The Impact of Global AI Competition on Real Estate: Expert Insights with Tech Tony Self

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, Mr. Tech Tony. Today we're going to run through, I probably had a bit of a misperception about the AI industry. I thought it was plateauing a little bit. Tony corrects me pretty quickly with a few exciting things that are coming up. And then we talk about robotics also that we've had a chance to invest in, but then also just the general replacement of real estate agents based on the AI that is there as well in the general direction that everything is going in. Hopefully you enjoy. Welcome to Rethink Real Estate. My name is Ben Brady, and this is a real estate podcast aimed to deliver sales strategies, marketing tips, and business insights from industry experts and myself to build a listing focused business for the future. Let's get into it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rethink Real Estate. We have Mr. Tech Tony. Howdy. Mate, are we going to get any exploits through your glasses today from Courtney, Rage Texan? No. I actually, I've both done two things. I've turned my phone off, which is weird, by the way, and it should be able to turn your phone off, but I actually feel, I'm feeling a little like stress that it's off. I'd feel anxiety. And then also on the glasses themselves, I've actually muted them too. You can mute them as well. But I do have my dog next to me, and he may make a sound. That's cool. Well, if you guys are, if you've ever got an opportunity to go to Redondo Beach, Tony and Courtney have actually just opened up a location down on the street frontage, and it looks phenomenal. We've just branded, but Beowulf also has got his own portrait down there, Tony. He does. He's our brand ambassador. So he's actually, he has an Instagram page, and if you can follow him there, he's Beowulf the Dane. So he's going to become very famous. I was going to say is that the photo that you've got sort of in the office there of him that's sort of on the side as a mascot, it's kind of almost real life size because if he was standing up, he'd be six foot tall. Yeah. It's actually smaller, believe it or not. I was trying to keep it perspective-wise, so it's a little bit smaller, but it's good. There you go. Well, mate, talking a little bit about tech, I feel like it, I don't know why, it just feels like it's been a little while since I've spoken to you about all of this. I have a general feeling about AI at the moment. I feel like it's plateauing a little bit because, you know, I was listening to, and again, keep in mind is that I'm about, you know, an inch deep when it comes to the technology side of the business. And I get my sort of updates from the podcast that I listen to and things along those lines. And it kind of seems like, you know, OpenAI being the sort of leader in all of this space at the moment, it seems that their latest release has kind of plateaued out a little bit. It feels like there's not these major advancements anymore. And this is just me, general consumer out there, not very tech savvy, you know, is this an opportunity that I feel like we can catch up here or am I completely off base and am I completely wrong? You're completely wrong. Thank you. So you're right. So what's happening right now, so they had the deep seek moment, which basically, so America or the OpenAI and all the different type of large language AI companies had it for themselves. But then China has been, I mean, China's smart and they came up with DeepSeek and they were able just to throw everything off. And what they did is that now, and I think it's good, competition is always good. So now OpenAI and Claude and Grok, in fact, Grok has some cool stuff. They have just released a voice part, you have it on your phone and they have a thing. It is inappropriate if you're a kid, but it's called Unhinged. And actually, I demonstrated to my old man group and it is horrible. I mean, it just gets at you. So the one you can do in front of it insults you, it insults you big time. I mean, with personal, it's amazing. I saw it when Musk was on Rogan and he was showing it. And so it also has a loved one where it falls in love with you and it tries to get like sweet nothings. So it's still advancing forward. But what's happening with China coming up, and they have lots of smart people there, they have started to just kind of push the envelope. So that's keeping everyone on their heels. So in my circles, because I watch all the little AI stuff when I work out, that kind of thing. And the nerds are all on Twitter right now. I mean, they're just like just holding their breath for the next deep seek moment. And that happens to be called Manus, which is done through Monica. Monica is a company that has a successful extension that you can install on your computer based out of China. And so where they've come is that right now from open AI, you have your different tier models. One is the $20 one, which everyone has, and I recommend you get, it's amazing. And then they got the higher term one, which you get at the operator, which allows you to have, think of it like a digital intern where you can give it, it will go on a browser and it'll search the web for you. They'll do these types of things. And it's pretty cool. That's $200 a month. The Manus one, they're saying they're going