeah.
• 8:46
  And I think even in times like now where things are just a little bit slow out there, you want to appeal to as many buyers as you possibly can.
• 8:54
  And I don't know, I think it is a shift since COVID that we're not just marketing to a small space anymore.
• 9:01
  We're actually marketing to people that are out of area or out of suburb or first home buyers that might be can't afford that area, but want to have that area.
• 9:10
  Like, you know, like I think the picture is just overall bigger than it used to be.
• 9:14
  Absolutely.
• 9:15
  I encourage anyone when they download the report to look at it both from a vendor and a buyer perspective because, you know, agents often care a lot about the vendor.
• 9:24
  You know, how am I going to win the listing?
• 9:25
  I don't want to lose it if I'm too expensive.
• 9:27
  So, yes, the vendor side of it is very important, but definitely focusing on the buyer.
• 9:32
  I encourage people to look at that and read that to understand how do they stand out from the very beginning when someone's engaging with them at an open home.
• 9:41
  We'll put a QR code on the screen for people.
• 9:44
  to download the report if you happen to be watching this on YouTube.
• 9:47
  But we'll also leave a link in the show notes where you can download the report, which I have, by the way.
• 9:53
  I've read the report.
• 9:54
  And there were some interesting things, like one in four buyers named poor marketing as their biggest pain point.
• 10:03
  So what does poor marketing actually look and feel like to a buyer?
• 10:08
  you've been a buyer, Sam.
• 10:09
  What does it look like?
• 10:12
  It looks like a Wasted Saturday and Sad Dogs.
• 10:16
  But apart from that, look, having been a buyer myself, I think there's such a range and a gamut of what this could be like from no price guides.
• 10:24
  We understand that's a challenge.
• 10:25
  And if I touch on the AI side of things, what does it mean to be AI ready?
• 10:29
  It means to have a price guide, right?
• 10:31
  Like the non-human form of searching is an AI search.
• 10:35
  And
• 10:36
  it's so interesting seeing what things need to be an AI ready listing is what buyers have missed for such a long time.
• 10:44
  So price guides, number one, inaccurate details or not having enough details, copies of normally very over embellished.
• 10:51
  It doesn't have the detail that they want to know photos.
• 10:54
  You know, I know previous research I've seen in the market over the years is that, you know, one of the biggest challenges buyers have is misrepresentation in photography.
• 11:02
  So
• 11:03
  Selling bigger than the room is actually through photos, which we're very passionate about, not shooting with two wide-angle lens, but not having enough photos, not having enough content, not having enough tools for me to help me make an informed decision.
• 11:18
  And so when we look at AI, AI will interpret, read and recommend based on what it's got.
• 11:24
  That is a massive shift in and of itself, which we'll get into a second.
• 11:29
  In a second, sorry.
• 11:30
  Like, let's look at it from the vendor because, you know, you and I have had a natter about that one as well.
• 11:34
  And everyone, I think, knows my story.
• 11:36
  Here's three agents.
• 11:37
  Here's three marketing schedules.
• 11:39
  The only difference between the three of them was the number at the bottom and somebody included WeChat.
• 11:45
  And that was the difference.
• 11:47
  And I'm not, you know, sort of saying that WeChat's not a valid channel.
• 11:51
  It probably is when it comes to Chinese buyers and the Gold Coast.
• 11:55
  But if it is just photography floor plan and look, you know, like then it's the digital ads and then it's back page of the Gold Coast bulletin.
• 12:05
  And I can remember that for us, that was quite a big list.
• 12:10
  It was like 12 and a half grand worth of marketing or something like that.
• 12:14
  Gold Coast is one of those areas.
• 12:16
  But there was no real conversation around the process and how being in all these things was going to get us the maximum pool of buyers.
• 12:26
  So how does a strong agent, do you think,
• 12:29
  reframe that conversation?
• 12:30
  Yeah, that's a great question and one that we could sit talking about for hours.
• 12:35
  And if we go back to the reasons why we did the report, I failed to mention actually, like we want to help agents.
