Ep030: The ROOST AI Manifesto

Chris McAllister: Welcome to this special ROOST Real Estate Company episode airing across all of our podcasts: Connect, Practice, Track, and Grow; the Landlord Profitability Playbook; and the All Things Real Estate podcast.

I’m Chris McAllister. I am the founder of ROOST Real Estate Company, and I’m here today, as always, with my partner in crime, Laci LeBlanc. Good morning, Laci. 

Laci LeBlanc: Good morning, Chris. Happy to be here. 

Chris McAllister: So today we’re gonna talk about my ROOST AI manifesto. Artificial intelligence is on the docket today. So artificial intelligence is all the buzz, right?

That’s all anybody’s talking about, and it’s already changing real estate. It’s changing how buyers search. It’s changing how sellers compare their options. It’s, it’s changing how owners evaluate property managers. It’s changing how real estate agents market their listing. It’s, it’s changing how you know, we communicate with tenants in the property management business, and it’s changing how companies in general, not just real estate [00:01:00] companies, organize themselves.

This is definitely probably the biggest… Well, no question, it’s the biggest technological change I’ve seen in my life. I think this is actually going to eclipse the whole internet thing when, you know, when that happened 25, 30, whatever it was, years ago. But at ROOST, we’re not afraid of that. But we’re also, and this is key, we’re not impressed by technology for technology’s sake.

So the question for us is not how do we use AI, because that’s what the buzz is right now and everybody else is doing it, right? The question for us is, the better question is, how do we use AI to serve people, and specifically our clients, better? 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I would say we are technologically very forward, but we’re also very anti-shiny object, right?

Chris McAllister: That is true. So- I still succumb regularly to the shiny object syndrome, but we’re, we are against them 

Laci LeBlanc: But you [00:02:00] have, you have things in place. You have people in place to say no, is, to ask you the questions, right? Um- 

Chris McAllister: That’s 

Laci LeBlanc: right. Yeah, but so why… K- that kind of covers the situation, right, of AI now. But why did you feel like we needed to put this out as a, as a manifesto?

Chris McAllister: I think it’s important that we get our thoughts on, about this stuff on paper for ourselves, for me, for our clients, for our team, for, any investors out there. I, I just think it’s, it’s something that is worth the time to get on paper and literally just share my thoughts. It’s, it’s…

AI’s not coming, right? AI is already here, and pretending it’s not gonna continue to have an effect, and probably a bigger effect than it has over the last three years on, our business here at ROOST, that would just be foolish. A- again, our buyers are using it, our sellers are using it, our owners are using it, our agents are using it, our tenants are using it, vendors are using it.

You know, sometimes they’re using it [00:03:00] to great effect and sometimes it’s they’re using it for aggravation. I- I’m having a hard time you know, with the, uh, the AI, uh, call centers, right? Where, you know, you’re pretty sure you’re talking to an AI, but you’re not so sure. And, you know, that’s something that’s gonna get better and better over time.

It’s not something that we have any plans to roll out anytime soon, but, you know, that kind of thing is out there. So, you know, the question is not whether AI will be part of the business. Clearly, it already is. The question is whether we are gonna use it with discipline, judgment, and clear standards, and that’s why I, I want ROOST to have a clear point of view.

We’re not afraid of AI, but we’re not chasing every shiny object either, and, uh, Laci, you’re gonna help me with that, make sure that I don’t, uh, continue to succumb to the shiny object syndrome. But, you know, real estate al- it’s always had a habit of jumping on the next thing, and sometimes that’s good, but more often than not, [00:04:00] it’s not so good.

Some tools help clients. Some tools just create noise. For us, I, I, I think the standard is simple. If AI helps us make real estate faster, easier, clearer, more consistent, more personal, we’re gonna use it. If AI is only there to create confusion, weaken relationships, introduce risk, or gives us an excuse to hide behind, you know, automation or technology, then honestly I don’t want us to have any part of it.

We need to leave it alone. We are absolutely interested in better tools, better judgment, better service, and I guess I wanna say bigger brains 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I mean, I do think it’s a really powerful tool. I think it’s worth noting before we move on that, you know, I hope everybody, every company, every individual has kind of developed their own AI manifesto, if not formally, then at least informally in their minds.

They’ve had kind of a conversation with themselves about how they would like to use AI, how AI can better their lives or [00:05:00] their business, um, and how it could potentially detract from it, because I think it came on so quickly, it just kind of took over everywhere all at once. Um, so I hope people are privately at least doing that, but you’re not seeing a lot of people publicly doing it.

Um, so I do think that was a valid question and a, and a good, good response. Getting it out there is not… It’s as much for ourselves as it is for the people we do business with, but I do think that, you know, we should be asking the people we do business with what their take on it is, right? 

Chris McAllister: So 

Laci LeBlanc: y- you say that AI should make real estate more human, not less human.

Explain that to me. 

Chris McAllister: Well, the best use of AI is, is not to try to use it to replace personal service, right? Real estate’s always been a belly-to-belly business. It’ll continue to be that, right? In person, present, so forth. The best use of AI, I think, is to protect personal service and interaction and hopefully enhance it, not to avoid it or you [00:06:00] know, replace it.

