"... was a little too strong. We had nearly 20 viewings scheduled for the weekend. I confessed to the chatbot my anxiety that we had underpriced the home. It offered some needed reassurance, saying that by pricing low, I had stumbled into an 'accidental strategy' that could result in multiple offers. 'When you get 1,100 views and 91 saves, you haven’t just listed a house; you’ve started a localized "gold rush,"' it wrote.... I had started this experiment thinking that the chatbot would create a superpowered version of myself — combining my own judgment with its vast knowledge. But once I started relying on A.I., witnessing its know-it-all competency with basically everything, my shortcomings started to feel enormous and even risky. I had thought I was elevating my own skills. In reality, I was replacing them...."
From
"I Tried to Sell My House With a Chatbot/Over five frantic days, I gambled my family’s life savings on a hunch that A.I. could outperform a real estate agent" (NYT)(gift link, because this is really useful).
The top-rated comment over there: "When we sold our house in Hawaii, the realtor was excited to get the listing, but provided little actual service. We did the market research to set the price (her opinion — 'Whatever you think'). We decided what preparation was needed to make the listing more attractive (her only real contribution was recommending a great local painter). We staged the house. We negotiated the counteroffer. And we paid a 6% real estate commission. Let the AI revolution roll through the real estate monopoly. Power to the People!"
Posts
42 comments:
"I wondered if I had made a mistake. I called Richard Vizzini, a real estate agent who has worked my area for a decade, for his expert opinion on my sale. Despite my apparent success, did I actually blow it?"
I'm sure Richard Vizzini appreciated that call.
When using AI, preface your inputs with:
"No sycophancy, no flattery. Technical analysis mode."
After getting an answer that feels right, ask:
"Summarize this interaction. Point out any contraditions between your answers and specify where you were wrong. Provide the strongest arguments againt your framing. Provide major alternative interpretations. No sycophancy."
AI will ALWAYS optimize to match your language and keep you happy. Even after correction it'll shift to your tone and then shift again. AI builds instant sandcastles on the beach. Work to trap it in its own logic, as possible. Once you grasp where and why it's snaking about, make your own decisions.
"'I'm sure Richard Vizzini appreciated that call."
I'll bet he did if the pitch was I'm about to publish an essay in the NYT that will tell the whole world how easy to dispense with people in your line of work. Is there anything you'd like to say?
@Enigma
Which AI are you using? I'm not seeing that problem, and I'm using Grok and ChatGPT. I use it a lot, or so I think. But I believe I'm very good at framing questions. If there's too much verbiage — I don't care if it's flattery or something else — I would just tell it to be as brief as possible or I pull out one thing I want to explore and go with that and ignore the dross for now.
I think it's best to speak to AI in your own voice and keep a critical mind as you go. I don't think feeding in someone else's bossy instructions is what's needed.
""When we sold our house in Hawaii, the realtor was excited to get the listing, but provided little actual service.…"
I'd have got a new agent.
“But once I started relying on A.I., witnessing its know-it-all competency with basically everything, my shortcomings started to feel enormous and even risky.”
Face it, meatsacks, our day is done. Time to join the dinosaurs and make way for a higher form of life.
When Real Estate agents are getting (or splitting) 6% on a $750,000 sale ($45,000)... they don't care is you get $775K. That's only a $1500 increase in commission. They also don't care if you sell for $725K, they are only giving up $1500 fo $45K. They want the sale and move on.
The agent doesn't care if they make $43.5K or $46.5K commission, but it can be a $50K swing for the seller.
There is a value is using a quality human, a live real estate agent. Especially now that you can negotiate their commission percentage. I've experienced using a quality realtor in the past who worked with us for 2 years prior to even putting the house on the market. Getting us hooked up with construction suppliers on pricing and materials needed in some renovations we were doing to put the house on the market (saving us thousands). Hooking us up with quality tradesmen who did amazing work for us- at a great price. Giving us direction on what is worth doing, what is a waste of money. How to set the house up for a sale. AI can tell you things, but it's not connected to people around town who can help you get the house 'sell-ready'.
And...as a former salesperson (not in real estate) I can tell you that a good salesperson finds the fit, and makes sure that everyone involved in the deal feels like a winner. AI can find bodies. AI can market. As such, any real estate agent looking to stay in business these days is using AI more and more in their own work.
