Property AI Report
00:05:02 · Mal McCallion
[00:05:02] S0: Absolutely, I'm not I'm certain that when they when they've done the maths, as I'm sure Paul Smith and his the guys and girls have, um, then 1.7 million is probably a lot less than they would be paying for their own bespoke piece of kit, particularly if they've got to retool it for the world of AI and try and actually make it, you know, with the like a dwelly kind of going around and you know, um super efficient, um, making uh the businesses that are competing with Spicer Heart in various locations for the CJ Laws in London. Um so yeah, I I think it it makes sense. Uh there's always this question, I think, nowadays, about do you switch? I get I get asked all the time from ages like you know, should we be changing our CRM system right now when AI is coming along and we don't know quite you know, blah, blah, blah. And and I think it is a big decision right now because the the tech is changing so much. You know, one of the things that I always say to anybody is is make sure you you preserve your data. So yeah, if you are moving CRMs, then getting to come keeping your data is the most important thing for you right now because AI learns off data. And if you have somehow decided that you know you only need to have the last few weeks of your data, that that to me feels like definitely the wrong move, not necessarily moving CRMs. But yeah, this this um yeah, it looks like they've got a good deal. I'm sure they've they've got a strong negotiating position of Spice or Heart. But also, you know, it speaks well to Rex, right? You know, actually they're they're being chosen by a significant player and you know their kit is is is up there in terms of um in terms of what what it does. And always it's it has struck me that the letting side is is the hardest one to crack, right? You know, I think that that if you speak to any any agents that are particularly in lettings, it's almost the last thing they transfer because it's the most the most cash generative on a regular basis, and if they mess it up, it's the most highly regulated and the one that's gonna kick them in the butt really, really fast. So yeah, that's um a big target like Spice the Heart, who, if they do get it wrong, is likely to be on the first on the uh on the list of those for Angel Martin or whoever who wants to come after them um to choose Rex and decide to go big on this.
00:07:00 · Mal McCallion, Matt Goddard
I think it speaks well to that business, certainly. I mean, yeah, I think it's gonna be it's going to potentially make the negotiations of other businesses slightly more uh what's the word, sharp, shall we say, in terms of what would yeah, what they're willing to pay for CRMs, because this doesn't feel like it's a lot. [00:07:16] S1: No, it's not very cheap. [00:07:18] S0: Okay, so next up on our property news, we want to look at the crisis in surveying. So apparently half of surveyors are going to retire within a decade. Um and nobody's no young whippersnappers are coming up wanting to fulfill the uh sorry, to fill the surveyor gap. So, you know, this is a report of the first annual survey of surveyors, which feels like it really should have been going for a lot longer than than one year. Um it's revealed almost half of all residential surveyors are due to retire in the next 10 years. So, Matt, obviously slightly concerning, right? Or basically the robot's just going to do this pretty soon.
00:07:56 · Matt Goddard
[00:07:56] S1: Well, it's it's a bit of an advertorial, this one, from Skyliners, which, as far as I tell, they they produce technology to help surveyors write their reports. So one of the key parts that's called out in this estate agency day article is that there's no details of the survey numbers. We know it has to be more than just me, you and someone else having a chat down the pub and and calling it a survey, because some of their percentages go to decimal places. So we can start to uh to call it. Yeah, so so two-thirds, 66.4% of surveyors place report quality is their number one priority. So so it falls in line with what Skyline looked for. But it it does say uh sort of call out. I I only know a couple of people from sort of maybe my generation who went into being surveyors, and you know, is is it something that uh you need as many people are you know the robots that we saw at the Olympics the other week gonna be start doing this? Probably not anytime soon, but when we're trying to go through that uh buying reforms and try to shift through, I know people who've had their sales held up significantly by trying to get hold of a decent surveyor to look at it. So, you know, is this gonna we're gonna try to ease one bottleneck and find we're we're coming up against another one? Yeah, certainly interest to see, but it it did strike me the the first survey of surveyors, it's a bit of a missed opportunity there. And so well done skyline jumping on it.
00:09:14 · Mal McCallion
[00:09:14] S0: So, so true. But yeah, no, it does feel so you know that there are so many kind of things coming together, aren't they? Sort of like moving uh moving parts. You think, well, you know, so so on the one hand we've got this crisis of you know entry-level jobs for young people, you know, nobody wants to hire them and stuff like that. We've got this big gap in you know in surveying, it's like, can somebody put those two things together, maybe? I don't know. Um, but you know, maybe people just don't wanna don't want to do it. I mean, I I I quite like going around people's houses and having you know, poke around. That feels like a great way to spend the day. And I'm sure many estate and legit agents have they probably got into the business because that is kind of actually what they really like doing. Uh but yeah, no, I I think it's um it it it's obviously gonna it's it's gonna be a worry unless they can actually do the recruitment and like you say, um it it doesn't feel like a young person's game or it hasn't certainly got the the cachet of being a young person's game, it hasn't for uh for many years. So yeah, I think there's um yeah, I can see some really funky advertising in in in all TikTok about how you can uh become a surveyor and how cool it is, um, and then hopefully start to rebuild the numbers because yeah, otherwise we we've got a big, big problem coming down the track that is a big enough problem already in delayed transactions. All right, that is our property news for this week. Let us tuck into our AI and tech news. All right, um, we're gonna start with something slightly niche, but actually quite interesting. So there is a um billionaire investor called Stanley Druckenmiller. Um, and he has written a piece um in the um uh Wall Street Journal, kind of flagging off one of his kind of mentees, right? So it's a making a point, but almost the subject is less important than the fact he openly says that he used AI to write it. And this has become a massive kind of call to arms, it seems, from everybody who absolutely hates AI writing, and particularly all the creators, obviously, is a journalist, yeah.
00:11:04 · Mal McCallion
The Wall Street Journal, that there are journalists who write for that, and they are all very many of them are very, very, very, very, very angry that the editor of the Wall Street Journal has allowed this without it seems much protection for the other journalists. Matt, this was something I know that you uh you were interested in. Um, what's what's your take?
00:11:23 · Matt Goddard
[00:11:23] S1: Well, I think it's just the the commotion it created more than anything, as you say. There's there's very few people gonna be picking up the Wall Street Journal, looking at a an op-ed about Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, and uh thinking how's how has it been written? But I think there's there's two parts to this, and it's been almost well, it has been polarising, like a lot of a lot of AI writing, which is the the Stanley Drunken Miller's sort of saying, Well, why the heck would I not be using AI to write this, given you know everything that's going on? And the uh the Wall Street Journalist editors said, Well, yeah, that that's fine. I think that the point where the other side comes in is sort of lazy journalism gets thrown around, but also it's near not even been the first draft. So a lot of the very obvious AI isms terminology and and sort of tells have been left in, so they've not even been picked up by whoever it is who you know ghost um ghostwrites these. And we were talking off yeah, exactly, and we were talking about this off air where there's certain things even turn up in in our trade press where you know it's been published by one person, but you can definitely tell by its writing style, but it's printed by someone completely different. And I know at RePIT years ago we had articles appeared in Forbes under one person's name, and it wasn't by any means the person who was appearing. It was like definitely not their tone, definitely not the style using words they would never use. So this has been around for ages, and obviously, marketing's right in your wheelhouse. You you must be aware of of how this has worked historically, and it was like people's names getting put on things. Ghostwriters for footballers' biographies. Any different to AI doing that initial pass for Drunken Miller?