• 12:41
  Like we want to help agents to become the next generation of agent when
• 12:45
  So in the report, it shows that 58% of vendors say that marketing strategy played a role in deciding who they chose to sell their property.
• 12:55
  So that's huge.
• 12:55
  That's almost 60% of people think that marketing strategy plays a significant role in who they choose to list their property.
• 13:02
  And that marketing strategy isn't about how often they're picking up the phone to buyers or what databases they're using.
• 13:10
  Their marketing strategy is how am I going to have your property stand out against competing properties?
• 13:15
  And how do each part, I think about the funnel, what parts of my content that I'm using are actually triggering buyers to move through the funnel to the point that they're ready to purchase, you know, from the awareness to the consideration, et cetera, et cetera.
• 13:30
  And how we work with agents is actually explaining that, you know, photos start here.
• 13:35
  It is awareness.
• 13:36
  You need photos to create awareness for a listing.
• 13:38
  And then as you move through each of the tools, like virtual tours, help buyers make a decision to go to an open home.
• 13:45
  or they help buyers make a decision to put an offering because they've been able to walk through the home multiple times.
• 13:50
  So if you can explain that to a vendor and the other two agents that are following you, trust me, are not even talking about marketing, I know which agent I'd be seriously considering, particularly when 50% of vendors say that marketing strategy plays a role in helping them decide who to list their home with.
• 14:09
  One of my favourite questions, give us the actual words.
• 14:12
  Like what should an agent say to, you know, our favourite Mr. Mrs.
• 14:17
  Vendor in the lounge room?
• 14:18
  Mr. and Mrs.
• 14:19
  Vendor.
• 14:21
  Mr. and Mrs.
• 14:21
  Vendor at X Real Estate, when you list your home with us, the marketing strategy that I've presented and explained to you today means that we have five times more engagement on your listing and the more engagement and the interaction and the more,
• 14:38
  information we help your buyers have to make an informed decision, the better it is come auction day or the better it is come the time that buyers are putting offers in.
• 14:47
  We want to get qualified buyers as quickly as possible and we want to move them through that funnel.
• 14:53
  Competing agents who are only offering photos and floor plans today don't have a marketing strategy.
• 14:58
  They're just doing the basics or what we would call the fundamentals, the foundations.
• 15:03
  They start here but there's
• 15:06
  What happens when somebody says it's too expensive or the other agent's cheaper or, you know, let's just say I'm out in a different, I'm in a regional market?
• 15:19
  How would you handle that objection?
• 15:22
  And look, when I say this, I get the job of an agent is hard.
• 15:26
  I've worked with them for 22 years.
• 15:28
  I've loved working in the industry.
• 15:30
  I lean in with curiosity.
• 15:32
  I ask and I have asked, like talk me through what happened in the listing presentation and I'm like,
• 15:37
  I think when price comes into it from the number of conversations and questions I've asked is when they fail to explain the difference.
• 15:45
  They fail to explain the return.
• 15:48
  If a vendor was able to clearly see what a marketing strategy equaled, i.e.
• 15:53
  here's a listing that we did photos and floor plans on or we didn't do social on or we didn't do both portals or whatever it might be, part of the broader picture.
• 16:04
  And here's one we did.
• 16:05
  And this is what it equated to.
• 16:07
  How can you argue with that?
• 16:09
  You can't argue with it.
• 16:10
  So I think price comes into it and agents have to compete then on their commission and they're on VPA when it's, I call it the apples and apples conversation.
• 16:20
  You want to really establish an apples and oranges conversation.
• 16:24
  And this report for me cemented that there's so much opportunity there for that to happen.
• 16:30
  So you've also said that an agent's current listing is auditioning for their next appraisal.
• 16:35
  What does that look like in practice?
• 16:37
  Well, we know that people are looking for a real estate agent.
• 16:41
  They look, I think it's six months before they decide on who that is.
• 16:45
  In the report, we actually cover off
• 16:47
  what were the main things or the reasons why someone called an agent in to list their home.
• 16:52
  The stat I gave you before at 58% is why they chose the agent to list their home.
• 16:56
  We wanted to understand what got agents in the door to list their home.
