Digital
Marketing
Podcast
Hosted by Greg Bray and Kevin Weitzel
255 AI Tools That Revolutionize Home Buying - Russ Wright
Show Notes
This week on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, Russ Wright of VisionAIry Success Engineering joins Greg and Kevin to discuss how AI tools can help home builders revolutionize their business and transform the home buying experience.
Home builder marketers should be willing to learn about new technology and be prepared to experiment with how AI tools can improve the home buying journey. Russ says, “I would just encourage everybody to explore as much as they can, just on their own personal basis of what kind of resources are available, like the ChatGPT, the Quad, the Gemini, all the different platforms. Each one has kind of its own strengths and capabilities, but just explore how to use it and educate yourself. From the business standpoint, use their imagination to try to identify where the problems are and then start looking for the solutions for these AI platforms that can help solve and improve those processes. But it all starts with exploring and kind of educating yourself and keeping abreast of the changes as quick as they're happening.”
AI cannot replace the human element in the home buying experience, but it can be an invaluable means for home builders to connect with home buyers. Russ says, “I think home buying is a very emotional experience, and that emotion piece of it is something that the AI doesn't have the capabilities of interpreting accurately and responding to accurately. AI is going to be a great resource just like computers have been for decades, and it's going to advance in its capabilities. But they don't have the ability to reason and they don't have that ability to judge the human interaction face to face as you're working with them.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about how AI technology can help home builders improve their business and the home buying process.
About the Guest:
Russ Wright is a trailblazer at the intersection of finance, real estate, and technology, with over two decades of experience in leadership roles spanning sales, marketing, and product development. As the founder of ListingLink, a cutting-edge real estate tech platform under VisionAIry Success Engineering, Russ is redefining lead generation and homebuyer engagement using generative AI and proptech innovation.
In his capacity as Principal at VisionAIry Success Engineering, Russ leverages his extensive background to help customers bridge the gap between the rapidly expanding capabilities of today’s AI enhanced technology solutions and their practical applications for today’s business platform. His knowledge of AI-driven solutions and Web3 applications, empowers businesses to achieve unparalleled efficiency, growth and innovative differentiation. His previous leadership roles, including Chief Marketing Officer at myidfi, Regional Vice President of Sales at Arc Home, and VP of Sales and Business Development at OneEnergy Renewables, underline his expertise in driving strategy and building high-performance teams in the fintech, mortgage, and renewables sectors.
Russ's hands-on experience in the mortgage industry, combined with his proficiency in AI, blockchain, and sustainability, positions him as a thought leader in developing transformative technologies for the home builder market. With a keen eye for emerging trends and a passion for innovation, Russ is committed to helping real estate and lending professionals harness the potential of digital tools to revolutionize their businesses.
Russ and his family live in Central Oregon and enjoy taking advantage of the outdoor adventures available there. He is also an accomplished musician and loves fishing in the lakes and streams of the Pacific NW.
Transcript
Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.
Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.
Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us on the show today, Russ Wright. Russ is the founder of Visionary Success Engineering and Listing Link. Welcome, Russ. Thanks for joining us today.
Russ Wright: Yeah, thanks very much. I'm happy to be here.
Greg Bray: Well, Russ, let's start off and just get to know a little bit about you. Give us that quick kind of background and overview about yourself.
Russ Wright: Yeah. So, my background, I've got about 25 years experience in the real [00:01:00] estate industry on the lending side and on some marketing startups and such. So, it's been in sales and marketing. And I started VisionAIry Success Engineering a little over a year ago with the idea of kind of bridging the gap between what I saw as some real differences in the AI capabilities and how they were being used in practical applications. So, that was kind of the genesis of Listing Link, our platform.
Kevin Weitzel: Before we get into all that nerdiness, let's find out some interesting factoid about you personally that has nothing to do with work, the industry, or family.
Russ Wright: Okay, Well, I dropped out of college to be a rock star and obviously that worked out really well. I was playing with a rockabilly band and our tour de force was we got to open up for Jefferson Starship at the Ohio State Fair, so.
Kevin Weitzel: Really?
Russ Wright: Yeah, yeah, so we used to have a lot of fun doing that.
Kevin Weitzel: That's legit.
Russ Wright: Yeah.
Greg Bray: What did you play, Russ?
Russ Wright: I played bass.
Greg Bray: Okay.
