ChatCRE Edition 1: Let’s Get It Started

Welcome to ChatCRE

Hi Folks. Before we dive in, I wanted to quickly say “thank you” for being one of the first 60 people to receive the first edition of the ChatCRE newsletter.

I decided to start this commercial real estate focused AI newsletter for two main reasons: Keeping up with updates in AI news is hard, and figuring out what’s actually relevant for CRE is even harder. After talking to many folks who either already leverage AI in CRE but feel like they can’t keep up, and those who WANT to use AI but don’t know how to get started, I’ve committed to putting together this monthly update to encapsulate a handful of AI updates that have rolled out over the previous month, and give you some tips on how to actually put this amazing technology to use in CRE.

I mean this sincerely, thank you for being here.

I’ll do my best to incorporate the most important CRE-related AI updates I’m aware of that occur throughout the month, but at minimum, in each monthly edition, you can expect to read about new AI tools, updates to existing AI tools, and how to actually them in our industry.

At this point, you may be asking “who actually is this guy?” The short answer is I’ve worked in commercial real estate marketing, sales, leasing, and brokerage management roles for over a decade, and a key focus of my job has always been staying ahead of the curve with commercial real estate tech. But despite the time I’ve spent with technology, when it comes to AI, we’re pretty much all starting from scratch. We’re at the very beginning of what’s going to be a wild rollercoaster ride that barely started a year ago, but it is moving FAST. 

So fasten your seatbelt and let’s get into it.

AI-Power Listing Outreach: The CRE Listing Launcher from the Massimo Group

(Image created with Microsoft Copilot)

Given this is an AI newsletter focused on CRE, I can’t think of a better place to start than touching on the release of one of the handful of publicly available AI tools actually built for commercial real estate: Enter The CRE Listing Launcher, built by The Massimo Group (a commercial real estate brokerage coaching service). The Listing Launcher promises to use AI to help brokers market exclusive CRE listings so effectively, that they can shorten the length of their listing agreements, and command higher fees. I had a conversation with Rod Santomassimo, leader of the company, to find out more about the product. 

Given every broker out there would love the prospect of charging higher fees, that’s a heck of a proposal. But how does the listing launcher actually accomplish this?

Here’s what it does:

When you boil down the platform: It's an AI tool that automates outbound 1-to-1 marketing for your listings. Said otherwise, you get a new exclusive listing, fire up the Listing Launcher, and it it "hits the phones" to market your listing, but it does it via text and email, reaching out to thousands of prospects for your listing on your behalf in a matter of days. But it looks to be much more than just a text and email blast machine. Once the listing launcher reaches out to potential candidates for the property you're marketing, it interacts with them as they ask it questions about the building, and if they’re interested it will coax them to book a showing through your Calendly link – You could think of it as a chatbot that actually does your outreach for you. The AI will also automatically follow up when it doesn't hear back from prospects, sort of like a drip campaign, and all this while you’re busy working on winning your next exclusive listing, and getting ready for your showings.

How’s it actually work?

According to Rod, the process for getting a new listing up and running is pretty simple, but you want to give yourself about a week's lead time. To get started, you’ll need a few things. First off, you’ll need the detailed information on your listing to feed into the listing launcher. Second, and most critically, you’ll need a list of people that you want the listing launcher to reach out to, complete with their name, cell phone and email address – You can provide up to 3,000 of them per listing. You don’t have to worry about training the Chatbot, like you might if you were creating your own from scratch.

Is this just for brokers marketing listings, or can it run other CRE marketing processes?

As of now, this is a POST-EXCLUSIVE tool, meaning it’s for marketing listings once you’ve won the listing. Rod and his team are working on a PRE-exclusive listing tool, which will be aimed at outreach to landlords for the purpose of winning new listings – They’ll also be working on a LEASING launcher tool that should be released in the coming months. This particular tool is focused on sale listings. As of now this tool is exclusively for the use of commercial real estate brokers. 

Drawbacks

Like with any new technology, there’s a few drawbacks (which I’ll plan to cover in every tool I do a deep dive on.) Other than the fact that the tool is limited to marketing sale listings, one potential drawback is the cost - $1,500 per listing. This isn’t a cheap fee per listing, but it all comes down to 2 things: What’s your fee worth and what’s your time worth? If the platform works as described, it could be a no-brainer for high-value investment properties. The second drawback, according to Rod, is that not all brokers will have well-defined prospect lists for the listing launcher to reach out to. If you only have 100 potential people to reach out to, it could still be worth it. It comes back to the question – “What’s your time worth?”, and whether or not it’s worth it to have AI reach out to those 100 people on your behalf. 

