Real estate leaders weigh buying vs building AI tools

Incorporating artificial intelligence into workflows and businesses has become a non-negotiable for housing companies that want to succeed. But as many business leaders look to integrate and implement this technology they are faced with the question of whether it is better to buy it or build it on their own. 

Tyler Morton, the broker-owner of REMAX Victory + Affiliates and founder of TroyOS, an AI operating system built for real estate brokerages and agents, and Brooke Anderson-Tompkins, founder and CEO of Bridge AIvisory, looked to tackle this question during a session at HousingWire’s AI Summit Tuesday afternoon in Dallas. 

In looking to adopt AI technology, Morton decided to go the build it route. However, his first attempt at this was a failure. 

“It didn’t fail because of AI at all. It actually failed because it wasn’t something that anyone wanted,” Morton said. 

Morton created a tool to help him streamline communications between himself and his agents, but he said none of them used it. 

“It was because I wasn’t meeting them where they were. I was solving a problem for me and not for them,” he said. 

This realization led him to the decision to start over again, changing the tool so it was a phone number agents could text to get information instead of forcing them to download and use another app. 

Build or Buy

Morton said his decision to build his AI instead of buying it came from a desire to enhance the experience his agents were having with tools that were “duct taped together,” while also not changing everything all at once. He acknowledged that some solutions are needed by all brokerages, and for things that fall into that category, it may be better to buy than build. 

“If everyone has that same need, it’s probably already been built and better than you can build it,” he said. “I’m not reinventing the wheel and creating a new CRM because there’s plenty of those that exist that do really well.”

However, when looking at tools to buy, Morton noted that he pays careful attention to how the company is using his data, as well as the potential “life expectancy” for the product. 

“I had all of my data with Facebook Workplace for a long time — that was our social feed. And then one day Facebook Workplace woke up and said we’re discontinuing this,” he said. “So what happens to the data when they’re done? Can you extract it in a format that you can even use?” 

A hands on experience either way

For Anderson-Tompkins, even if you buy technology there is still a level of building you must do in order to make it work within your business. 

“Even if you buy, you have a responsibility and there is a lot of work that goes into making it an effective tool or process,” Anderson-Tompkins said. 

But with AI progressing and developing at such a rapid pace, Anderson-Tompkins said it is important to evaluate what you are asking it to do in order to figure out what kind of safe guards you need on the AI and its outputs. 

“I always envision it as like a large concentric circle coming into a core, and the core today would be agentic AI, meaning the deeper that you go, the higher the guardrails need to go to be put into place along with it,” she said.  

Anderson-Tompkins stressed that it was important to have Responsible AI, which she defines as AI systems that are aligned with your mission, values, goals and risk tolerances while still delivering a transformative business outcome — made unique to you. With this in mind, she said that leaders exploring their AI tool options should really pay attention to the problems they are trying to solve, making sure they are solving the underlying issue and not the “hype on the front side.” 

While all of this may seem daunting, Morton said he doesn’t believe you need to be a certain-sized company to start building your own AI tools. 

“Solve the easy problems first,” he said. “What can save you an hour a week or five hours a week? You don’t need to solve it all at once, but you will continue to grow it and build from there. There is no better time to start than now, just get in there and start asking questions and when you don’t know what to ask, ask AI what you should be asking.”