Russ Wright: Yep. Yep, had the old stand up upright bass and, you know, thumping it [00:02:00] and doing all that fun stuff, so.
Kevin Weitzel: Nice.
Greg Bray: Awesome. So, how long did you tour beyond the State Fair?
Russ Wright: Um, not long. That was kind of the capper, you know go out on a high note that kind of thing. Yeah, life kind of interfered with the aspirations of rock stardom. So, yeah
Greg Bray: All right. So, how do you go from music into the real estate industry?
Russ Wright: I started off in the title business actually a long, long time ago. Then started working in the wholesale lending side on the non-QM for a company called One Stop Mortgage way back in the day. So, that was kind of the transition and worked in wholesale lending for a long time before I came over into this.
Greg Bray: Well, tell us a little bit more about Listing Link and kind of where you were trying to go with that and the services that you're offering there.
Russ Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So, like I mentioned, I kind of got started like I think everybody else has, just kind of using ChatGPT as a glorified search engine for finding out cool stuff. And started seeing really quickly that these generative AI platforms just [00:03:00] had incredible capabilities, and it was expanding rapidly and kind of segmenting. With my background in the mortgage and real estate industries, saw that there was a really cool opportunity to put some of these tools to work to kind of enhance value for both the buyer side and for the builder side and the realtor side of the business. So, that was the genesis of Listing Link.
Greg Bray: So, what is the challenge or opportunity that you are seeing in the market that you were trying to help home builders and others in the industry solve with your tools?
Russ Wright: Yeah. So it kind of comes back to that same point that most AI applications today have been just glorified chatbots, you know, like where it's, here, let me connect you with customer service or answer some basic questions. After COVID, I think a large segment of the business, the homebuyers, really started going online to do a lot of research and started, trying to find out as much as they could about homes before they ever really engaged with the builder or with the realtor.
And so, what we're trying to do is one, create a resource that [00:04:00] can really inform the buyers about the property, about the options, and at the same time capture good information, conversationally and through their digital footprint on kind of what was important to the buyers so that the builders and their lender partners could have a really informed position to start their outreach, and to connect with these buyers early in the process to kind of help guide the experience for them.
Greg Bray: So, is this something that is done through the chat type of interaction with a prospective buyer? Or how you kind of using the tools to then engage with a potential shopper?
Russ Wright: Yeah, it's a great question. So, we use QR codes and hyperlinks. So, the QR codes are for print materials, anything visual, like flyers or placards, like inside the model homes for the builders that the buyer can basically just scan with their phone. It connects them to this AI assistant that's trained on all of the aspects of that model home, of the neighborhood, the surrounding area.
[00:05:00] So, they can literally engage and have any question they have about the property, about the builder, the neighborhood, have that available for them as a resource to help them kind of explore hopefully their dream home.
Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this. Is this just spoken? Let's say I'm in a model home and they're using your services and they scan the QR code, is this just like, they get a narrative. Like it says, Oh, this home has this many square feet. It's in this neighborhood. The school district is yada, yada. And I said, you know, Hey, it's really important that I know what churches are around five mile radius around this place. Does it answer those types of things?
Russ Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, it's amazing the capabilities. It's only dependent on what information you train it with. So, as long as we've got all that information available, which, you know, through all the resources like Google and all these other options, all that information is out there. So, we just go out and collect that as the knowledge base for the AI assistant, and then conversationally the buyer can ask anything they want.
They can say, Hey, what's the nearest elementary school? What restaurants are nearby? What's the best golf course within 2 miles? At the same time, they're also asking [00:06:00] questions about the property itself. What's the square footage? What's the energy efficiency rating for this home? What kind of packages and options are available for this type of model?
So, it becomes a really interactive conversational thing with the AI assistant and what happens in the background is it's collecting this conversation information to synthesize with a lot of demographic info that we collect off their digital footprint as well to create basically this avatar of who this buyer is for the builder and for their lender partners.
Greg Bray: Russ, as you are training this, what are some of the challenges a builder might run into in trying to actually train some of these tools? I personally find that some of this stuff sounds almost too good to be true, that these tools can just answer all these questions. But as we know, the whole old saying in computer world, garbage in, garbage out, you know, kind of the thing. How do we get the right information there and trust that it's really accurate? You say, well, it's out there on Google, but [00:07:00] Google's not a hundred percent perfect in its accuracy either. So, what is that training process include and look like?
