One of the most engaging panels at Seattle Agent magazine’s Accelerate Summit, held on March 25 in downtown Bellevue, focused on AI in the real estate industry. Two people at the forefront of this issue — Sidekick CEO and Co-founder Michael Martin and Resourceful Director/VP of Strategic Growth Ernest Peralta — offered their thoughts on how this emerging technology is poised to help brokers win listings, negotiate smarter and save time. Here are three takeaways from their discussion: 

Your clients already use AI 

Historically, a client might call or e-mail a broker for help buying or selling their home. Today, clients are already using AI tools to form opinions about the housing market long before their first meeting with a broker. Agents need to rethink the services they traditionally provide — connecting home buyers with home sellers — and offer the interpretation, judgment and local context that AI can’t.

“Agents have to do more than provide information,” said Peralta. “The agents who stand out will be the ones who combine technology with judgment, local expertise and strong relationships.”

AI is about more than clever marketing content 

Early on, AI tools were viewed as novel ways to help create clever and engaging marketing content for social media, websites and listings. But Martin noted AI is increasingly embedded into daily workflow to help brokers with things like lead qualifications and client communications. Embedding AI into client relationship management (CRM) and brokerage platforms can automate repetitive work so agents can focus on advising clients and closing deals. In addition, AI can analyze massive amounts of data to identify patterns that might otherwise be overlooked.

“This enables smarter prospecting, better pricing insights and more personalized client engagement,” said Martin. “Agents who leverage these capabilities can operate with a level of precision and responsiveness that wasn’t possible before.”

Google searches vs. AI prompts 

Who hasn’t entered keywords into Google and sifted through pages of results for information?

“Google is a little outdated,” Peralta argued. “Literally, you can ask Chat GPT anything,a and you will get more in-depth information.”

Martin noted today’s internet was not designed for AI, and much of the discovery won’t happen through Google searches.

“An AI model doesn’t care if you have images of the skyline or clever copy,” Martin said. “AI sees a marked-up file. There’s this whole other dimension to discoverability and content structure for how AI agents access information.”

He encouraged brokers to create a version of their website that an AI agent can understand — not for Google to find in a search.