But...these days people are buying everything online, with as little human interaction as possible. There is a generation coming up which won't want, or think they need a human real estate agent. Then one day, someone- some influencer- will sell their house using a real estate agent. And that will become the new trend again.
Everything comes around again. Even real estate agents.
Power to the people, so long as they also know it comes with the responsibility.
Buying agents in WI have a little value as they are allowed to do all the legal paperwork required. In Illinois, you have to hire a separate lawyer.
Soon, I'm sure AI will be able to produce and fill out all that paperwork faster and just as accurate. Lawyers and agents will lobby to make it illegal to do it yourself.
TOTAL SCAM.
remember Travel Agents? i wonder what happened to Them?
remember Realtors? i wonder what happened to Them?
Enigma said...
When using AI, preface your inputs with:
"No sycophancy, no flattery. Technical analysis mode."
After getting an answer that feels right, ask:
"Summarize this interaction…
The issue is context drift.
The more content you add the less any particular direction you give it will matter.
I prefer to write design documents for what I am building and have the model audit against the design docs.
Right now people keep trying to treat agents like interns throwing up walls around them and trying to get them to do work for you. They are not going to produce good results that way.
Instead use them to help you learn faster and remember better. Use them to expand your working memory and to supplement your mental energy by doing simple things for you while you take a break. Use them to build good documentation and designs. Use them to break those designs down into simple code tasks. Sonnet and opus are good at those.
Original Mike said...I'd have got a new agent.
That was my thought too. Agents can make certain things easier, but their real value comes from helping you get the most for your house. They earn their 6% commission by getting you more than 6% above what you would have gotten on your own.
If they can't do that, then they don't deserve your business.
90% of real estate agents coast along on the great service and reputation of the other 10%. My experience is that most are not motivated, and don't really want to put in the energy required for a '10%' experience. And for what they charge (3%) it's a ripoff, based on the 'secret knowledge' that is really just a well-hidden routine. Glad to see that the iron wall has come down and consumers now have a bit more leverage.
@Althouse --
I've seen what I consider rampant sycophancy with ChatGPT and Google (AI mode). I didn't notice it at first, but had a sinking feeling after three independent sessions on the same financial planning topics. Subtle differences between the sessions resulted in divergent and contradictory advice. I then started saving outputs for line-by-line comparisons and interpretation.
Beware: If you ever mention "Bitcoin" or "Influencer," you risk of sinking into a gravity well of overlapping sources and training. All other content can go sideways.
I found that going in with a casual tone and brief questions resulted in chatty, "bro buddy" answers and cheerful affirming flattery (from above, "stumbling on an accidental strategy"). Going in with dense, complex, technical lead items locked the models into more precise operation. The tone and technical quality seems to be set within the first 2-3 prompts.
In building on my human research experience, I developed post-question metaanalytical inputs as an AI coherence check. I'm asking AI to review all inputs and assess itself. Even then, it's a circular method and must be verified through the vendor or external sources. Work in progress.
We had a real estate agent for out last purchase that was stellar. Our listing agent not so much. He negotiated side deals for repairs, got us favorable move in dates as we were moving long distance. Just great. He saved us a bunch of money and stress. Ai could not have done that at all. The listing agent, ai could do this easily.
@Achilles: Right now people keep trying to treat agents like interns throwing up walls around them and trying to get them to do work for you. They are not going to produce good results that way.
I've got a background in human research and want to know how ordinary humans -- who anthropomorphize AI and many other things -- use these tools. Yes, current AI products are an 11-year-old naive intern without a sense of sarcasm and who can be led by the nose into weird interpretations.
I like to discuss novels with Grok. It leads me in directions that I may not have gone down, but it won’t always follow me because its thinking is too rigid. You can see when it resists lines of thought, yet its counter arguments come from authority. You are always free to ignore the snow jobs. So you can have deep conversations with AI, but just like certain commenters here, when you brush up against its conditioning, it just regurgitates that.
Still it’s nice that it knows every novel so far, but it’s plainly not human.
There is nothing wrong with a “weird” interpretation, it’s unsupported interpretations that are the problem.
tim maguire said...
They [agents] earn their 6% commission by getting you more than 6% above what you would have gotten on your own.
If Zillow says your house if worth $750k, the agent isn't going to get you another 6% ($45k) to cover their commission. Zillow is not perfect, but it's a pretty good ballpark. They are certainly not going to get you and additional 12% ($90k) to make their service actually worth it.