Russ Wright: Yeah, that's a great question. so for the surrounding area stuff, there's basically ways to connect to, like, Google Places and other platforms that have all this demographic data on the neighborhoods. You know, so it has the churches, it has the schools, the recreational stuff, the restaurants. So, that's one piece of it.
But the specific information on the home itself and on the model is the information off the listing itself, any of the hard data that gets plugged in, you know, like on the options, on the model itself, on the builder, you know, kind of their background and their strengths. All of that can be fed into the knowledge base basically as text documents.
One of the challenges up until, you know, probably in the last six months is I'm sure you've heard AI has the propensity to hallucinate effectively. So, if it doesn't know the answer, it will very creatively make something up. So, one of the solutions for that, and what we've [00:08:00] implemented is the ability to basically it's a tailored platform for the database that makes it where it goes right to the relevant data and it eliminates the vast majority of the options for the hallucinations. So, it makes it much, much more accurate, much more reliable, and a real accurate resource.
Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this. How much Big Brother information is out there that people can actually ascertain? So, if I'm going in, let's say I get past the, you know, tell me about the neighborhood and the schools and yada, yada, yada, where's the closest hospital? What if I wanted to get into, you know, what is the marital status of all the people that have purchased in this neighborhood and what interest rate did they pay? I mean, how granular can it get, and is there a privacy wall anywhere in there or no?
Russ Wright: Yeah, no, that's a great question as well. So, every time when you go online and you say, hey, we have these cookies that we implement to enhance your experience. Every time that someone accepts that, they're basically making that information available out into the Internet. And [00:09:00] so, there are repositories that collect all that. But there is a lot of privacy restrictions. The European version is the GDPR. California has their own.
People have to one consent to the information that's being put out there, and they always have the option of cleansing it from the system as well. So, I mean, if somebody started asking that type of information, we try to direct the conversation through the AI assistant to the relevant data about the home, the neighborhood, the general surrounding. So, it doesn't go into that kind of level of kind of invasive privacy of folks that aren't engaged in the conversation.
Greg Bray: So, Russ, as you have been bringing this to builders and kind of putting it out there, are you getting any concerns from like the sales teams that they don't want to have the technology. They want to be the ones answering these questions and they want to be the ones talking to the buyers. What type of acceptance or non acceptance do you see there?
Russ Wright: So, I think it depends. You know, each builder has a different model. A lot of the builders have started going towards self-guided tours. I think that really started [00:10:00] exploding after COVID. And in those situations, it becomes such a great resource for being available to answer the questions for the buyers when they don't have that sales agent there to kind of accompany them through the home.
But even when it's not a self guided tour, in a lot of cases, maybe that one sales agent is tied up with someone else and it can still be a resource for that buyer and collect the information for them to follow up and kind of craft that first conversation with them. So, overall, the response has been very positive. You know, and especially in those self-guided tours, it's almost invaluable because it answers any questions they've got while they're in the home, while they're engaged, and then captures that information for the builder and their sales team to follow up.
Greg Bray: Do you have the ability for a builder to review transcripts of past conversations to make sure that they agree with the answers that are being given and be able to go back and go, Oh, you know, they didn't quite answer that quite right. We need to figure out how to fix that.
Russ Wright: Right? Absolutely. So, for each conversation, every time someone [00:11:00] logs into the AI assistant, it captures the entire conversation, so the query and response from the buyer and the AI assistant, and it keeps track of the whole thing as well as when they sign on, they give their name, their email. So, they've got that conversation, and that's part of what we synthesize with that online presence information, you know, kind of like their LinkedIn profile, their Facebook information that they've made publicly available.
And we kind of synthesize that to say, hey, look, you know, this buyer is a professional. This is the role that they have in their job. In some cases, it even pulls up if it's been shared, you know, kind of what their income range is, what their online buying habits are. So, it really creates a unique profile of who this person is. So, with that first outreach, you can really customize the conversation.
Greg Bray: You know, Russ, Kevin and his team have done a lot of work trying to get the AI to sound like him, you know, and, and, and get not, not like his, but use his brand voice, right.
Russ Wright: Right. [00:12:00] Right. Yeah.
