With all the hype going around about AI and how easy it is to get things done with it, is it okay to use ChatGPT in real estate investing?
Using AI, or artificial intelligence, is not a new thing. Since its invention, people continue to find new ways to make their lives a lot easier by using AI as an aid and tool. It is used in different ways in different industries, almost always delivering the same level of competence and efficiency. The question now is, for something as intuitive as real estate, is an AI chatbot as effective?
Table of Contents
- What Is ChatGPT and How Does It Work?
- How to Use ChatGPT for Real Estate Investing: 6 Ideas
- Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT for Real Estate Investing
- What’s the Most Reliable Tool for Real Estate Investing?
- Wrapping It Up
- Frequently Asked Questions
The concept of artificial intelligence is something that a lot of people are still trying to grasp completely. To the uninformed, AI is a threat that can take away jobs or robots that can potentially do more harm than good. While the fear of AI turning into Terminator’s Skynet is understandable, it is a very unlikely scenario.
AI is simply the simulation of human intelligence and logic using machines and computers. It is used to help make certain day-to-day tasks easier, such as speech recognition, language translation, machine vision, and mapping of inputs.
By automating certain tasks, AI can help individuals and organizations make informed decisions in a fraction of the time. This is where a tool like ChatGPT comes into play.
Related: Impossible Things: 6 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Real Estate
What Is ChatGPT and How Does It Work?
ChatGPT is an AI-driven tool used for natural language processing. The tool allows you to engage in natural human-like conversations with a chatbot. Chatbots were developed to engage users in conversation by understanding and answering questions to stimulate human interaction. The best examples would be Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant.
You can simply ask them questions through text or audio input (or both) and interact with them as if you were conversing with an actual human being.
On that note, ChatGPT takes it a step further and does more for you. It is a tool that can do coding, write essays, and compose emails, among other things. With such features, ChatGPT’s become a huge internet sensation. Users from all over the world are raving about how it made their lives a lot easier.
As a result, a lot of people are becoming curious about how ChatGPT will work in real estate investing. Is it possible to use something so impersonal and detached in a field where you not only rely on accurate calculations but on gut feeling and human interaction, too?
How to Use ChatGPT for Real Estate Investing: 6 Ideas
The good news is that there are several ways that ChatGPT can be of great help to real estate investors. Its use will vary depending on your investment strategy but generally, ChatGPT can take a huge load off your shoulders as you go about your business.
Real estate investors who choose to invest in rental properties will benefit from the ideas on this list. Regardless of whether you start a rental property business for Airbnb or a long term rental, you will find the following uses for ChatGPT helpful:
1. Write Property Descriptions
ChatGPT is saving real estate professionals a lot of time. Many are starting to use the tool to write accurate property descriptions. All you need to do is give it a few details about an investment property and voila! It gives you compelling listings in a matter of seconds.
2. Estimate Calculations
Investing in real estate is a science. To know if a property is worth buying, you must make ROI projections and income calculations. With ChatGPT, you can easily estimate your potential income versus the monthly expenses needed to keep and maintain your property.
While the tool cannot be used for complicated calculations, it will give you answers to simpler equations, such as mortgage calculations and ROI projections. If you want a tool that will do the heavy lifting for you when it comes to crunching numbers, we recommend going with an online investment property calculator.
Related: Real Estate ROI Calculator vs Excel Spreadsheets: Which Is Better?
3. Generate Marketing Ideas
While real estate investing is a science, it is also an art that requires creativity from time to time. As a real estate investor, creativity can sometimes be quite challenging, especially when you’re not gifted with a good imagination. Marketing investment properties, whether you’re a seller or rental property owner, involves a certain degree of creativity.
For this reason, ChatGPT can help you generate creative yet effective marketing ideas to promote your property and get the word out there fast. It can help create a name for your business or give you excellent content ideas to improve your social media presence.
ChatGPT can also be utilized for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes to improve your content. You will need to do some fact-checking for greater accuracy and some basic editing to make it sound more like you for a more personal touch.
4. Communicate With Tenants and Other People
Another effective way of using ChatGPT in real estate investing is using it to communicate with people. Many agents use it to answer questions about a property on the fly. Landlords and vacation rental hosts utilize it to respond to tenants’ and guest queries.