• 17:00
  And one of the myths, another myth we wanted to bust was how many properties I'd sold, you know, and my years of experience.
• 17:06
  That actually ranked really low.
• 17:08
  Friends and family recommendations really high on the list, but also that how are they looking and very quickly determining the quality of the agent they're listing with.
• 17:18
  So, you know, friends and family might recommend number one or number two, and who's the third or who's number two and three and why are they number two and three and the digital footprint and how they market themselves.
• 17:29
  And the fact that your most recent listing is the quality of your next listing.
• 17:34
  You know, if you're bringing on a listing and doing six photos and a floor plan, how are you ever going to convince that next vendor that you should be doing X, Y, Z?
• 17:43
  It's really hard to do that.
• 17:44
  So shifting and how you market homes will naturally shift the expectation of the next 5, 10, 15 vendors you're sitting with.
• 17:54
  When times are a little bit tough, and we know that it's a really tough environment out there at the moment, you know, I've been through a few cycles now.
• 18:02
  I feel like I've got the war wounds to start showing for it as well.
• 18:06
  Likewise.
• 18:07
  You know, one of the first things people cut is marketing.
• 18:11
  And you can tell the people that actually double down on the marketing when times are tough because…
• 18:16
  They're the only people that you see.
• 18:18
  So true.
• 18:19
  It's so true.
• 18:20
  This is when downturns in markets, and likewise, I've had a few myself, just organically, the better agents lean in on doing better, you know, doing the things that help them stand out, help them get better buyer interaction.
• 18:37
  And we're here now, definitely, they should be thinking about these things because they play a big part in how they attract their next listings.
• 18:46
  You've said that the machine, like being the robot, being Google or whatever, may now be the first thing reading a listing rather than the buyer.
• 18:55
  So what does the AI see and what does it need to see?
• 19:00
  I do not profess to be an expert in this field.
• 19:02
  I think for anyone who's trying to understand it like we all are, it's about reading and educating yourself on what it looks like specifically for the industry that you work in.
• 19:13
  And for us, it's real estate.
• 19:14
  I think it's going to be very disruptive.
• 19:16
  And I think it's going to be disruptive in the way that people search for real estate.
• 19:20
  Where do they go to find their next home and how do they search?
• 19:24
  Be it on a portal, be it through a website.
• 19:26
  Their AI agent, be it Gemini, whatever your favorite one is, Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT, it is an amazing beast in that it will curate a list of properties for you right down to the specific needs that you have for a property or criteria for a property.
• 19:43
  So gone are the days of selecting bed, bath, car and a price guide.
• 19:46
  You know, you're able to talk quickly.
• 19:48
  very conversationally to AI and ask exactly what you're looking for.
• 19:53
  And it's amazing, like some of the search criteria that buyers have for property.
• 19:58
  So when you talk about an AI-ready listing, you have to make sure you've got the right content for AI.
• 20:04
  on any of those platforms we're talking about, large language models, to read, interpret, and deliver the property based on the search criteria.
• 20:12
  So when we talk about AI ready, some people might have heard it be referred to as listing completeness.
• 20:18
  That is the number of images need to be above a certain number.
• 20:22
  There has to obviously be a floor plan.
• 20:23
  I mean, I think you're definitely living under a rock if you don't have floor plans on your listings today.
• 20:29
  Fall plans, virtual tours, walkthroughs, very clear, organized structure to your copy.
• 20:36
  I've seen some amazing agencies start to really play around with this.
• 20:39
  Toop, one of our partners in South Australia, you know, really breaking them up into sections and touching on whether something's energy efficient or what the energy rating is.
• 20:48
  Like this is the sort of stuff that buyers want.
• 20:51
  I always refer to, if you've been fortunate to buy a brand new car, Sam, you know,
• 20:56
  When you get a spec manual or you've, you know, the beautiful brochure and it literally lists everything about the car, right?
• 21:02
  Some of it you think, why do I need to know that?
• 21:04
  But it lists everything about the car.
• 21:06
  That's really the way we need to think about a home when it comes to AI.
• 21:11
  Like what is it about that home?
