AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard can help you create all kinds of content to support your real estate marketing and communications efforts. But there are some drawbacks you should know about, especially if you care about your search engine rankings and reputation.
Using AI to Write Real Estate Content
I know firsthand that many real estate agents and brokers are now using generative AI-programs like ChatGPT and Bard to write their real estate content. They’re using AI to create real estate blog articles, social media posts, and more.
And while artificial intelligence can certainly simplify the content-writing task, it’s still no match for human-generated content.
- Yes, it can spit out real estate content in a matter of seconds.
- Yes, it typically adheres to basic grammar and spelling rules.
- And yes, it can work for hours without getting “tired.”
But you should think twice before allowing AI to write all of your real estate content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to use these tools to increase productivity, while avoiding some of the common problems associated with AI-generated content.
4 Problems With AI-Generated Content
You can create real estate content by providing a specific prompt to a generative AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard.
For instance, I could tell ChatGPT: “Write an article about the pros and cons of using a home inspection contingency, for an audience of first-time buyers.” And it would deliver this article in under a minute.
Here is the actual article ChatGPT delivered (PDF)
But there’s an important point to be made here. Just because you can churn out real estate blog content and articles with ChatGPT and Bard doesn’t mean that you should.
In fact, I would argue that you definitely should not. A far better approach is to use generative AI programs to facilitate the real estate content writing process—not to take it over entirely.
I’ll offer some best practices for using ChatGPT and other AI programs for creating real estate content a bit later. For now, let’s get back to the theme of this article.
Here are five potential problems with AI-generated real estate content:
1. Inaccurate or incomplete information
I’ve spent countless hours using tools like Bard and ChatGPT to create all sorts of real estate content, ranging from social media posts to articles and e-books. Along the way, I’ve learned that these tools occasionally produce inaccurate or incomplete information.
An example: I once had Bard tell me that home prices tend to rise more quickly when supply levels increase, when it’s usually the exact opposite.
In addition to producing inaccuracies, AI programs often create incomplete content that misses some very important points.
If you refer back to the article on home inspection contingencies produced by ChatGPT, you’ll notice it leaves out an important point when discussing the potential downsides. It doesn’t explain that contingencies can make a home buyer’s offer less attractive to the seller, which might result in them losing the house in a competitive market.
That doesn’t mean the rest of the article is incorrect or inaccurate. ChatGPT does cover some other important points and considerations. But it also ignores what is arguably one of the most important considerations when using contingencies—the risk of losing the home.
2. Sameness and similarity
If you’re like most real estate professionals, you care about search engine optimization, visibility and rankings. Earning good Google rankings for your real estate website can go a long way toward helping you build your business. So it’s worth pursuing.
This is another potential problem with AI-generated real estate content, especially blog posts and other forms of website content. There’s a certain “sameness” to the material they produce.
Millions of people use generative AI programs like Bard and ChatGPT every single day, and a lot of them are creating real estate content. By their very nature, these programs learn through repetition. So they often develop a certain pattern in response to user prompts relating to real estate content.
If I conducted three separate sessions with ChatGPT to have it create an article on inspection contingencies, it would produce three separate articles with unique wording. But they would almost certainly cover the same topics and follow the same general format.
The point here is that if you use AI programs to create real estate content, it will probably have a similar “feel” to a lot of content that already exists online.
And this is where search engines like Google come into the picture.
Google likes to reward content that stands out from the crowd by being more authoritative, more comprehensive, and above all, more useful to the reader.
You cannot achieve these things with AI-generate content. Not with a single prompt anyway. If you have ChatGPT or Bard crank out real estate blog posts or articles from a single prompt (as in the earlier example), the content will resemble similar articles they’ve created in the past.
And that’s no way to earn top rankings in the search engines.
3. Ignorance of local market conditions
As a real estate agent or broker, you probably focus on a specific geographical area. Maybe it’s a particular community, town, city or metro area. Your real estate content strategy should reflect this by offering quality information about the local real estate market.
Generative AI platforms like Bard and ChatGPT can perform a lot of different tasks. But they’re not very good at creating accurate and local real estate market reports.
ChatGPT doesn’t even have access to current market data, due to its knowledge “cut off” date. And Bard tends to say the same things about almost every local real estate market, as if they’re all the same.
Writing accurate, in-depth information about your local real estate market is one of the best ways to attract local home buyers and sellers to your website. After all, that’s the exact kind of information they’re looking for.
But you can’t rely on AI programs to accomplish this objective. This is one area where you’re better off writing your own content.
4. Glossing over instead of digging deep
As we’ve seen, generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard tend to produce short and shallow real estate articles and blog posts—at least when given a single prompt.
And this is not the kind of content you want to publish onto your real estate website or blog.
If you take your publishing efforts seriously and hope to benefit from them, you’ll need to create useful content that fully explores the topic at hand. You don’t want to gloss over an important subject.
Google has a concept it calls “Your Money or Your Life,” or YMYL for short. Basically, they have higher standards when ranking and displaying web content that deals with financial or health-related topics. And real estate falls under the broader category of personal finance.
In an article on their blog, Google’s search team explains that their search engine algorithm “seeks to surface reliable information, especially on topics where information quality is critically important.”
Real estate is a serious subject that can affect a person’s overall financial health. Bear this in mind when writing content for your blog or website. If you use an AI tool like ChatGPT to create real estate content, try to develop a “multiple prompt” process to produce comprehensive, in-depth articles.
A single prompt on other hand will result in a short and shallow article that glosses over the subject matter. This kind of content doesn’t benefit your readers or position you as an expert. It’s not going to impress anyone, and it certainly won’t rank well in search engine results.
Finding a Happy Medium: The Hybrid Model
This article is not meant to dissuade you from creating real estate content with generative AI tools like Bard or ChatGPT. On the contrary, these tools can be a useful additional to your writing and publishing efforts.
But you shouldn’t give them free rein when it comes to creating content.
A better approach is something I refer to as the human-machine hybrid model. And while it sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, it’s actually quite simple.
With a hybrid approach, you control the content development process and use the AI to supplement your writing efforts. This gives you the best of both worlds. It accelerates and simplifies the process, while avoiding some of the common problems outlined in this article.
An Example of the Hybrid Method
Let’s say I’m writing an article that explains who pays for which closing costs in my local area, between the buyer and seller. I’m using my own knowledge and experience to explain local customs regarding who pays what.
I decide to generate a list of common closing costs and insert it within the article, to make it more informative for readers. I could do this quickly and easily by giving Bard or ChatGPT the following prompt:
“Using bullet points, create a list of common closing costs incurred by both the buyer and seller.”
A generative AI program could create such a list in a matter of seconds. I could then copy and paste that content into my article, verify it through my own experience, and move on to the next section of the blog post. Repeat as necessary!
That’s just one example of how you could use a hybrid model to create better real estate content with AI programs, while avoiding some of the problems mentioned above.
The idea here is to use Bard or ChatGPT as a writing assistant, rather than the actual writer.
I encourage you to experiment with this method, and possibly develop your own version of it. Just make sure the finished product truly serves your target audience. Combine AI with your own knowledge to create superior real estate content that’s better than anything else out there.
If you do this, you will be rewarded with better search engine rankings, a stronger response from readers, and a more effective content marketing strategy.