RE: Real Estate Podcast

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:24)
Good afternoon everybody. And welcome to another episode of the RE real estate podcast. My name is Ben Harang. I'm with my cohost, Clint Galliano. Good afternoon, Clint. How are you doing today?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:39)
I'm doing wonderful, man. How are you doing?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:41)
And I'm doing terrific today. Um, you know, the wonders of technology, we're sitting about 12 miles apart. Um, and other than the background, we could be doing it side by side or around the world. And it just, every time we do this and start talking before we start recording it, it, I'm amazed at the technology and how far it's come. Uh, I saw a video of Katrina Hurricane Katrina aftermath yesterday, 20th anniversary is coming up.

And the quality of the video and the fact that we had to go through three generations of different media to be able to use it 20 years later. I'm just glad we still have the video. So anyway, the wonders of technology never cease to amaze me. So what's on the agenda today, Clint?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:31)
So we're talking about some more recent technology, and that's AI and artificial intelligence and its use in real estate. Is it a Terminator or is it a tactical tool?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:38)
as in artificial intelligence?

that's a good question. Sound like we're gonna talk about it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:51)
Yep. Yeah. Kind of the goal here is to demystify AI. A lot of people, well, there's two main camps, probably three camps on thoughts on AI. One is AI is going to be a panacea and it's going to do everything for everybody.

the other one of the other camps is going to be, it's going to take everybody's jobs. And then third camp, which I feel that I'm squarely in the middle of, it's a tool that's going to allow you to do more and help you to do your job a little bit easier.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:30)
Absolutely.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (02:31)
And that's kind of my main thoughts on it. So we'll go ahead and kick it off. Kind of the main thing, it's like, I guess we'll start it out as, don't worry, a robot's not gonna sell your house.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:45)
And the reality is a lot of what we do today is AI. We just starting to hear the term AI more often. but if you ever, if you ever chatted with anybody on a website, you're not chatting with a person as pre-canned responses to frequently asked questions. and it cuts down on that person to person interaction, which is cheaper.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:10)
Well, let's flip that around a little bit. What's being called AI is actually just programmatic responses. ⁓ What has started the AI craze in the last couple of years is the expansion of large language models. So I guess the of the elephant in the room, people worry about

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (03:19)
Okay.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:35)
AI taking over, know, they think about, you know, the Terminator and Skynet ⁓ basically killing almost everybody. I don't think that'll ever happen. But what is commonly called AI, you know, and then I think we talked a little bit last week about how

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (03:42)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:58)
There's articles in the news about people falling in love with AI Chat bots and stuff. And there's probably people in Japan that want to marry their AI Chat bots and everything. There was a movie back in 2016, I think called She, might've been 2013, I don't remember. But you know, there's basically about this guy that fell in love with his AI and then all the AI said, you know what, humans are so, you know,

light years behind us, so we're just gonna leave and go off on our own. Anyways, that's just a sidebar. Ultimately, what they've been able to do with these large language models is allow them to process inputs and give real language outputs. Before, by chat bots and everything, if you're

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (04:32)
Uh-uh.

Yeah.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (04:54)
question or your ask responded or asked a question that was, you know, saying, all right, I'd like to see this house, then it would say, give me the address, you know, because it was programmed to say if they asked to see a house, ask for the address. And then that would be communicated to somebody. Nowadays, they've made it to where

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (05:08)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

huh.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (05:21)
it'll accept pretty much any input and just based on the large language models, it more or less figures out what you're trying to ask and then it goes out and searches for the answers. And so it's not like it's thinking, it's not like it's, you know, reasoning, it's just going through its data and coming up with the most likely answer.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (05:44)
Right.

It's a hundred percent data driven and is there's no critical thinking in the process. There's that you don't get, you don't get to know it and it get to know you from on a personal level. what's driving you to make the decision you you're making, what, what would stop you from making that decision? What would help you make that decision?

The back and forth that we have as people is they try to build it into AI. and at this point they've not been successful doing that. but the way I see it in, in Clint and I are pretty much on the same page is you can embrace AI or you can not embrace AI. If you don't embrace AI, you get left behind. It's just another step in the process.