• 21:13
  What's on the spec sheet for that home that AI needs to know?
• 21:17
  And for the agents that have been
• 21:19
  like we said, and trying to myth bust some of these beliefs, hold as much information back as you possibly can, that's got to be a thing of the past.
• 21:27
  When we talk about AI ready, for you, if you do think that you've got to switch the belief system there and start to think about what is it that this buyer should know about this home.
• 21:39
  Let's give everyone a bit of a checklist.
• 21:40
  So we want something actionable.
• 21:42
  So beyond just loading the photos and the floor plan, how are your sharpest agents or even, you know, some of the agents at Stone, how are they now using immersive content to nurture their databases and maybe even capture leads on the front end?
• 21:56
  Yeah, good question.
• 21:57
  So let's touch on what are the checkboxes for what's to include.
• 22:03
  Absolutely minimum number of photos.
• 22:05
  We would suggest more than 15 photos is AI ready, 15 to 16 photos.
• 22:11
  A 2D floor plan, a 3D floor plan is obviously very helpful to the human buyer, lesser to the AI buyer with the actual 2D floor plan, but for human buyer, absolutely.
• 22:22
  Virtual tours.
• 22:23
  Whether that is you're only showing part of the home or showing the full home, virtual tours, honestly, in my opinion, when you read the report, should be a standard on every listing.
• 22:34
  Video walkthroughs, like video is an amazing piece of content.
• 22:37
  And again, in the report, it ranked very highly as your piece of content that buyers actually still considered new and interesting.
• 22:45
  When we talk about video, I think it's only 10% of listings have video today.
• 22:49
  Why do you still think it's new and exciting and new and interesting?
• 22:53
  So if you're an agent and you're worried about the cost, try it.
• 22:58
  Put it into the recommendation.
• 23:01
  Video is great for you to build your own brand.
• 23:03
  Obviously, snackable.
• 23:04
  It's a word going around, snackable.
• 23:07
  bite-sized content, get creative because, you know, the social audience is definitely out there.
• 23:13
  I think that's where a lot of the emotional buyers are sitting today are on social.
• 23:17
  So your video, very important.
• 23:20
  And then obviously your copy, I think.
• 23:23
  Steer away from those very embellished copy.
• 23:26
  That's great for a vendor to feel like you're telling the story about their home, but AI doesn't care about the embellished stuff.
• 23:32
  It just wants facts and details.
• 23:34
  So
• 23:35
  That's the checkbox, the tick box of what should be included.
• 23:39
  And then in terms of how to capture leads, there's so many unique ways that we see some of our partners use the tools, right?
• 23:49
  There's one thing to put them up on REA or domain and sit them there, but there's another whole way of using them to help engage buyers from your database.
• 23:58
  I'll give an example.
• 23:59
  We have a client in Sydney who he uses the virtual tour platform.
• 24:04
  to send to his database of hot buyers or hot leads before the listing has actually gone live.
• 24:10
  So let's say listing goes live on a Thursday.
• 24:13
  He'll send a virtual tour out on a Tuesday to the database of buyers that are very nurtured and shares this to them and tells them that they'll be the first to go through it.
• 24:22
  It's not online.
• 24:23
  They're getting exclusive walkthrough of this property.
• 24:26
  Now he doesn't show the whole home.
• 24:28
  He only shows parts of the home through hotspots, which is our virtual tour.
• 24:32
  But that works so successfully for him.
• 24:34
  He will have people call and already ask when the open is.
• 24:37
  There's some really creative ways of how you use the content.
• 24:41
  And it may not be that it's always up on our domain.
• 24:44
  Like how you use that piece of content to move buyers through the pipeline is your MO, is your marketing strategy.
• 24:51
  It's no one else's.
• 24:52
  I think it's a really good way just to keep the database warm too, isn't it?
• 24:56
  Because if we've already sort of proved in Australia as a nation of property lovers and lurkers, even if we're not looking, we're looking.
• 25:06
  It's very true.
• 25:07
  It's very true.
• 25:08
  And back to what we were talking about before, Sam, when we spoke about buyers are your pipeline of vendors.
