Commercial real estate brokers might be expert salespeople. They might have mastered the art of marketing. And when it comes to finding the right tenants and investors for the right properties? They shine.
But not all commercial real estate professionals enjoy writing. Many would rather hammer out the details of a transaction during a face-to-face meeting than spend even 20 minutes fussing over the body of an email message.
And that’s where ChatGPT comes in. Since OpenAI launched this Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbot in November of last year, real estate professionals have turned to it for help with drafting marketing materials, emails, letters of intent, right of first contracts and property descriptions.
This, though, might just be the beginning of what ChatGPT can do for commercial real estate professionals.
Damodaram Bashyam, executive vice president and chief information and innovation officer with Berkadia, said this chatbot, especially as it evolves, can help commercial real estate professionals eliminate the most repetitive and time-consuming parts of the job of selling real estate, freeing them to spend more time on marketing properties, finding clients, networking and closing sales.
“During the past few years, we have seen the evolution of AI in general,” Bashyam said. “Many companies have already been using AI-enabled chat bots to answer the questions of customers who log onto their sites. But what ChatGPT is doing is a more transformational change. There are more opportunities for commercial real estate professionals to leverage this technology and become even more efficient.”
As Bashyam says, commercial real estate brokers can use ChatGPT to develop pitch decks, create the copy for marketing materials and crafting market analyses for clients.
Consider the potential the chatbot holds for creating an analysis of a market. Brokers can simply enter the demographics and economic stats of a region and then ask ChatGPT to create a report highlighting the benefits of buying a property or bringing a business to the area. If brokers enter the right prompts, ChatGPT can create a compelling market analysis in minutes.
Without the help of ChatGPT? That job could take an entire day.
Another example of how ChatGPT can help CRE professionals? Brokers need to constantly stay in touch with their clients, something that often involves sending regular email messages. Bashyam says that CRE professionals can use ChatGPT to draft email messages that contain the latest trends and information and then send these messages to their clients.
“It is up to real estate providers to keep their clients informed on the latest trends in commercial real estate,” Bashyam said. “This job can be much easier with ChatGPT.”
Reasons for concern
This doesn’t mean, though, that ChatGPT is foolproof or that the human touch isn’t needed to create market analyses or marketing materials.
Bashyam points out that ChatGPT does not have the most up-to-date information, having little knowledge of anything that has taken place across the globe after 2021.
It’s why real estate professionals will need to tinker with any copy that ChatGPT produces.
“It’s not wise to just use whatever ChatGPT produces as is,” Bashyam said. “You need to have people look at what it writes. You have to be sure the information is accurate. Most of the companies in the commercial real estate industry will want to leverage the tool in a cautious manner. They will need to implement this in a more controlled way, enacting some guidelines for people to follow.”
This is especially important with ChatGPT because real estate professionals are adopting it more quickly than they typically do with most forms of new technology. That’s largely because ChatGPT allows CRE pros to immediately do their jobs more efficiently. It can be tempting, then, for brokers to use the AI software to create reports, emails and marketing materials without taking the time to review the materials that it creates.
ChatGPT is also more powerful when companies and individuals fuel it with their own data and information. That way, the software will create marketing materials and reports that contain information that is useful to clients.
“Because it is seeing such a fast adoption and because it has such a wide variety of applications, you have to make sure that you follow data privacy and security practices to protect a company’s data,” Bashyam said. “This is one of the best tools to improve productivity and efficiency. But it comes back to how you use it. You need to leverage the tool with your own real-time data. That is more powerful. It’s about integrating ChatGPT with your company’s own data. That helps you provide more insights and current information versus broader and more general information.”
The challenge with commercial real estate is that it is a high-touch and relationship-driven business. Bashyam says that the key to using ChatGPT effectively in this industry is to marry the efficiency boost that the AI program can provide with the need to build relationships with clients.
Again, that’s where using ChatGPT to create emails with current market information or to draft market analyses comes in. Brokers can create these reports quickly, fine-tune them and then send them to their clients, usually completing these tasks in under an hour. That’s an efficient way to keep in contact with key clients.
“Real estate is always going to be a business that is driven by long-standing relationships,” Bashyam said. “ChatGPT won’t change that. But ChatGPT can make it easier for brokers to maintain those relationships and keep their clients informed. We are still at the beginning stages of this technology. But we can already see the efficiencies that it can bring.”