A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. A house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. This is probably the only reliable truth when it comes to pricing a property. Enter artificial intelligence. Like everywhere on the planet, AI is disrupting real estate. In March, famous real estate CEO Ryan Serhant of his namesake company posted a video on Instagram titled “ChatGPT just blew my $50 million deal.” In his post, he explains how he negotiated a deal on the property, but “at the last minute the seller uses ChatGPT and asks, ‘Should I sell at this price?’ And maybe because of the way he asked etc, ChatGPT told him no, you shouldn’t sell at that price, it’s worth more. Then, he said, the buyer did the same thing, asking OpenAI’s AI tool if he was paying too much, and ChatGPT told him that, yes, he was paying too much. “It gave him comparables that showed why, without context and without actually understanding the property,” Serhant said. Serhant’s post has more than 3 million views. He managed to save the deal, he said in a later post, by telling both the buyer and seller the following about AI: “It doesn’t know the future, it can’t predict the future. “AI can model a market. It can’t model a deal.” Serhant said he believes AI is an essential tool for real estate agents and has even launched his own AI-based workflow automation platform and operating system, called S.MPLE, which he spoke about recently on the Property Play podcast. And he’s not alone. For most real estate professionals, AI’s data aggregation capabilities can certainly enhance their expertise, according to Kamini Lane, CEO of Coldwell Banker Realty. “Market analysis, benchmarking, those are key tools in a real estate agent’s toolbox. But the important thing is that they are starting points for an agent to then apply their judgment, their expertise, their nuanced understanding of the real estate market, to validate or improve the recommendation that any data tool would provide,” she said. Lane said his agents are seeing more clients — buyers and sellers — turning to sources like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to price their home or calculate offers. Like Serhant, she warned about the way these broad, generalized language patterns overlook the nuances of a home, a neighborhood, and a client. “One of the most important things that agents can see, that ChatGPT, or any other AI tool, won’t know, is [what’s] to come and to come. “The anecdotal data that agents aggregate through their conversations is something that no AI tool will ever be able to aggregate in the same way that a real estate professional can.” guide homebuyers in their search by knowing their specific needs. This then allows home buyers to have a more personalized conversation with Zestimate. “AI advice for consumers needs to be connected to real context, real data, real ability to act,” said Nicholas Stevens, vice president of product and AI at Zillow. “Then that AI advice needs to be deeply tied to what a real estate agent is trying to do. This is the difference between what we do at Zillow and a generic third-party experience. “Agents have to upload detailed floor plans and 3D visual captures of the entire house and surrounding land with all possible information. Then, in AI mode, Zillow gives advice to the buyer on what might be a good deal. “He actually sees a renovated kitchen. There are actually improvements being made to the home, which is helpful both for buyers, but also for homeowners who are considering selling or renovating,” Stevens said. Zillow’s AI feature is now primarily aimed at buyers, but Stevens said the company will roll out a tool for sellers as well. He may also not be inclined to give the often difficult-to-hear advice that a human agent must give. “AI is trained to be wooers, it’s trained to give you the answers you want, so you can continue to engage, and so AI is more likely to give you the price you want versus the price a house is going to sell for,” Lane said.