4 Reasons AI Is Holding Back Your Real Estate Success
17 Apr 2025 · 12 min
Lars Hedenborg argues AI distracts real estate agents from what actually works: human judgment, authentic brand building, and adapting to market shifts. He's coached thousands of agents and helped over 5,000 families, and says AI is useful for research and brainstorming but can't replace the relationship skills that close deals.
Going to dive into the four reasons why AI is holding you back and potentially killing your chances of success in real estate. Now, this is inspired by an experience I had recently where I got to see an interview of someone that teaches AI to real estate agents. And I did a little bit of research on this person to find out that this person has never sold real estate or there was no trace online that this person had sold any real estate. And the advice that this person was giving was the thought that AI is the ultimate salvation and it will somehow magically help you get in front of more buyers and sellers. And commission checks are just being printed out of thin air. It is the kiss of death I'm seeing right now. The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share all with you the good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results. You just gotta do the work. The first reason, so let's just jump right into it, the first reason is that AI is a massive distraction. It is not a magical lead generator. So all the time you're spending thinking that AI, or even if AI is integrated into your CRM, thinking that AI is going to be the answer and is going to get you high quality, inbound, organic, warm leads, we don't see that happening. So I do use AI in the business and we do recommend that agents use AI. And I'll get into some of those reasons and the, the effective ways that you can use AI, but it is a massive distraction. I have an agent, actually really successful agent, and I asked them the question. I said if all you had was a database of people that knew, like and trusted you, and that's all you could work on is building that database, feeding it regularly and communicating added value consistently, is it possible that you could build a database of 250 people and there's 50 to 100 in there, that if you treated them the right way in a given year, they would refer a piece of business to you that ended up closing. So ultimately getting to 50 to 100 transactions per year just on the right 250 people, and they said, yeah, 100%. It was in a group coaching setting. I do a Monday call with Our community where I just answer questions and I challenge agents. And they brought up the topic of their integrating AI. I think they have AI calling to circle prospecting or like just this bleeding edge AI solution for real estate agents. And I'm like, have you talked to anyone where that thing actually works? And they said no. I said, how much did it cost? And it was a five figure annual investment. And I said, oh my Lord. I said, you guys haven't even really done the required level of effort on your database and then also your digital footprint. Nobody really wants to see AI generated anything. And it might be different in the future, but as it stands now, it's a massive distraction. So that's the first reason why AI is holding you back. You think it's going to be this end all, be all, it's going to solve all your problems and you're spending a lot of time on it and it's a massive distraction. That's number one. Number two is that AI lacks human judgment. It has no emotional intelligence. When I brought up the, the reason, the inspiration for this, where I, I basically heard this AI real estate AI coach say another use, this was their words, not my words, that you could use AI to do all of your client care, basically your interaction with your buyers and sellers, your active clients, that you could have AI handle those conversations. Is this possible? Are there AI driven services, either via chat or voice that are doing this right now? Yes, 100%. Here's my question for you. I was on a AI driven whatever, you know, automated voice system where it is not what I wanted. I'm like representative, human person, representative, representative. They, they couldn't understand exactly what I was asking. And I was trying to be clear. I was trying to, you know, placate this robot, essentially this AI driven customer service solution. And I was trying to get them to help me and they couldn't do it. And so to think that AI is going to plug that hole in your business. You know, only 1% of agents sell two homes per month consistently. So 25 homes per year. Less than 1% of agents last year sold 25 homes or more. And, and you could run that kind of business without any technology, you don't even need a CRM to run a business at that level. Right? Maybe if you're selling a thousand homes per year and it's a highly sophisticated business that you're running. But for these basic businesses that we're running, where the relationships we have with our clients are 90% of the reason that connection and they're either searching for a home and this is where they're going to raise their family, or they're selling their home and it's where they raised their family. There's a lot of emotion involved in what we help buyers and sellers with on the daily. So to think that AI is going to plug any of that is it's highly unlikely and I just would not suggest it. So that's the second reason, the third reason why AI is not going to be the holy grail that you think it is. It cannot replace brand building. And honestly, it makes your marketing generic. If there is an AI, and I have conversations with AI every day, I use AI in different ways for research. I was able to go into Perplexity, which is an awesome AI tool. I basically just asked Perplexity. We were trying to cross reference the schools that had men's volleyball to schools that had great programs for entrepreneurship. And I could do that in about 30 seconds. On perplexity, is it a valuable tool? 100%. And there's lots of tools