Avoiding a ‘sea of sameness’: Small real estate teams weigh AI benefits

Artificial intelligence is elbowing its way into real estate, promising efficiency while threatening the very thing agents trade on: human connection. For Jeff Funk in Orlando and Michael Franco in New York City, the daily experiment isn’t whether to use AI, but how far to lean in without losing authenticity.

Funk, leader of eXp Realty-affiliated The Funk Collection, says that real estate AI is embedded into the workflow of his eight-member team. He founded the business in 2016 before joining eXp the following year. 

“We have automated emails going out, drip campaigns,” he said. “But agents have to know the scheduling of that drip campaign. If they have a conversation with someone today, [they had] better make sure an email doesn’t go out tomorrow saying, ‘Hey, haven’t talked to you forever.’”

Franco founded the five-member Michael J. Franco Group in 2013 and joined Compass in 2019.

He’s using AI for a range of marketing content, but never as a complete human replacement. 

“I’m continuing to push for more (use of AI) in content creation, primarily for marketing,” he said. “It can be everything [from a] relevant and eye-catching listing description to any kind of marketing materials; content for postcards, content for brochures and flyers and content for newsletters.”

Fighting the ‘sea of sameness’

Funk warned that too many agents are letting AI do all the talking — creating formulaic copy that’s easy to spot. 

“I don’t know if you scroll around on Zillow or anything, but there’s a sea of sameness in the listings,” he said. “Agents will throw something in ChatGPT, and they will immediately push it. It goes from ChatGPT to print. Over time, you start noticing that. Not every home should start out with ‘Welcome to 123 Banana Street.’ You start seeing that pattern.”

Once AI patterns become recognizable, Funk said, it can quickly damage credibility. 

“We’re all still new to all of this AI content, but once you recognize it, you can’t unsee it,” he said. 

The solution, he said, is to train AI to reflect authentic, human communication methods unique to a particular team or team member. 

“You have to train it and you can’t just open up ChatGPT and say, ‘Write me a listing remark,’” Funk said. “It’ll do it, but it’s not going to do it right for you. And it needs to know who you are and how you talk.”

Balancing efficiency with relationships

Both leaders drew hard boundaries on where AI ends and human interaction begins. 

Funk said he’s recently had to confirm that communication from him was not written by AI. 

“I’m like, ‘No, it’s me,’” he said of texts some clients assumed were AI-written. “Because you don’t want to break that trust. It takes forever to achieve that and it takes a second to break it.”

Franco said the key is not going too far with AI in client reachout. 

“I don’t substitute any sort of personal interactions, except for responses,” he said. “We’re getting into some of that too, using AI for email responses and text responses, but only for an initial response, not for engaging with a client or prospective client beyond that.

“We’re small. We don’t do a lot of online lead stuff so the business is primarily referral and people that we either meet directly or through somebody. We’re not substituting AI for real, personal interactions at any level.”

Funk acknowledged that the current surge in AI products can be overwhelming. 

“With real estate agents, we’ve always talked about shiny objects, and there’s always been a program to help you do this,” he said. “Now, with AI, everything’s a shiny object, and everybody has a brand-new solution coming out, and they all sound really good.”

AI wish list

If Funk could design the perfect AI tool, he said it would revolutionize home searches — basing them entirely on text prompts rather than a series of checked or unchecked boxes. 

“People say, ‘Hey, I want to live in Orlando.’ Orlando is a big spot,” he said. “Well, where do you work? What do you like to do on the weekend? Are you a Disney fan? Do you like concerts or the theater? Farmers markets? Do you want land?”

Franco hopes to reduce outsourcing. 

“I still outsource a lot of print production,” Franco said. “I have a videographer. If we can take some of this stuff in-house, then we can start utilizing some of the video editing tools, and that’s going to save us a lot of time and effort. We’re not relying on another person to put out the content or waiting for the content to come back to us to put it out.”

All in all, the real estate industry must continue walking a fine line of AI advancement and not moving away from human authenticity that breeds client trust and long-lasting relationships — no matter how shiny the object.