• 25:13
  This agent's buyers are already getting a real experience of what it's like.
• 25:18
  to work with an agent selling a home, right?
• 25:20
  If this is how this agent is helping me look for my next home, I'm getting a really good feeling about this agent.
• 25:25
  This could be an agent I actually reach out to when it comes time to selling my home.
• 25:29
  So that CX, that unique experience that this agent is establishing well before people become their vendor.
• 25:36
  We've all seen AI generated property content go too far.
• 25:40
  Where do you think the line is between presenting a property beautifully, like with virtual staging and things like that, and presenting it, you know, a little bit misleadingly?
• 25:49
  Yeah.
• 25:51
  If I can say, like, we are the globe's largest content provider in real estate, right, and we are looking at every part of our business as to how AI might affect it or how do we use it to help us.
• 26:06
  I would say if you are an owner or a manager or a leader within a real estate agency, I would be setting up some really strong guardrails or guidelines into how agents are using it to alter content.
• 26:19
  In Europe, they're well ahead of us in establishing laws and regulations around the use of AI already.
• 26:26
  I anticipate at some point it will happen here in Australia as well, but I would stay clear of it.
• 26:32
  as much as possible or you have some very good quality control to watch what's happening because ourselves have explored it and know that it's not there it hallucinates when it comes to visual content and you just have to be really careful with it if you've got great qc you've got someone looking at it awesome but if you don't and it's an agent putting something through gemini or google nano banana and flicking it up on the portal just be really careful really really careful
• 26:57
  So we've taken a lot of twists and turns and we'll put that QR code back up on the screen for everyone to download because I think it's some really valuable research.
• 27:06
  Like I do think on the whole that we need to listen to vendors and buyers directly, maybe more than...
• 27:15
  I think it's really easy for us in real estate to listen to each other all the time, but I think you've really got to listen to the customer.
• 27:21
  So I think that's where this research has been really valuable.
• 27:24
  And Alex, I want to thank you for coming along and sharing all of your knowledge with us today.
• 27:29
  Pleasure.
• 27:29
  Thanks for having me.
• 27:30
  If there was like one thing, if you were speaking to an agent watching this today, what's one thing that you would tell them to change this week and not like next year?
• 27:44
  One thing.
• 27:45
  One thing.
• 27:47
  We've already told like, well, we'll leave them a checklist.
• 27:50
  But, you know, like if there was one main thing, like, you know, if you don't remember anything else about this podcast, remember this.
• 27:57
  Change the narrative.
• 27:59
  from it being an expense to an investment.
• 28:02
  Do your pitch to ChatGPT, to Gemini, let it coach you and ask it, what flips it from expense to investment?
• 28:11
  What's my dialogue?
• 28:12
  What's my scripts that I'm using?
• 28:14
  And what tools do I have in my toolbox that help me shift that in my marketing or in my listing presentation?
• 28:22
  Because when you change that, the stress is
• 28:25
  or what Tom Pennells will call the commission breath of thinking you've already lost the listing before you actually have lost the listing.
• 28:31
  Be confident.
• 28:32
  And particularly, it will give you confidence when you read the report.
• 28:35
  There is an incredibly positive message here for agents.
• 28:38
  The vendors are simply looking, they're not looking for the cheapest campaign.
• 28:41
  They're looking for confidence.
• 28:43
  They're looking for trust.
• 28:44
  And marketing is an incredible part of that process.
• 28:48
  And if you fail to talk to it and talk about it, and it's just another line on the expense sheet,
• 28:55
  it will continue to be really tough, right?
• 28:57
  Changing it to an investment and what helps, what means the property will stand out or what will you give this vendor that another agency can't?
• 29:06
  Everyone can give photos and floor plans.
• 29:08
  Not everyone right now can give virtual tours.
• 29:11
  Try and think about that would be my lasting point or tip for agents out there.
• 29:16
  Yeah, that is great advice.
• 29:18
  Marketing as an investment, not a cost.
• 29:21
  Alex Warren, thank you so much.
• 29:23
  Thanks, Sam.
• 29:24
  Thanks for having me.