You’ll have to be the judge of that one, but you can find more info on the listing launcher here while you think about it. The listing launcher became available to 20 early adopters this month, and they’re taking 100 more users in March. 

You didn’t expect me to hit you with a deep dive like that in the first edition, did you?

Listen, we’re not messing around here. To keep this newsletter practical and tactical, I’m going to need to get into the weeds a bit so you can get an idea of what tools you can actually make use of and which ones you can’t. But if an outbound email and texting robot sounds like more than you’re ready to bite off right now, don’t feel like I’m leaving you behind. If you’re JUST getting started with using AI, here’s an X (Twitter) thread I wrote on how to get started with using ChatGPT for commercial real estate. It’s a 10 step playbook on getting started and getting comfortable with using ChatGPT. I highly recommend it for anyone who feels like they don’t know where to start with AI – But don’t let that feeling preclude you from reading the rest of this newsletter. 

Last note on that topic, if you want to use AI in your business, but you don’t know where to start, you aren’t alone:

Here’s what else has been going on with AI for CRE in the last month or so.

AI-Driven Lease Abstraction:

In early January, I tweeted a handful of AI predictions, one of them being that AI tools capable of full-blown lease abstractions would be released in 2024. It turned out that LeaseLens had actually been released a few days before that (hopefully I still get some street cred for the prediction).

This has been a hot topic in the CRE AI space, as late as Fall 2023 it didn’t seem like any AI tools were able to complete legitimate lease abstractions – But based on the handful of tests I’ve run, LeaseLens seems capable of doing just that. 

As a note - Lease Lens states they don’t share any data with 3rd parties and that all leases are deleted after abstraction. But PLEASE consult with your legal counsel before uploading any actual legal documents to this platform.

One more note on the topic, there’s an additional AI lease abstraction tool out there called Prophia AI that seems powerful. Their sales process is more involved so I haven’t demoed it yet, but if this use-case is important to you, consider looking into it.

(Image credit: LeaseLens.ai)

AI For The Rest of Us:

(Image made using Canva)

Potentially the biggest AI news of the past month: Microsoft released Copilot for Office 365 to general business users (it was previously just available for enterprise users, companies with 300 employees and up.) This product provides AI functions through the tools that professionals use every day, like Powerpoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook – Your slideshows, docs, spreadsheets and emails will soon have AI baked right in (assuming you or your company splurge for the subscription.)

While this isn’t EXPLICITLY related to commercial real estate, my prediction is that this will be one of the most impactful AI updates of 2024, because it means your everyday CRE pro who may not be tinkering with ChatGPT, or any other AI tools, now has the option access to the power of AI in the tools that they live out of every single day.

Curious how CRE pros can use Copilot 365 in their every day work? Here’s a quick look at how you can create an AI-generated Powerpoint Presentation with 1 prompt:

(Video made using Focusee)

Would I call that a finished presentation? No. But it’s a solid jumping off point produced in seconds, and having the ability to do this all directly in Powerpoint, and similar functions in Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote is going to add a new level of accessibility to folks who’ve wanted to dip their toe in the AI waters but haven’t had the gumption to sign up for one of the standard AI platforms (there are MANY of those people).

Here's just a handful of ways you could use Copilot for CRE functions:

• Summarize a lengthy email exchange in Outlook between a tenant and attorney to understand the points that’ve been covered and next steps.

• Analyze & create charts for sales & leasing data in Excel

• Draft LOI’s or contracts based off templates in Word

• Automated meeting notes & action items in Teams

• Draft Powerpoint’s & pitch decks from an outline

We’ll save the deep dive into Copilot 365’s CRE uses for another newsletter. But if you’d like to see detailed breakdowns for how to use Copilot to execute the tasks above in the newsletter, let me know in the poll below!

And there you have it.

A CRE listing outreach automation platform, lease abstraction, and AI ready for the professional masses all unleashed in the first 7 weeks of 2024 (or close to it.) I have a feeling there will be plenty to cover throughout the rest of the year.

Thanks for joining me for the first edition of ChatCRE - I’d love to hear what you thought! Feel free to comment with what you liked or could do without, or send me a message over on X. If you found this helpful, please feel subscribe, or pass the newsletter along to a friend.

Last thing..

I’ll be giving a presentation on the benefits of AI tools for CRE this March. If you’d be interested in me giving a presentation on the topic to your team, feel free to send me an email, and let’s chat!