to release it for free initially. And it's like 20 times faster. They've done use cases, they show it where it's creating code and it's fast and it does some great, beautiful things. I can say, okay, create me a website, take a look at this site and it does do everything for you and just kind of leave it. It's like a digital intern. So we don't know if it's true or not. So I'm waiting for an invite, but that's like the whole, my whole geek space, they're all like, oh, they're all freaking out saying, oh, if this is real, oh, this could be another deep seek moment. So they're just like, they're just amazed by it. They're waiting to see if this is actual. So I'm not sure if it's real or not, but it's impressive. So the deep seek moment was the fact that they could build these LLMs because at far less value, right? That was the big moment where it wasn't going to take billions upon billions upon billions of dollars to fuel these things and with all these big chips and whatever it may be. Now that being said is that now this moment is, is that ChatGPT is saying that the advanced version of what they have, it takes so much power in order to run it that ultimately they're charging you $200 a month for it and so on and so forth. Now this version is saying that it's coming out and it's going to be able to do more things, larger project basis and, and be able to, and be able to do it quicker for less money. Is that right? Yeah. Or if they charge you at all, like one of the use cases that they demonstrated where it would search for real estate, that's where I was really keyed in on it, where I'm a, I'm a home buyer and you know, when you're searching for a home, you know, it's, it's a process. You got to search the property or your agent will get your filters. They send it to you, kind of go back and forth, get to spend the time. So this is your digital assistance. Okay. This is my, my budget. This is what I like. This is where I want to be. Uh, and just like research for me, what's the best schools or you kind of, and it does it for you and it goes, okay, here are some curated lists of properties that just came up and come in and take a look at it and then it probably contact the real estate agent as well. The only thing you can't do is actually do the showings and the negotiations, which still keeps real estate agents employed, but I'm telling you anything that's I want to double click on that for a moment because there's an episode that's going to air shortly within rethink real estate where I was on a complete and utter ******* rant the other day. Tony, as you know, we do a lot of auctions external to Harcourt's now in the white label space around the country. On average, let's say that on average, an auction property has between, I don't know, let's call it three and five offers on it at any time, right? You know that that generates quite a lot of offers, the volume of offers that I get from realtors where they don't even make a phone call to the listing agent or to us as the auction team and just send the offer in and then when you try to talk to them and you make a phone call to that realtor to go, hey, can I talk to you a little bit more about your offer and about your buyer? They're like, oh no, just send a counteroffer. That behavior is key and you know what? Agents should be replaced on a buyer side because I'm talking that's 90% of the offers that we get, we don't even get a phone call and when we try to speak to them about their buyer and about having an actual verbal conversation about it or negotiation, they're like, no, just send me a counteroffer. At the end of the day, that is just pure behavior where they should be replaced. It's laziness and poor practice and they're not doing the service for their customer. I mean, one thing as a listing agent, we mostly have listings, but when we work with our clients, I can't tell you many times where I'll get a call out of the blue saying, did you get our offer? I go, what offer? I mean, I checked my emails, I checked my spam, they never called me because usually before we submit an offer to our client, if we're representing the buyer, I'll call the agent up. Absolutely. This is, you know, just kind of check to see, can you share any information? Most of the time, most agents and they tend to, the listing agents tend to be great agents, so we may know them, so, and they love that you have a good agent out of size. Okay. Tell me a little bit about this. What's a good offer? Do you have anything in hand? What would get our offer accepted? Are there any type of terms? So, because what I want to do is I want to draft an agreement that will get accepted right out. So we're not going to have any counters. So you call, you actually contact the listing agent and you ask them, okay, what are you looking for? What's your, do they need to have a rent back? Or do, you know, what is your client's, do they want to have a quick closing? Is it price? Is it terms? And you just kind of just have a conversation. Then you go back to your buyer and you say, okay, we had a conversation with, they have this many in hand, or we can go maybe back up. You earn what you're supposed to do on behalf of your client. It drives me nuts when the buyer agents does not, did not call us. I just, at least, and I, whenever I submit offer, I still text and I call just to confirm you have