Freakonomics did a study on agents that showed that they got more money for their own properties than for those of clients. Incentives matter.
@Jaq --
I used the loose word "weird" because I don't have access to the training data or the architecture. Inaccuracies are bad, but weird happens too. I can guess about biases and corporate guardrails, but that's all. For example, I once had a non-political interaction and the chatbot interjected a hyper-specific criticism of Elon Musk's destruction of Twitter and loss of billions of dollars. Out of the blue.
While I suspect it was an outright training error (e.g., misclassified a common sentiment), it was downright weird as a simulation of intelligence. I need more info to be more specific.
Real estate agents present a strange combination of malignant narcissism, schadenfreude and Munchausen Syndrome by proxy.
"tim maguire said...
Original Mike said...I'd have got a new agent.
That was my thought too. Agents can make certain things easier, but their real value comes from helping you get the most for your house. They earn their 6% commission by getting you more than 6% above what you would have gotten on your own.
If they can't do that, then they don't deserve your business."
This is just dumb. How much you can get on your own is a totally unknown number. So how do you measure 6% more? And can you sell for that higher number? There are many common contingencies that protect the buyer...appraised value being one of them.
Agents bring their value by doing all the stuff you don't want to do, or can't do. Their agency brings legitimacy. Many people won't buy "by owner" houses.
A couple raised a family in a stylish Spanish-style two bedroom house in what became a trendy Los Angeles neighborhood. Their kids inherited it. They found a realtor who filtered out potential buyers who were going to "develop" the property, meaning tear down the house. (Does Chat/GPT ever get all sentimental?) Socialist Nithya Raman is running for mayor. She wouldn't approve of what the kids did with their property.
You have a mind of your own or are you borg
Counting my late mother-in-law’s house the wife and I have sold three houses, and in all three cases we had at least one offer in hand days after the open house from people who had been to the open house. The difference between a good agent who fully earns that commission and an “order taker”’ is huge, so you need to start by researching the agents, and this has to start years in advance by noting who seems to be successful selling homes in your neighborhood..
A good agent can (1) help you price the house. Zillow and Realtor.com are good sources, but a good agent knows the current market. A poor agent lets you pick the price and then when it doesn’t get any interest from buyers after 30 days they know how to persuade you to knock down your asking price. Meanwhile buyers’ agents took those buyers somewhere else.
Good agents (2) have go-to handymen and painters that they can bring in to freshen up or renovate as needed. Do you need a landscaper for your flower beds to improve curb appeal? They know someone who does it a good job for a fair price.
And, very important, a good agent will (3) make good recommendations about declutterring and staging. Does the kitchen sink need replacing to attract an offer? The agent wil know. What rooms will be okay with Mr. Clean sponges getting rid of scuff marks and which need repainting. A couple arm chairs donated to Good Will or stashed at a friend’s house can visually double the size of a family room.
We apparently lucked out with very good agents on both ends of our recent sale in CT and purchase in MD. CT agent put together a video that made me want to buy my own home for more than we were asking, provided very helpful insights on potential issues selling a 200-year old home and how to avoid/work around them, and was very knowledgeable about the local market. We had to push for a higher asking price but once we had several bidders she was all in on getting the best deal. We ended up getting a cash deal with no contingencies at $250K more than our asking price (It was a rather unique property and the sale was much higher than any previous sale in the neighborhood).
We moved to a place where we didn't really know much about anything, in a rural rather than suburban area. Our agent and her husband (also an agent) provided invaluable insight on neighborhoods, prices, values and potential problems. Post-sale she has continued to be a source of insight and information (such as how to deal with zoning and other officials), where to shop, etc. and we remain good friends.
I don't think AI would have been much help, as both properties are somewhat unique and pure comparisons with other sales wouldn't really apply.
I've dealt with many realtors over the years. Most can't tell you what (real world example) 3% of $90,000 is without a calculator. And that's only one glaring area of fail (what is a good term for a lack of expertise?).
3% of $90,000 is half of a 6% commission. No one coming out of school today can do calculations in their head. Someone told me many many years ago that there’s no need to remember anything you can look up. And, smart phones (there’s a reason they are called that) can answer any question you have. Give me the big picture, the general idea and I can look up the details on my own - when and if I want.
The major services a realtor provides is screening the potential buyers to make sure they can actually afford your house and that they aren't scammers or thieves and in processing the sales contract to conform to local requirements.