Every time, every time there's a technological change in a real estate business and AI is just not in a real estate business. It's it's in life. we lose some experienced and seasoned agents because they don't have enough fire in them. In themselves to make that leap again, with a, another learning curve using technology. And that's unfortunate that we lose some good people, but

We, you need to commit to making the changes because we certainly don't do business like we did five years ago. it's been a little over five years that Clint & I have both been at, at KW and thinking about how we did business before I came to KW, how we did business when I got to KW and how we do business today. It's not even close.

You know, who, who would have thought I had a studio set up in an office to do these videos? I guess people five years ago did the same thing. It just, I wasn't, I wasn't into it yet. so it's just a change in the change in the times. And I think everybody's better off if we embrace it and use it to our advantage.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:47)
Yeah, I guess the main thing as far as to think about it is that AI is a co-pilot, not the pilot. It's not driving the actions. It's assisting ⁓ in whatever you're trying to use it for. It's not going to magically generate ideas for you.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:00)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (08:08)
It might help you refine ideas. It might help you filter through the noise, but it's not going to make the decisions for me. The decisions are still up to the buyers and sellers.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:21)
And

Clint knows this AI story from a couple of months ago about designing a 3D model that I wanted to design. And I told it what I wanted, went back and forth and I said, yeah, we're doing it. We ought to have it next day or two. We're doing it. We're working on it. We're almost there. And it became apparent early on that they were leading me on. So I went and designed it myself, but I strung them on until I...

I have enough and I called them out about lying to me and they were flat lying to me and they acknowledged it. They were just stringing me along cause it's not something they were capable of doing, but it's like they didn't want to admit they couldn't do it. So it's certainly not a perfect, process or panacea. so it's, it's built by people. So there's, there's always going to be a human element to it. Another sidebar.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (09:11)
ultimately the, you know, it's, it's almost like, uh, I don't know, think back to stories of having an assistant that's always trying to please you, even if they're telling you lies, you know, it's like, you, you'll see these characters and stories and that's pretty much what AI is.

You know, so if you do use it, be very specific in what you ask for and tell it how you want it to give you answers. You know, so some people use, I guess, I you could put the label AI on it for property alerts, things like that. That's, I don't call that an AI, but it's, it's a

a basic form it's automation more than anything else.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (09:54)
Right, it's

automating the process more than real AI.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:02)
But I still classify AI in the same bucket as that because it's a tool to get things done rather than set up the search parameters for something a client like. So if a buyer's trying to find something specific, set up the search parameters and they get emails whenever something that resembles what they're looking for comes on the market or has a price change or something like that.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:29)
and sends out a notification, that makes my job a lot easier. So I don't have to be looking at what's on the market every five minutes to specifically find that property. So it makes it little easier.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:42)
And I,

I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it's easier. makes it more productive. Cause I don't think people really care if, the job is hard or easy. And I tell people all the time, this, this job is extremely difficult. If anybody could do it, we wouldn't have a job. The reason we have a job is because it's so difficult and it gets into minutiae detail that if you don't do it regularly.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:01)
this is true.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:10)
You can get lost in a hurry and get yourself in a bind. So it gives us the freedom to be more productive so we can continue to represent our clients is the way I see it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:22)
Yeah. So another one is home valuation. We talked about that a couple of times since the beginning of the year, since we started releasing episodes. There are a lot of home valuation tools out there. They all have their degrees of accuracy, and they don't have the same accuracy across the board.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:48)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:49)
The same tool will not give you an accurate price in every location across the country. It all depends on what data to have access to. But it gives you a ballpark estimate. Again, it's another tool in the toolbox.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:04)
It gives you a down and dirty guesstimate of the value as a place to start. And then you go through the process.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:09)
And that was guesstimate,

not the other word that sounds like that.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:13)
Right, right. And, always wondered why somebody has their house listed for $200,000 and they want it on a website that claims that house is worth $160,000. That never made sense to me. sometimes this price is wrong. Sometimes the guesstimate is wrong, but it just...

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:34)
But they put a $40,000

pool in.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:38)
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Best way to get a pool at a house is to buy a house with a pool, Clint. You put $40,000 in a pool. If you get five or $10,000 back for it, you're doing real good. So that's just a, that's a real estate ism, I guess.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:43)
You

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we mentioned chat bots earlier on in the episode here. You know, so those are basically the same thing. You ask a question and it tries to give you an answer based on programmed or canned answers that they've got. Facebook has this built in on business pages. Websites can have this built in and you feed it specific data to give answers.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (12:57)
So.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:21)
Ultimately...

chatbot or an AI can't keep up with a human. can give answers and they can probably give answers faster than any human can or practically any human can, but what they don't understand is nuance. They can't figure out why you want to move. They can't figure out or they can't understand

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:34)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:47)
the excitement of a growing family, the stress of a sudden relocation, or the sentimental value of a childhood home. They can't take any of that stuff into account while communicating with you. And that puts a big difference in the responses you get from that rather than interacting with humans.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:51)
Right.