it. So I have it in text or email that you received the offer. Exactly right. And it's just, it's anyway, that's a, that's a complete and utter other topic. But the reality is, is that people need to understand is that these types of things are out there at the moment that are going to be far more efficient and outside of actually physically getting them into the property. This is another thing, Tony, though, is that the volume of people like, so we have Harkless Housemate that people log everybody into at their open houses on a constant basis. So we're getting, we're getting thousands of people added into our database every, every week that it come through. Do you know the volume of people that are buyers that are actually accompanied by an agent is less than probably 5%? It's unbelievable. Right. Yeah. And that's something I've never understood as well. Cause you're there to help your client. And part of where they're, they're, they're wants you as your agents, you have your input cause they want to get your input as an agent. So yeah, we've, I've actually, my, my, uh, my wife, my partner, she's, I've seen her where she goes, this house is not for you or we got to leave because she knows. And then it kind of gets like this, you know, I'll tell you what I'm seeing and you know, I know that you've seen, so right. They should be there, um, rare circumstances. They can't attend it. If you like have an open house where, you know, this, that's the only times, but we'll still get a call from that agent. If we know them saying, look, I have my client coming, just want to let you know, I can't do it. I know this is the only time you have available. Is it okay? And they, and it's still conversations that we, and we appreciate this. Oh yeah. You know, send them over. And then we say, Oh, we know. So, so agents, a great agent. Cause again, we're just trying to help the deal three, want to have a good transaction for all parties involved. Now Tony tools or, or resources that you've been using lately more than you thought you would or anything along those lines for the group. Have you got anything that, that you've been using more than, than what you've displayed to us previously? Yeah. So I've gone down another rabbit hole. Um, I've been obsessing about, okay, so, uh, you know, that, uh, chat GPT, you can search the web. I showed that to you before. Yeah. So you click the little web icon down the bottom of the search and then it does. Yep. Right. And perplexity has that. So I've become obsessed with how do you rank on those pages? Because I know that that's going to be the sources for that. So I joined another gang on school and this gentleman actually have Australia of all places. So I got, I got the, are you guys are, you're smart guys. And, um, this gentleman is an absolute expert in SEO automations and how to start to rank into these engines, which is long and arduous off the, the, there's a lot of basic fundamentals you have to approach, but at the same time, there's these new nuances. So I've been, I've been focused. Just answer your question. I've been focused on how do I rank in these web searches and how do I get there? And I've, I've discovered how you do that. And there are a lot of it's basic fundamentals, but some really cool additional things you have to do. So I've been focused on that and I'm about to get this content all launched, uh, in this, uh, and using this new type of thing. So I can start to rank up in that, that generate like GA, GEO, I guess, join it of, uh, I'd love to let that's probably next month's session. Then Tony, we probably need to run through the ranking side of it because I think it's something that we need to give some time on because I've been thinking that Chad Whitfield actually within the company the other day, he called me and goes, you will never believe where I got a listing or a presentation from the other day, like where he goes, the guy literally said to me on the phone, I just typed into chat, GBT, who should I sell within St. Clemente? And you came up as the first person. Like really? He's like, he's like, he's like, he's like, yeah, like I, I don't know if I'm, we're not doing any ads or we're not focusing on that area or anything like that. Like how did that happen? Yeah. So it's, it's amazing. Cause that was, I want to understand how you get ranked in there and it's, it's interesting. So yeah, we'll, we'll hold that till next time, but that's the, that's the rabbit hole I've been on like going in and it's been, I've been exhausted from like all these late nights. I get, I'm getting like five hours sleep a night now because I'm always on there. Do you know what, for you, for you actually, cause I know your sleeping pattern, that's probably a decent amount. I gotta be honest. It's an hour less. Yeah, that's right. Well, mate, the, the final thing that I wanted to talk about is that, you know, it's all good and well for us to say that, you know, the realtors there for the showing and all that type of stuff. And that, you know, we'll never be replaced from a physical perspective. Kalistra and I recently invested, had the opportunity to invest and gain. Keep in mind, I stand by the comment that I have zero idea when it comes to technology. We just got given an opportunity to invest in a company called figure AI and we got into the series C round and I think we got in