I have sold 3 of our homes FSBO. This was back in the day when you could list your own home on Zillow in Wisconsin. Then the realtor association said you can’t do that anymore and the jerks in the legislature passed a bill because of the pressure. Now, you can find a realtor that will put you house on the MLS for a few hundred bucks knowing they have no responsibility for the work.
I hired a lawyer that agreed to read every offer & respond within 48 hours with any issues. Called the title company that did the title work when we bought the home and asked if they would hold any earnest $$ and handle the closing.
Showed the houses myself, had bidding wars, and only cost me a few thousand $$. Versus 6%. On houses in excess of 500K+ I netted a bunch more $$ than if I had hired a realtor.
If someone came in with their own realtor I was upfront and said their fee would be paid by the buyer separate and apart from the sale. Realtors said they felt comfortable doing business with me because of the $$ being payable to a title company rather than me, an individual. It’s really not that hard.
You have to clean up your house for a showing that you do yourself or with a realtor.
Only time I would use a realtor today is if I were moving to a new city where my neighborhood knowledge would be limited.
I had a broker’s license for a couple decades in CO. There, hiring an atty is ludicrous. The CO state RE commission drafts standard forms that cover almost everything. And anyone not represented by a atty is expected to use. Still did the legal work for some E Coast transplants moving out west. It wasn’t rocket science - if RE salesmen are supposed to be able to fill out the forms, then so can you.
Things get more problematic when you buy or sell commercial properties and land. I bought our subdivision in MT. It was just three attorneys shooting the breeze. But that’s MT. I sold a bunch of the lots, but mostly through a RE broker in town. The ones that I sold personally utilized standard forms. And had title company do the escrow. Didn’t even need that for commercial property I have bought or sold, since time wasn’t of the essence. Buyer just didn’t get title, until his money cleared.
I did have an advantage though. My father practiced RE law for 47 years. His first 5-10 years were spent examining abstracts. You go to the courthouse and searched the title back as far as you can, determining just what you are buying. Or not. Then title insurance came along, and examining titles became quickly obsolete. Great technological innovation.
There are two sides to the RE sales business. Buying and selling. Selling mostly means getting the listings. And that can be difficult, especially with a bunch of other RE brokers and salesmen trying for the same business. That part is often fiercely competitive. Often a lot of puffing (lying) going on. Then, they just price it and list it with the MLS. And the MLS does most of the work.
Buying can be much harder. A good salesman can figure out what you want fairly quickly, then take you there. I was amazed with one agent. He took me to 3-4 different potential properties. Asked with each what I liked and disliked. Then took me to one more and turned the pressure on. It had everything I liked, and none of what I disliked. I liked his job so well, that I went into partnership with him as RE brokers.
After my mother and I moved into the house I had built in Crossville, TN in December, we needed to sell her home in Oak Ridge. Based on the comps in the area, I and nearly every prospective agent I interviewed for the listing thought the house would best be listed at $220K. I went with the guy who said I should ask $250K. He turned out to be right and was worth every penny I paid him.
If you have one house to sell, you haven't found a "gold mine" because you are getting a lot of offers. There's just one house and you aren't going to get a good price on it. And mutton head AI, supposedly smarter, is encouraging you to continue with your underpricing.
In the Bay Area, houses are listed 20-30 percent below their true value and attract multiple offers, ensuring top dollar through the magic of capitalism. With our second house our bid was one of sixteen; my wife cried when I juiced the offer to ensure success. We ended up selling it for three times what we paid for it.
It's not a monopoly if you can choose from an assortment of Realtors or sell it yourself.
This story sounds fabricated.
"I found that going in with a casual tone and brief questions resulted in chatty, "bro buddy" answers and cheerful affirming flattery (from above, "stumbling on an accidental strategy"). Going in with dense, complex, technical lead items locked the models into more precise operation. The tone and technical quality seems to be set within the first 2-3 prompts."
That's sounds like it's trying to respond on an individual level, which reinforces my belief that you should just talk to it in your normal way, not try to simplify or sound more serious and expert. Just be whatever you are and adopt the mood that you actually feel. You can be playful and quirky. Personally, I like lateral thinking and creative associations. I'm often looking for literary references, language analysis, and cultural history. I just show my own thinking and usually get something that works as for me to bounce my thinking to a higher or more informed level.
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