One downside is that using ChatGPT may sound suspiciously robotic with its responses. So, as a rental property owner, you can tweak it a bit by doing a little editing to make it sound warmer. Make it more accommodating―and more human.
If you’re the type of person who doesn’t do well with written correspondence, ChatGPT can take some of the pressure off.
For instance, you can use ChatGPT as a vacation rental owner to write welcome letters to your guests, list down checkout instructions, and create guides for tourists. With the last one, instead of just giving guests a simple list of the top places to visit, ChatGPT will give you compelling results. They will help you connect more with your guests.
If you’re a landlord, you can use it to communicate with your tenants. You can use the program to write lease agreements (you still will need an attorney to go over it), late rent reminders, notices of rent increase or excessive utility usage, and more.
5. Prioritize Management Tasks
If you’re a rental property owner and you own several investment properties, ChatGPT can help you prioritize your tasks so you don’t get overwhelmed with juggling your responsibilities. Simply give it a list of tasks you need to do. Then, it will list them down in order of priority, along with the reasoning behind its choice.
6. Research Basic Housing Information and Regulations
Real estate investing is all about location. You’ve heard it before and we’re saying it now. You need to find the right location that will give you a good return on your investment. However, before you can get to that, you will need to do some digging into potential markets. This is something that ChatGPT can help you with.
Understandably, researching a particular real estate market will take you quite some time to do, especially if you do it the conventional way. With ChatGPT, you can learn about basic housing information and regulations about any market of your choice with just a few keyboard strokes or a few choice words spoken.
For instance, if you plan to invest in vacation rentals, you will need to read lengthy articles and lists about short term rental rules and regulations of different counties and cities. Instead of going through all that material, ChatGPT can give you a list of cities where vacation rentals are completely legal. Also, it can summarize laws in different areas into digestible chunks for you to process.
Related: What Is Real Estate Investing and How Does It Work?
Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT for Real Estate Investing
As with all things in life, using ChatGPT for real estate investing comes with its own set of benefits and setbacks. Let’s go over some of them briefly.
Advantages of Using ChatGPT in Real Estate Investing
Here are some of the pros of using ChatGPT in real estate investing:
1. Convenient
It is very convenient to use as all you need is your smartphone or device to type in or talk. You can use it anytime, anywhere.
2. Time-Saver
Using ChatGPT also lets you save time as it cuts back on time-intensive activities, especially when it comes to real estate market research.
3. Easy to Use
It doesn’t really take a genius to use ChatGPT. While the technology is sophisticated, using it is not rocket science. All you need to do is type a question or command (or verbalize it) and it will instantly give you results.
Drawbacks of Using ChatGPT in Real Estate Investing
Now let’s take a look at some of its drawbacks:
1. Potential Labor Cuts
One of the threats of using ChatGPT in real estate investing is its overall impact on the industry’s labor force. Since it can perform certain human tasks, professionals who are paid to do similar tasks are at risk of losing their jobs to a machine.
2. Inaccurate Facts
ChatGPT can only give what it gets. It means that while it can simulate human-like responses, the program is only trained on specific datasets. If it is fed incorrect data relayed as facts, it will result in adverse consequences for real estate investors.
3. Impersonal and Uninspired
As already mentioned earlier, ChatGPT responses sometimes tend to sound very robotic. It lacks the personal touch that only you can give others. If you’re a highly creative person, you may find that you sometimes have better ideas than the tool.
What’s the Most Reliable Tool for Real Estate Investing?
As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of things ChatGPT can do, but when it comes to performing certain tasks, you will do better with another tool. This is especially true if you’re looking for a potential investment property that will give you a good return on investment.
For this reason, we recommend a real estate website like Mashvisor to do the work for you. Unlike ChatGPT, Mashvisor provides all the right tools that will help you find the right property in the most profitable locations of your choice.
Here are some of the things Mashvisor can offer for investors like you:
Highly Accurate Real Estate Data
Mashvisor is known as one of the best websites that provide investors with high-quality data. It sources its information from highly reliable sources like Zillow, Realtor.com, the MLS, and Airbnb (for short term rental data).
The website covers nearly every real estate market in all 50 states, from metropolitan areas to smaller towns, giving you more location options for your investment. It also ensures that its database is regularly updated so you can confidently make highly accurate and realistic computations.