a little bit later than what we would like to cause it is pretty hyped up at the moment, but essentially if anyone hasn't seen it, one of the big things that they just recently did is that they just put groceries in front of an AI in front of these two robots, right? These are physical robots. They stand about five foot six high. They currently BMW have them in their factory building cars in South Carolina. And again, it's, they are the only product they're about to launch with another company like a, a excuse me, a shipping company that sort of that, that they'll do all the shipping work and whatever it may be anyway, they now a segwaying into the home, right? And the, where it sort of got a little bit of publicity recently is that there were these two robots, they've got two people, two robots standing there and the owner of the home comes up and puts the groceries in front of them. Like it's got milk, it's got an apple, there's ketchup, there's all these different things, puts it down and basically says, can you two help each other put these away in the right places? Thank you. And walks away. They'd never seen the groceries before. Now don't get me wrong. If you watch the YouTube of it, it's absolutely ******* hilarious to read the comments. Like the robot opens the fridge. He puts the ketchup in the fridge and the milk in the fridge. But one of the comments was, yeah, but my electricity bill just went up $500 a month because he left the fridge open for like half an hour anyway, but it's pretty amazing. Like they're both working together, like they both look at the product and then they see that it's meant to go to the fridge. So one hands it over to them to the fridge and they put it in the fridge, a piece of fruit is over here and it hands the piece of fruit and puts it in the bowl and so on and so forth. But where I'm going with this is that it was interesting based on that video, Tony, is that they said that they've moved up their timeline to have robots in the house. They were planning on getting them into the home within five years and they moved that up another two years earlier. So three years, they believe that those products will be available for people to have in their home. And it sort of made me think because that is now something that is now in the domain that we are being in the property itself. So whether it be cleaning services, whether it be watering plants, whether it be mowing the lawn, whether it be general tidying efforts and things along those lines, all of this to be said, do you think that there is part of this that possibly could segue into real estate? Or where I'm going is what part of AI at the moment do you see is the biggest threat within real estate? We mentioned the buyer side and everything along those lines, but now it's building into the physical attributes, the quote unquote, iRobot thing. Do you see any major threat to the industry at the moment? Well, I don't think I don't see it as a threat. What I do see it as it's actually helping us get better. So if you want to go to like androids, I mean, so that's been an interesting kind of topic because Tesla and them have been Optimus has been out for a bit and they're actually testing them right now in their factories as well, building Teslas and using Grok. And that's why the AI kind of going. So you're we're seeing an ad and they're one of the big pushes. They have it in the home. So you have the Optimus robots or androids in general to be in home to help with doing cleaning that kind of thing from a real estate perspective. I mean, I've seen some bots where they've had it for doing like open house tours where you have the robot will do the tour. I've seen some of those those never took off because you have to have connectivity typically with Wi-Fi. Some of these you get vacant because the reality of a home sometimes is vacant. It might be occupied, but then the owner is not going to want to have a robot there with you. So that so that from that perspective, yeah, it's it's it's debatable. Right. But from from real estate, I think just from the searching kind of getting the like our whole contract, our contract process is way too complex to make that easier where everyone understands, because right now agents, they just send DocuSign don't explain. A lot of them don't, not to say all of them, but most do, though they won't explain what the contract is. And God forbid you ever ask my wife because she loves a contract. She'll like spend hours. That's why we work really well with engineers. We love engineers because they have a lot of questions and we give them a lot of information. But from the Android standpoint, like security kind of watch if you have a vacant home, something kind of be there, watch the property. If there's any type of issues I can if it gets to that point, it's just I'm not I'm not fearful of it at all. I think it's going to be exciting. I think from just from the home standpoint of actually to be able to like help, like say, if you have an older someone that like my mother-in-law, she's a bit older to have someone there to kind of just be present so we can kind of just watch through the eyes and kind of that's kind of creepy, actually. Just think of all those movies like iRobot, Terminator series, where they go bad. But I again, I'm a half full kind of person. So I do see that there's a lot of