Over the course of my career, I have learned that being a great real estate agent doesn’t necessarily protect you from change. I have always believed that the most successful agents in our industry are relationship builders. They communicate well, earn trust, stay connected to their clients and, over time, create a loyal following that becomes the foundation of a successful career. I still believe that today as strongly as I ever have.
The problem is that every once in a while, something happens that changes the rules, and sometimes even the strongest relationships can’t protect us from circumstances beyond our control.
I think back to the mortgage meltdown that began around 2007. Many of the clients we considered loyal customers suddenly found themselves facing circumstances they never could have imagined. People lost jobs, property values plummeted, mortgages went underwater and homeowners who had done everything right for years were suddenly handing their keys back to the bank. When that happened, something else changed that had a profound impact on our industry: the homeowner was no longer the decision-maker. The banks and asset managers were.
At one point, approximately 65% of our business consisted of REO and short sales. Think about that for a moment. Some incredibly talented agents who had spent years developing relationships with homeowners suddenly found themselves competing for business controlled by an entirely different group of people. It wasn’t because they had stopped being good agents or because their clients had stopped trusting them. The business had simply changed around them.
There were others, however, who saw what was happening and decided to pivot. They learned a different side of the business, figured out who the new decision-makers were and began developing relationships with banks and asset managers. At the risk of sounding immodest, I was fortunate enough to be one of those people. In 2007, I opened Intero’s first REO service center, and over the following five years we brokered nearly $2 billion in sales.
I don’t share that as a victory lap. I share it because that period taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my career: when the business changes, we can spend our time wishing it hadn’t changed, or we can figure out how to change with it.
Nearly 20 years later, I find myself thinking about that lesson again.
I’m not sure I have ever anticipated the kind of change that is beginning to take place today, and I happen to view this change very positively. I’m talking, of course, about artificial intelligence. AI is powerful, game-changing technology that, in many respects, is still in its
infancy. Yet even at this early stage, it is changing the way people communicate, market, research, analyze information, prospect, create content and manage their businesses.
I don’t believe AI is going to replace great real estate agents. Relationships still matter, and I believe they always will. Trust, experience, judgment, empathy and the ability to sit across the table from another human being and understand what really matters to them remain incredibly important. What I do believe, however, is that agents who learn how to combine those human qualities with the capabilities of AI are going to have a tremendous advantage over those who choose not to.
That is why I believe our willingness to embrace this technology matters so much. This isn’t about becoming an AI expert or chasing every new application that comes along. It is about being curious enough to learn, experiment and determine where these tools can make us better at what we already do.
At Intero, we are making that commitment as an organization. Over the coming weeks and months, we will begin introducing you to the capabilities of Maestro and the AI technology being incorporated into the platform. I am incredibly excited about what Maestro can ultimately mean for our agents, but I would encourage everyone not to stop there. There is an entire world of AI resources available today that can help us communicate more effectively, prepare faster, market more creatively, analyze information and eliminate hours of work that previously had to be done manually.
From where I sit within our organization, I also feel a responsibility to walk the talk. I can’t encourage everyone else to embrace AI while refusing to learn it myself, so I have made a point of experimenting with different platforms and integrating tools like Copilot and Claude into my own daily routine. I am still learning, and I suspect I always will be, but I can tell you that I am already saving countless hours while accomplishing things that would have required considerably more time and effort just a few years ago.
Something happened this week that really drove the point home for me. I was having coffee with an agent I am recruiting to Intero, and during our conversation she mentioned that she had doubled the number of transactions she closed over the past year. Naturally, I wanted to know how she had done it. She smiled at me and said, “It’s all AI, Terry. But don’t tell anyone, because the slower my competition is in embracing AI, the more money I intend to make.”
I laughed when she said it, but the more I thought about her comment, the more I realized that she understands something important. She isn’t waiting for someone to tell her exactly what AI will eventually become. She isn’t waiting until everyone else adopts it or until every application has been perfected. She is experimenting with it today, learning what works,
discarding what doesn’t and figuring out how to use technology to make herself more productive. In the process, she has doubled her business.
That conversation took me right back to 2007. There were agents back then who recognized that the business was changing and began building relationships with the people who controlled REO assets. There were others who continued doing what they had always done and hoped the market would eventually return to normal. Neither group could control what was happening around them, but they could absolutely control how they responded to it.
I think the same principle applies today.
AI is going to continue evolving whether we participate or not. We don’t control the speed of that change, and none of us knows exactly what this technology will look like two or three years from now. What we do control is whether we choose to learn about it, experiment with it and find ways to make it work for our businesses.
So perhaps the question worth asking yourself this week isn’t whether you believe in AI. The better question might be: Am I using the technology available to me today to make my business better than it was yesterday?
If the answer is yes, keep learning and keep experimenting. If the answer is no, perhaps it is time to start investigating what is available to you. You certainly don’t need to master everything overnight. You just need to be willing to get started.
I intend to still be here two or three years from now, learning, adapting and, hopefully, flourishing right alongside all of you. I would love to have you come along for the ride.
There’s plenty of room on the train. Just don’t miss it.