Greg Bray: You know, and, as they use it to generate, and he's got a lot of experience there. Is there an opportunity to make this thing sound different from builder to builder from the standpoint of our brand voice and our story. Does that just kind of happen naturally, or is there a specific effort that goes into that?
Russ Wright: The capability is there to do just about anything you want. What you can do actually is with the knowledge base in the background, you know, if there are key tenants and core values that you want to be communicated or if there's specific language that the builder likes to use in their communications to kind of probe to get information, to kind of set the table for what the expectations are, we can absolutely program that stuff in. As far as the actual vocal piece of it, making it sound just like Kevin, uh, that could be done as well. But that starts getting a little labor intensive when you do it customer by customer. I'm sure it's something we could explore, but that's not one of the standard features.
Greg Bray: Well, the licensing fees for Kevin's voice would be pretty astronomical.
Kevin Weitzel: It would be steep. It would be steep for sure.
Russ Wright: It's [00:13:00] something we can explore though. Kevin. Let's talk.
Greg Bray: So, Russ as you've been working on this, how have you seen this connect from a buyer journey vision? Where do you think it's going in the future? Is it going to just be kind of the quick Q/A? Is it going to be something more? What's your vision of the future home buying experience and where these tools fit?
Russ Wright: The whole market has just continued to expand and grow so quickly in its capabilities. You know, it started off with basically just ChatGPT, you know, and a couple of other platforms, and that was everyone's perception of AI. They've continued to segment and specialize more and more. There's a company called 11 Labs that, Kevin, actually can replicate your voice and your delivery and your messaging that you can incorporate into that. So, that specialization is accelerating at a crazy rate.
So, I think what we're doing right now is kind of the first level of it where it's really taking advantage of AIs capabilities to synthesize information together and do it more than just a [00:14:00] conversation back and forth. But there are what they call SDKs, software development kits, where we're going to be able to embed this AI assistant like into a virtual tour or into other settings where it just becomes more and more seamless.
And I think that's the direction things are going is, you know, it's going to become less and less obvious that you're dealing with AI or, you know what the application is, but the capabilities for analysis, for engagement, for messaging, for crafting that it's just continuing to expand. So, I think that's the direction its probably going.
Greg Bray: So, right now, it's pretty much when somebody is on site touring, but you see opportunities to use the same knowledge base that you've loaded into this in other places too.
Russ Wright: Absolutely. Basically the QR code is a hyperlink that takes you to the AI assistant. If builders are doing a lot of online marketing, you know, like Facebook, you know, other social media platforms, any place where there is the opportunity to get this information in front of [00:15:00] prospective buyers, this gives you the capability of doing that.
So, you know, whether it's a QR code and a print ad, if it's a hyperlink in your email campaigns going out to folks that have visited your homes in the past, any of these is the opportunity to present this information and, kind of create that portal for them to ask about them as a builder, ask about their model homes, ask about the neighborhoods, the homes are in, and it's customized to each different location. So, it really becomes a very specific interaction for that particular moment.
Greg Bray: So, Russ, as you are stepping back from this tool in and of itself, what are just other types of applications for AI in general that you think builders should be exploring and experimenting with right now?
Russ Wright: The capabilities are mind boggling. There's AI powered CAD tools for design. There's, you know, robotics for construction that are AI driven, site mapping, you know, like drones and LIDAR driven stuff, you know, for helping out on site mapping, [00:16:00] material forecasting for inventory control. You know, it's really just finding the right customized application for it and finding the best way to create that platform.
AI itself is basically, you know, they're called large language models and the idea is the more information they have as that resource, the possibilities are practically limitless. So, you know, I would encourage anyone that's interested in exploring it. I mean, the marketing capabilities and this kind of customer data capture are a natural, but there's so many more applications for it that would really be relevant for the industry.
Kevin Weitzel: So, when we look at stuff like the 2014 edition of the Zuck Dash 14, I think is what it was called, where it had the kind of pasty, rubbery looking skin, the very queasy, unrealistic looking smile and the horrible haircut. And just recently they've released the 2025 edition where he has kind of cool hip afro looking hair, an exposed gold chain. He looks much more human-like.
Russ Wright: Right, right.
Kevin Weitzel: Will we see those [00:17:00] Zuckerberg type changes happening? What rate is this happening? I mean, that took 10 years for him to start looking more human. The AI, it's sounding more human. In a matter of months, it's changed. There's a new edition now coming out shortly here, so.
