How AI can ‘bring down the learning curve’ for agents
Rechat’s founder and CEO discusses the industry’s growing adoption of AI and what agents should be doing in a market that’s “more competitive than ever.”
Key points:
- Shayan Hamidi founded Rechat in 2015 as a “super app” for agents. As the company has evolved, AI has moved from the back end to the forefront of its products.
- Agents have an “unbelievable amount of tasks that need to be executed,” Hamidi said — which makes AI “a perfect fit for real estate.”
- That doesn’t mean it’s making the job easy, however. To survive in today’s competitive market, agents must work harder and commit to it for the long term, Hamidi added.
Rechat wants to be the one-stop shop for real estate agents — and 10 years in, the company is making its mark. So is its founder and CEO, Shayan Hamidi, who made his debut this year on the SP 200 ranking of real estate's most influential leaders.
Rechat's self-described "super app" offers marketing tools, a CRM and a transaction management center; a more recent addition — an AI assistant called Lucy — is designed to help agents do more (in less time).
For Hamidi, the world of artificial intelligence is nothing new. He got his start in technology at the University of Toronto studying computer science, math and economics, and after graduating, leveraged his background to co-found the residential real estate startup TheRedPin in 2009. Following his exit from the company in 2014, he founded Rechat, an AI-powered platform that allows agents to manage the key aspects of their business within one app.
Hamidi recently spoke with Real Estate News about the industry's adoption of AI, how the technology can "bring down the learning curve" for agents, and what agents should be doing to thrive in the current market.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rechat has embraced AI in a big way — how did you get started with the technology?
We started using AI a long time ago in the back end, for analytics work. We had this unbelievable tool that uses AI to figure out who you should be marketing to, but it was never in the front end, which we now do with generative AI.
The AI we have today, Lucy, she's the assistant for agents. She can execute on tasks that it would take hours for an agent to do. You can ask her to create a website for you, … and within seconds, it's done. Historically, you'd have to spend a couple thousand dollars and wait for a couple of weeks possibly to do this. Internally, we have a saying: "We went from 90 days to 90 seconds."
AI-powered tools are showing up everywhere — how are they influencing the industry as a whole?
There's a number of reasons why AI is a great solution and a perfect fit for real estate … If you look at an agent's day-to-day, you have buyers, you have sellers, you have listings, you have prospecting, you have to create marketing content, you have to stay on top of your relationships … There's an unbelievable amount of tasks that need to be executed.
Now historically, a lot of the more successful agents and teams would essentially go out and hire assistants and outsource the legwork, and they would focus on the things they do best.
Well, this is not something everyone can afford, obviously. So with AI, you're able to actually make that available to everyone. Everyone can have this assistant that helps them with the heavy lifting on things they don't need to be an expert on.
We think that, with AI, we're actually able to bring down the learning curve and the work that goes into becoming an amazing agent and offering a great client experience.
What are the biggest challenges for real estate professionals today?
Well, we're in a very tough market. There's historically been low inventory, the interest rates have been sticky and pretty high — so it's been tough to be part of this market for the past two years.
There have been a number of different things — macro elements — that have impacted agents' lives. And there have been the lawsuits coming down on the industry that have impacted the brokerages. Real estate has always been competitive, but I think it's more competitive than ever.
Given those challenges, what advice do you have for agents?
My advice would be to take a step back. The market is not the same as it was several years ago where just being in the market or working part time you could make a living. This has become an extremely competitive market. You need to be very committed to your profession, you need to be able to deal with it like a professional, you need to be able to invest in it, and you've gotta be in it for the long term.
This is no longer something you can do while you are a teacher on the side or have other gigs on the side. This is only something you can do if you see it as a full-time profession. You also need to look at this as more like a marathon — you can't get in and quickly see results.