Property Search Tool
When it comes to searching for investment properties, Mashvisor offers a search tool that allows you to look for areas that will give you a good ROI. Simply enter any location of your choice in the homepage’s search field. It will then show you a map that contains potential properties that are actively listed on the market.
You can customize your search using the site’s real estate heatmap feature, which functions like a weather map indicating which areas are hot and which ones are not. You can filter your search so that the map will only show you areas that perform well under different categories. The categories include monthly rental income, cash on cash return, and listing price.
It makes the search for potential investment properties easier and faster, saving you time and resources in the process.
Investment Property Calculator
As a tool, one of Mashvisor’s advantages over other real estate platforms is its real estate investor calculator. Its calculator lets you do the math easily without breaking a sweat. It taps into the site’s huge database for default calculations that are still very accurate.
If you want greater accuracy, you can customize your computation by entering numbers based on your market research. It allows you to achieve a more realistic projection when doing the math for a potential investment property.
Unlike ChatGPT’s basic calculations, Mashvisor’s investment property calculator can do all you need to do as a real estate investor.
Get access to Mashvisor’s high-quality data and other tools to get you on your way to a thriving real estate investing career. Get started on your 7-day free trial today.
Wrapping It Up
To end, using ChatGPT in real estate investing will help make certain aspects of your life a lot easier, allowing you to focus on other things. While using AI’s been a huge boon to real estate investors and professionals, we also recommend not being too dependent on technology for obvious reasons.
Real estate investing is an industry that is built on and thrives on human connections and interactions. Using ChatGPT and other AI-driven tools to enhance such relationships is a great way of using technology to your advantage.
If you want to maximize your investment potential using AI and not bring down your human connections, we recommend using Mashvisor as your go-to tool. It gives you access to a massive database filled with highly accurate and relevant information. It also offers tools you can use to make investment decisions easier.
If you want a more reliable tool than ChatGPT for real estate investing, schedule a demo with Mashvisor today to get access to the best real estate data and tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few frequently asked questions concerning ChatGPT:
How Is ChatGPT Used for Real Estate?
ChatGPT is used by real estate professionals and investors to:
- Communicate with other industry professionals, tenants, guests, and other people
- Write down property descriptions and compelling listings
- Make simple estimates and calculations
- Generate effective marketing ideas
- Prioritize management tasks and to-do lists
- Research basic real estate information
Can I Use ChatGPT to Invest?
While ChatGPT can perform plenty of wonderful things for investors, at this point, it is still incapable of investing in real estate for you. We still recommend investing in real estate the tried and tested way―doing your research and making informed decisions based on it.
You can, however, use ChatGPT to make the research process a lot easier. You can use it to dig more about certain real estate markets. Additionally, you can perform basic computations to give you an idea of whether a potential investment is good or not.
What Are the 3 Investing Strategies in Real Estate?
There are plenty of good ways to invest in real estate, some better than others. Ultimately, it will depend on your goal. The following are the top three real estate investing strategies:
- Rental Properties. Owning a rental property is an excellent way to optimize a property’s appreciation potential while making some good money on monthly rental income.
- Real Estate Investment Groups (REIGs). In simple terms, REIGs are like mutual funds that invest in rental properties. You will need access to financing, but REIGs are ideal for folks who want to own a piece of real estate without personally managing it.
- House Flipping. Also known as fix-and-flips, the strategy works best for those with some experience in real estate valuation and renovation. It involves buying undervalued properties, fixing them up to increase their market value, and selling them for a profit.
What Is the Most Profitable Form of Real Estate Investing?
Investors go with different investment strategies according to their goals and needs. However, if you’re looking for a strategy that will let you optimize an investment property’s appreciation potential, give you a good return on your investment, and provide you with a steady stream of income, we highly recommend investing in rental properties.
Rental properties allow you to enjoy the benefits of having a monthly income source that helps you maintain the property (mortgage, maintenance, and other associated expenses) and make a decent profit to take to the bank.
Generally, those who invest in rental properties don’t intend to sell them immediately. It allows you to hold on to the property as you let it appreciate over time while enjoying a regular cash flow with the monthly rental payments for tenants and guests.
You can choose between long term rentals and short term rentals, depending on your situation and preference. Each has its own pros and cons, so you will need to perform due diligence before going all in. However, if you do it right, it is a very rewarding strategy that will not make you regret your choice.