To the Editor:
Disclosure first. I sell under the RE/MAX flag, and Real REMAX Group is one of the four founders of Open Real Estate. I’m writing as an agent and an educator, not for the company.
Every agent I train is asking me the same question right now. What happens to my listing?
Most of the coverage has framed Open Real Estate as a listings war. AGNT, HomeServices, Keller Williams and Real REMAX Group on one side, private listing strategies on the other. That fight is real. But I think the bigger story is the one I want to talk about today.
Buyers aren’t just scrolling portals anymore. They’re asking AI. Zillow already lives inside ChatGPT and Claude. A buyer can type or speak “three bedrooms, a garage, under 350” and get an answer in plain English. That answer only knows what the listing data tells the robots.
Now the good news. Buyers still want us. In a Realtor.com survey, 82 percent of people thinking about buying or selling said they use AI for housing insights. Those same people still rated real estate agents the most accurate source of market information, ahead of AI. AI may answer the first question, but they look to us to interpret it. We’re still the ones who walk them through the house.
When AI becomes the front door to home search, who decides what it sees?
Enter it once, standardized fields, syndicated everywhere. That’s the first challenge, though. Getting to “standard fields” across the whole country. Get it right, and it’s the menu AI orders from. A listing with thin, sloppy, missing or mismatched fields doesn’t just look bad. It might not make the answer at all.
It’s like the robot knocking on the door with a buyer in tow, and nobody’s home. Or the name isn’t on the mailbox, so it doesn’t know who to ask for.
For years we wrote listings for humans looking at photos. Now we need to write to match the fields that buyers might be searching for. The agent who fills in the details and gets the facts right is the one whose listing gets found.
Here’s what I’m telling agents right now.
First, treat every field like a buyer is going to ask about it, because they will. “Garage: yes” and “heated two-car garage with a workshop” are not the same listing. Only one of them shows up when a buyer asks for somewhere to keep the boat through a cold Rochester, N.Y., winter.
Second, write your remarks the way a buyer asks the question. Nobody types “charming residence bathed in natural light.” They say, “big windows, a fenced yard for the dog, room for a home office.” Write it the way they’ll ask it. One guardrail, though. Describe the house, not who should live in it. Zillow says its connector in Claude will ask a buyer to restate a request in objective terms when it leans on a protected characteristic. Our remarks should already be there.
Third, before a seller agrees to keep a listing off the open market, make sure they know AI search may never see it. Private marketing can be the right call for some sellers, and that decision is theirs to make. It just needs to be an informed one. Think about it like this. A private listing is a great restaurant with no sign out front. Some people love the speakeasy feel. But the buyer typing exactly what that seller has into ChatGPT on a Tuesday night is going to walk right past it.
Fourth, search for your own listing the way a buyer would. Open ChatGPT or Claude with Zillow connected, describe the home in plain English without the address, and see if it comes back. If it doesn’t, you just found your homework.
Brokers, this one lands on you too. Better listing data is a training problem before it’s a technology problem. You can build the best plumbing in the country, and it will still carry whatever an agent types, late at night, after a long day of showings. Garbage in, garbage syndicated everywhere. If you want your listings in the answer, teach your agents to write for the answer. Then check the work.
Open Real Estate doesn’t have a launch date yet. The founders expect to pick a tech company to build it in early 2027. Good. That gives agents time to fix their listing habits before the plumbing is built. The founders say any brokerage can join, and it’s free.
AI is the topic. People are the mission. The listing is still how we serve the person on the other side of it.
Jeremias “JMan” Maneiro
Associate Broker, the Maneiro Team at REMAX Realty Group, Rochester, NY, and Chief Edutainment Officer, JMan AI