possibilities. But from a real estate side. But it's still it's still it's still falling in the trap right now for me from a longevity perspective, that it's more support than it is overtaking, because I guess that, you know, that the nuances of showing a property, even if it is vacant, to find the key to get the lockbox that then most of the time fucks up and is a pain in the ass anyway. And then relock the home up and all of those different things. Like there's just there's so much distance between like, don't get me wrong, they're saying that the breakthrough is being able to put the ketchup and figure out that it needs to go in the refrigerator versus put it in the in the drawer. Like that's a major breakthrough. We're a long way away from people being able to be replaced, I guess. So it's more the support side of things that it still is. Yeah, I mean, I love my Roomba, but that thing still gets stuck everywhere. And I'm sure we have we have like you'll look at our house and we have sometimes some stuff like like there's a special spot always gets stuck. So we take the cat thing and just jam it under there or God forbid you have like shoes out. And it's beautiful. It actually unloads itself when it works. But most of the time, if you get that nailed down one hundred percent, I would be because that's it's amazing when it works. It's like the house is great, especially if you have any animals. But that's still and that's how old is that technology? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They've yet to get that one hundred percent. Maybe there might be something else. I'd love to see if there's something better because I need to update my Roomba. What do you use? Do you use Roomba? No, no, no, no. See, this is the thing I couldn't handle it. We did buy one. But the reality was is that I just couldn't handle the inefficiency of it because it just didn't do a good enough job for me. So that's why we we get the house cleaned by cleaners, because I don't think the cleaning side of a property will never unless someone's polishing something or, you know, you've got a robot cleaning your toilet properly or all of getting into the like I'm a clean freak. I like Crystal will tell you, like, I'm just I'm to the next level. And and like like I couldn't handle the fact, Tony, that like in the corner, the Roomba. Yeah, sure. It says it flicks the stuff in like and it gets it. It's like, no, it doesn't. It doesn't get into the ******* corner. I don't know. No, no, it doesn't. So so so I like that just blows like I just couldn't do that. It's kind of like we look I looked at that. They've also got like a lawnmower one because I love that idea. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They've got one of those. But the thing is, like anyway, the technology is just not sufficient at this point in order to replace any human being. It takes more humans in order to get the technology right than it would to just somebody mow the lawn, for Christ's sake. So so I think that that is there's still this highest level of evolution that needs to happen with all of these things. I think the people, though, taking advantage of the support side of things that there is like a great example of this. I just like I had a I had a speech that I had to do at our annual awards. Right. And I am I'm really good at I'm really good at being off the cuff and speaking. However, I never get all of my points across because it'll be all over the place. And I'm I'm I don't usually so I because it was a very important moment for the business. And you and Courtney were there with your team. And I needed to read it and I needed to make sure I got my points across. And I came up with a general structure. And then I got ChatGPT to help me redefine it, do it in a tone. I obviously said that I was a CEO addressing an audience, a live audience on a momentous moment. I gave it a whole thing. And the speech that it came back to me with, I was so happy with and I was so proud to read it like it was just it gave it another edge when if it was on my own, it would have probably missed to an extent because I would have said too much. I wouldn't have said, you know, like it's it's got so much more information or it's got so much more stuff that it's pulling from that it made it really punchy. And I thought that it did a really good job with those type of things like and like and day to day, like I just saw Callista just before. We've got a whole list. We've got someone gave us a list of one hundred and twenty seven showings that they had on a property in Miami that we're just about to take to auction. Part of our job is to put that into the system and to go through all of those people and to let them know that it is now an auction. They sent us over a spreadsheet, right, that wasn't formatted the same way because she uses Airtable on the back end of our auction system. So all she did was just upload a chat GPT and said, hey, make sure it's this format. Like imagine how long that would have taken otherwise. Yeah, just those little things. And what you just described is something because you're a great speaker and you were able to take that the AI to help you make you to make it yourself better. So because I've seen some people read verbatim because if you're not able to be comfortable speaking, so I have these points that I want to have. And