now that are AI driven, social media or marketing tools for real estate agents. Anything they put out is so bland, it's so watered down. None of it is highly impactful. It's not going to create any engagement whatsoever. And most of the time you could tell if someone's putting out an AI generated or canned piece of content. And so it's going to check the box for you mentally thinking that you're doing brand building, thinking that you're doing marketing and ultimately you're not doing any of that. And so it's not going to lead you to the result that you want to be led to. I used to not be a big Gary Vaynerchuk fan and lately I've just been all in on consuming his stuff. He curses a lot, so you have to get over that. But Gary Vee had an expression where he said, unless you are the guy or girl that has the billions of dollars that can be the bleeding edge on a technology like AI and you're a local service business, you need to drop back into what it was like to do business in the 1950s where every relationship mattered. You knew everything about the person that came into your local barber shop or the local restaurant where it had a local owner, non franchise. Right? That's how you need to run your real estate business is a high degree of caring. And we are not going to blaze a trail with AI in real estate. And I think that's a massive competitive advantage. And when it comes to marketing and brand building, the Deepest and widest moat you can build around your business is your ability to build a database of folks that know, like and trust you, to build out a value add touch system that's personal, that's branded to you, that has your personality laced all over it, and then just touch those folks on a regular basis. Our touch System is a 60 touch system over the course of a year where you establish these relationships and it does happen on autopilot, but it's all branded to you. Most of it is not even real estate related. Right? Nobody wants to hear about the home you just listed or some generic piece of content around interest rates. I mean, they want to know how crazy it is to be a husband and a dad and barely get your kid out the door in the morning. And you know, what it was like to really push through that difficult negotiation with that other agent and how you represented your seller. If you're going to talk at all about real estate and AI cannot replicate that for you. So it will never replace your ability to build a database, to expand your digital footprint. It just won't do it. All right, that's number three. Number four, AI does not adapt to changing market conditions. Right? You are the market expert. Your job is to establish authority, albeit through authenticity, but establish authority in your market as the go to expert. And I just believe in my soul that AI is not going to be able to step into that role for you. People want to know that they're entrusting their largest purchase or their largest asset. If they're buying or selling, they're entrusting that asset with somebody that absolutely knows what they're talking about. And I just don't think AI is going to step in there. And you could use AI to pull up some market stats, especially a tool like perplexity. I use ChatGPT as well. I'll have conversations with ChatGPT and I'll kind of go through like, you know, different scenarios that I'm running through in business. I will say this though. I was very hopeful that I had hired the perfect employee to my real estate coaching company, Real Estate B School. And this employee was 1500amonth. I think it was 1500amonth. And this employee worked 24. 7. Awesome. Emma was her name. Emma was AI, not a magical lead generator. You know, they don't have human judgment or emotional intelligence. They're not going to, you know, follow your brand. I gave Emma the longest, like three or four months and just constantly, you could just tell. And we tried to train Emma and we worked on it worked on it, worked on it. They said if you just train the AI they will do what you need them to do. And it, it never worked. So I had to fire Emma. It was sad. I was hopeful, you know, that this was the one employee that never needed to take a vacation or never needed to sleep. And it just didn't pan out. If there are tools that can benefit what you're doing in the business, yeah, totally fine. Here's what you can use AI for. Like let's say you're wanting to create some short form content and you're just stuck for ideas. You go into chatgpt and you will just type out, I'm a real estate agent in Dallas, Texas. You know, I want to work with trade up buyers. So home to sell trading from 400,000 to 800,000. What are 10 short form video topics I can create? I don't have a studio, I just have my iPhone. How should I create these videos? And they'll literally give you an answer like go to this spot in Dallas, this new home development, this, you know, they'll tell you exactly what to do. And you can also say, okay, what's an effective way to if you've never done video before, what's an effective way to script or at least bullet point out a short form video where I'm interviewing a local business owner? That's an effective way to use AI but not to think that it's going to magically deliver closing checks. Right, that's what we want. Every agent's looking for just feed me the fish, feed me the fish. But no agent is looking to build the system so they know how to fish. And that is what we do with the million dollar agent method. Our promise is that within 90 days we'll get you to two to three closings per month. Just implementing and following our daily routine on your database, your digital footprint with we've got eight other legion levers, our client care compound effect. We have systems that are proven and they will never be displaced by artificial intelligence. So if that's you, go to milliondollaragentmethod. Com, that's milliondollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you over there. Have a good one.
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