Exactly.

There are

And a big part of what we do every day when we're talking to people is to, I call it talking them off the ledge. You know, they're frustrated. They're overwhelmed. They don't know if they, they don't know if they're making the right decision or not. It's a, it's an emotional decision. AI is strictly data driven. So AI can understand.

One of the partners wants to take the new job and the other one wants to stay where they are. And there's internal conflict to be taken into consideration when you're navigating the process. The kids are starting a new school as three kids and they've been in the same school and now they're going to split them up and send them to three different schools with different take-in times and let out times. And just life happens. And I can't imagine maybe after I'm gone that AI can take all of that into consideration.

And trying to help people make the decision that's in their best interest. Not just this is the cheapest, this is where you want to live. Just not just the data driven results. We do a little counseling in there. We talk through issues, we address concerns. And I just haven't seen a computer that can do that yet.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:23)
And the other thing to add to that, and I think it's probably one of the most critical things, is that an AI doesn't have a fiduciary duty to you as a buyer or seller. ⁓ Its purpose is to execute a command based on data. Whereas a real estate agent has legal and ethical

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (15:34)
Right. Right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:45)
or fiduciary duties to act in your absolute best interests.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (15:50)
Right. So

the, if, if the, a buyer and a seller ask AI the same question, they're going to get the same response. but if the buyer has a conversation with their agent who they trust, they can come to one conclusion or decision. this, if the selling, if the seller has a conversation with the selling agent and

They talk about it depending on what's the motivation for the seller to sell their house and how bad they want to move on with their life and things like that. Hopefully the two meet somewhere on something that they can both live with after consultation with their agents and come up with a plan that can help everybody move forward. That's difficult for an automated process to do.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (16:33)
Yeah, recap everything. AI is a powerful tool. It's making buying and selling more efficient and is helping it to be data driven, but it's not the be all end all. The best results come from having an agent that uses AI.

for data analysis and speed, but the agent having wisdom, empathy, and ethical guidance.

to provide you with the best representation possible. And ultimately, final decision on what some people, it's the biggest financial investment in their life ⁓ shouldn't be left to an algorithm because that algorithm is not personalized to their situation. It's just a generative large language model.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (17:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:32)
It's personal. It's human. Technology can inform it, but at least right now, it can't replace it.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (17:40)
the, there's a certain group of people, professional people, that I'm going to try not to call out specifically that are completely and absolutely data driven. and they want questions to answers to questions and they're going to make an analytical decision based on the information they have available. Those people will probably do a deep dive into AI.

and make an analytical decision. They don't want anybody to help them walk through a process. It's going to be driven by the data and that's it. Those people are sometimes difficult to deal with.

Cause it's kind of outside the norm of what we do, depending on how, how focused they are on that. But most people, it becomes an emotional decision. They, they have highs and lows and we help them, we help them get through those things that AI at this point can't help them get through. So is it, is it a cure all? No. Does it help? It does. It's like, like having an assistant.

with us to help us get the job done for our clients.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (18:50)
There it is.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (18:51)
Okay. I think that's it, Clint. We can wrap it up. Another one's in the can and we may be doing a couple of specials coming up.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:01)
Yep. So just want to remind everybody to check out rerealestatepodcast.com. That's our website. You can go there and find the link to our YouTube channel. If you want to watch our shining young, beautiful faces, you can find the audio episodes.

Or you can link to your favorite podcast application and subscribe through there. That's all there. Also, if you want to ask a question, if you've got a burning real estate question, but you don't want to call one of us directly, you can ask a question on the website and we'll address it here on the podcast. And you can also find out Ben and I's contact information. We've got links to our individual websites there also.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (19:41)
Absolutely.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:51)
So looking forward to talking to y'all real soon in the future. Go ahead, like, subscribe, comment, and share on this episode, however you find it, and share it with your friends.

And like Ben said, another one in the can. We'll see you on the next episode.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (20:06)
Clint have a good one see you later

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:08)
Alright, Ben. Bye bye.