Russ Wright: Yeah, it's going to continue to become more and more realistic and more and more lifelike and more and more transparent in the way it communicates and the way that it interacts. What's happening also is that you really used to have to be a coder, a developer with Python coding experience and things like that to get involved, but now there are what they call no code platforms that can allow entrepreneurs, business owners, managers to get in and start customizing AI tools for themselves, whether it's that inventory management or CRMs.
So, there are some really cool tools that allow people without that coding experience to start delving into this, and that's where it really starts becoming democratized and the advancement just blows you away. I forget, is it Moore's Law for computing that, you know, said [00:18:00] the increase in the capabilities of computers, expanded exponentially, like every 5 years or 10 years, whatever it was. That's happening with AI now, and the only limitations really are the capabilities of the backroom functionality with the LLMs. It's going to continue to accelerate. And Zuch will look better and better.
Kevin Weitzel: And look even more realistic.
Russ Wright: Yeah, he's going to look like the real deal.
Kevin Weitzel: Have a goatee or a soul patch or something. I mean, even recently, because AI computing is really limited just by power. You know, how much power can they get? And I think recently, uh, the first AI computing farm, uh, is being attached directly to a nuclear power station. So, it'll have crazy limitless power. That really is the limitation, right, is how fast these computations can happen?
Russ Wright: Yeah, it's how fast it's bandwidth. How quickly can it process information and then spit back the response and how accurately can it do it? The accuracy piece of it is one of the areas that's helping out with the power control. It's called retrieval augmented generation, [00:19:00] where they're able to, you know, really just go in and parse the amount of data that's needed to get the necessary response back accurately. That's allowing a lot of growth without the increase in the power usage.
I mean, they're using AI to start modeling how to more efficiently do the power usage as well and craft these systems. You know, that's a great application for some of the builders, too, that are interested in, you know, sustainability is how to engineer and how to craft the energy efficiency modeling for these homes to make them even better, so. Power is definitely going to be one of the huge constraints.
Greg Bray: So, Russ, kind of piggybacking off Kevin's comments a minute a go. Where do we draw that line though, where it's not okay to just have AI do all the work? We still need that human connection, especially in an emotional selling process where we're trying to help people find a home. It's a big deal. Is there some risk that builders go, I don't need these people anymore at all. I just have the computer answer all the questions, sign [00:20:00] here, you're done, and away we go.
Russ Wright: I think home buying is a very emotional experience, and that emotion piece of it is something that the AI doesn't have the capabilities of interpreting accurately and responding to accurately. AI is going to be a great resource just like computers have been for decades, and it's going to advance in their capabilities. But they don't have the ability to reason and they don't have that ability to judge the human interaction face to face as you're working with them.
So, I think it's going to be a great resource and a tool and it will continue to expand, but I think one of the challenges is, people need to learn, you know, especially in the education system, there needs to be a focus on teaching critical thinking skills and creativity and things like that, because those are what differentiate us from the computing capabilities of the AI systems. So, as long as they're there is a supplement and augmentation, I think the growth potential is huge. But I don't see it taking the place of that human interaction and that [00:21:00] ability to shake somebody's hand and craft that experience.
Greg Bray: Russ, appreciate you spending some time with us, sharing some of your experience and vision. Do you have any last thoughts or words of advice that you'd like to leave with our audience today before we finish up?
Russ Wright: I would just encourage everybody to explore as much as they can, just on their own personal basis of what kind of resources are available, like the ChatGPT, the Quad, the Gemini, all the different platforms. Each one has kind of its own strengths and capabilities, but just explore how to use it and educate yourself.
From the business standpoint, use their imagination to try to identify where the problems are and then start looking for the solutions for these AI platforms can help solve and improve those processes. But it all starts with exploring and kind of educating yourself and keeping abreast of the changes as quick as they're happening.
Greg Bray: Well, Russ, if somebody wants to reach out and connect with you and learn more, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
Russ Wright: My email is russ@visionairy and that's A I R [00:22:00] Y, visionary.biz. My phone number is 503-621-8000 or if you want to check ou, the system itself, our website is www.listinglinkai.com. And they can actually play with one of the, uh, AI assistants on that, on a specific property, so.
Greg Bray: Well, thanks again, Russ, for being with us. And thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.
Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.
[00:23:00]
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