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You can’t scroll through your daily news feed these days without seeing story after story about the impact of generative AI on virtually any and all industries. It’s here, and the good news is it can be an incredibly useful tool in real estate. 

According to a recent analysis by McKinsey Global Institute, “In our own work with AI, we have seen real estate companies gain over 10% or more in net operating income through more efficient operating models, stronger customer experience, tenant retention, new revenue streams, and smarter asset selection.” 

And this should hold true for the real estate investor as well—even those of us with fewer than 10 doors. Especially investors with small portfolios, in fact, since we often don’t have the help of slick management companies. 

Think of generative AI as a super-smart, articulate virtual assistant, and then think about all the things you would delegate to that assistant if you could. Here are a few places to start:

Create Property Listings

Have a vacancy coming up? When writing your property listing, don’t waste time agonizing over your prose.

Enter the key details into ChatGPT, including the important keywords (“view, “covered parking,” whatever works for your market), and ask it to use those inputs to create a 250-word listing optimized for your keywords using a “friendly but professional tone.” In five seconds, you’ll have a listing that you can either tweak yourself or, better yet, ask ChatGPT to keep tweaking until it’s perfect.

Time saved: 1.5 hours

Market Your Listings

Use a generative image AI tool like the creative options in Canva to create an Instagram post for your new listing. Better yet, have Canva create 10 posts, including all the relevant captions and hashtags, each slightly different, highlighting a desirable feature of your listing, and post one every other day until you’re leased. 

Time saved: 4 hours

Respond to Inquiries

Set up an auto-response within Instagram so that anytime a follower comments “details” (or whatever word you choose), an AI bot immediately sends them the full listing in their DMs (even if it’s 3 a.m.). The bot can also ask for their address—and now you’ve begun to grow your future marketing email list. 

Do they want to walk the property? The bot can send your Calendly schedule with predetermined viewing windows.

Time saved: 2 hours

Automate Emails

Every month, five days before rent is due, send your tenants a quick reminder (one ChatGPT has written for you and that you’ve auto-scheduled in advance, once for the whole year) with the link to your rent payment site. Once a quarter, automate a friendly check-in (again, have ChatGPT compose for you), asking if there are any maintenance issues that need attending to.

Time saved: 1.5 hours

Virtual Staging

Empty houses don’t sell nearly as well as furnished ones do. Show your potential tenant just how your place will look with their perfect mid-century sofa in the living room. Use generative AI to virtually stage your rental and help your hipster tenants image themselves right at home in your space.

Time saved: 8 hours and up!

How have you used generative AI to save you time and money?

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.