it's it's actually it's the address is what your needs are and what you're looking for and you're able to personalize it. And then even with like the Airtable stuff, I mean, data analysis and where it's at. It's just I mean, every time I'm looking at stuff, you can you can repurpose it, create this like I did. I did some really like Instagram. I do Instagram, but it's I think it's kind of dumb, but I still do it anyways. And I make like 30 quotes, automatic reels. I say, OK, go to chat GPT, do this, do that. Dragon camp. And it does it every single day. And I just have a real Tony. This is another part of this. And this is the part where I've gotten a lot more comfortable with it, OK? Is that so I keep my like I'm once a week, at least I go through my own financials and look at, you know, where is this at? What's that at? What's my investment at all of those different things? And then I decided the other day, I just had a moment. I had chat GPT up on my desktop and I was going through my own Excel spreadsheet. Right. And I'm like, OK, let's do this. So I'm 36 this year. Oh, in 30 in 30 years time. And you said I'm old. We're getting old, mate. Come on. Jesus Christ, you're a baby. So so I said to I said to chat GPT, this is my property. This is where it is based on real estate values over the last 30 years. Apply that to the next 30 years. How much will that property be worth? How much I've got this much in my 401k. I've got this much in a whole life insurance. I've got this much, this much, that, that, that, that, that, that. Take the last 30 year metrics and apply that to the next 30 years. How much will these things be worth? And it and it all did that. Right. But then I'm like, oh, wow, that's that's an impressive number. But then I'm like, oh, ****, hang on. Adjust that for inflation historically over the last 30 years. And then I'm like, oh, that's a much less impressive number. And then you start asking for different strategies around different things and how they think based on that information. Now, again, it can't be 100 percent accurate. Don't take it as gospel. But it really was so stimulating to actually go through that. Right. And then also, again, here's another example, Tony, again, sorry to rant, is that someone just approached me with a self-storage unit that I can buy for one point four million dollars in Maine. OK, it makes one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. It has a property on that that hasn't been leased out. That's fully remodeled. And I literally was like, I didn't have time. I plugged all the information, chatted with you and said, hey, what's my cash on cash if I buy it outright? And what's my what's this? What's that? What's that? That's the type of stuff that you should be evaluating opportunities as a realtor and doing it really quickly and sending it to people. Like, I think that's just the amazing stuff, how it maps it all out and showed the formula of how it got there. Right. It was it was amazing. But and also to being able to because because a lot of times people are afraid to ask questions. And if you don't understand something like the process or because there's a lot of like nuanced terms in real estate, especially going to income properties like for one, like, you know, with 1031 exchange, reverse regular exchanges or like if you want to invest in a DST or Delaware Statutory Trust where the so you can look at it. And what's nice is now you can search, like include the web. And they've just added through Chachapiti a thing called DeepThink, which is it will do deep analysis with sources. And you have up to believe three or four on the twenty dollar account. And I usually where I would take a look at something. I just now said, OK, here's a website address. Give me a deep summary of this and put DeepThink on it. And it does a great job of just analyzing everything. So I can say I can look at it. Oh, yeah, that's I thought that's what it was. And it's OK. There's something I didn't realize. And it uses sources to actually bring that. So from it's just like the phone, it's I feel like I'm I'm becoming more informed and better what I'm doing. And that's why I really like it and enjoy it. And it's it's it's great. I mean, it's I think it's a great tool. And it's and the fact that you have so many different ones out there, you got Brock, which is a great alarm. You have Metta, the Olama one. You have Claude, which is an amazing writing tool. Now you have DeepThink, which is Chinese. You have to remember that's Chinese. So it's going to go over there. And then, of course, you have Chachi and everything else. So there's just so much out there, which I just absolutely love. Well, mate, we'll continue to explore. And thank you for being our our guiding force through all of this. Is it as there's plenty of stuff to do next time? We're definitely going to be doing the ranking stuff. So let's talk about that, because I think that's a really big avenue for people. But thanks again, mate. I appreciate it. Appreciate you having you on. All right. See you. So about 75 percent of our audience hasn't liked, followed or subscribed to our podcast. It would mean the world to us, and it would help this podcast more than, you know, to expand our reach if you were to like, follow or subscribe on any of the platforms that you're watching or listening on. Thanks again.