There is a lot of work in real estate and property management that clients never see. Notes have to be organized, emails have to be drafted, updates have to be summarized, meetings have to be prepared for, maintenance histories have to be reviewed, accounting summaries and so forth, follow-ups have to be tracked.

It’s… There’s so much stuff, and I’m sure it’s the same in any other business, but there’s so much stuff that happens, quote, behind the scenes in the real estate business, and I always refer to that behind the scenes stuff as backstage work, right? Backstage versus front stage work, which is actually meeting and interacting with clients.

Backstage work is, is as critical, if not more critical, than front stage work. You can’t do… You can’t put on a good play on stage without having a good backstage process and a good backstage crew. But the backstage work, that prep work, it can also bury people. And like when our team, you know, especially in property management, is buried in, you know, [00:07:00] repetitive backstage work, you know, they’re in the weeds, they’re overwhelmed, it’s a busy time of year, they have less time, less energy for front stage work, right?

On stage work, talking to people, solving problems, advising clients, explaining options, making good judgment calls, and following through on, on promises, you know, whether they’re explicit or implied. You know, AI can turn messy tenant notes into a clean summary. It can help an owner advisor prepare for an owner conversation where we’re gonna be talking about what do what should we expect rents, you know, to look like over the next year or two, three years.

You know, how to draft a better property description if you’re going to list a house, and not just a better property description, but one that w- will absolutely never allow you to run afoul of, you know, fair housing or different laws like that. Um, summarize a recurring maintenance issue, analyzing maintenance issues.

Where are our own- our owner maintenance dollars being spent? You know, we never were able [00:08:00] to answer those questions before. We’re able to answer those questions now. Or helping marketing, helping you and I turn what we, what we know in our heads into useful content, and for that, for me, this has been, you know, the best tool Ever.

The AI is not… Well, obviously it’s not a person, but it is not the final decision maker or any decision maker at all really, right? Human beings still own anything that’s AI generated, or at least they do at our company. The human being still reviews it, edits it, verifies it, and most importantly, we take responsibility for anything that goes out the door that was AI enabled, right?

The value is in the judgment, the care, the context, the follow through, you know, that, that comes after, and the, a- and the interpretation and analysis that comes after all the repetitive work that’s done. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about this, Laci. It’s been a lot, so forgive [00:09:00] me for being a little verbose today.

Laci LeBlanc: No, I think that’s really important. I think this really helps to set the expectation for our company, um, and maybe the standard, I hope, for other companies. Because, you know, we talk a lot about AI in general, personally speaking, in addition to business. Um, h- talk to me about how your personal journey with AI started and how that plays into this.

Chris McAllister: Well, I think, um, ChatGPT got off the ground in late ’22. I’m… If I remember right, I had my first free ChatGPT account in 2023, probably about, well, three years ago now. And I made it a point that this, uh, that this was something I was personally going to learn how to use. So there was a couple of podcasts that, you know, I’ve listened to over the years.

Um, I can’t remember what the name of it is, but we can put it in the show notes. It’s a guy that does an AI daily brief. That’s what it’s called actually, The AI Daily Brief. And it was, like, a 15 or 20-minute podcast. I still listen to it from time to time, but it was just [00:10:00] all the headlines of the day and what AI could do, couldn’t do and all that kind of stuff.

And then I even went so far, this was at least two years ago, probably longer, is you know how you open up Internet Explorer or Google or whatever, and you can, you can decide what page it’s going to open up to. So instead of having all my browsers on every computer just open up to Google or what have you, I set them all to open to ChatGPT just so I could get in the habit of using it first.

So it’s been something with me that’s been intentional for a long time. And then, y- you know, I realized that you could tell ChatGPT to remember things, right? And then when you came back later to work on something, it had context. And then I think I went for the $20 a month version, and at some point I went for the $200 a month version, and it’s just amazing how much of a, how much of a help that is.

Um, so it, it… I’ve actually been use it to, to help me run the business, help me [00:11:00] plan, help me think for quite a while now. At first, you know, it was, it was just… it was probably more tactical, right? You know, I would use it to check my not so much check my math, you know, my spreadsheets always did that, but to check my, uh, language, right?

English language. You know, is what I’m writing, is it good content? Is the punctuation, you know, that’s the word I can’t find, is, is it correct? So I would use it to help get my ideas together, draft content, refine some plans, you know, organize some ideas, help me prepare for meetings, just get things out of my head.

And it, and many, many times, you know, it sort of helped me get unstuck. But over reali- over time, I started to see that the bigger value was that AI and ChatGPT kind of have to teach it to do this. Claude sort of does this out of the box. But these days it’s actually helping me challenge my own assumptions, right?

I’ve told Chat that don’t take anything I say at face value. Anything I say, I want you to give me the other [00:12:00] side. And what I found is, used well, a good tool, you know, whether it’s Gemini or Chat or Claude, you know, it doesn’t tell you what you wanna hear. You know, you, you want it or I want it to push back, but I have to explain to it that’s, that this sounds crazy, but the relationship I want with it, right?

So it does push back. It does ask better questions. It, it does push back on gaps in my thinking and, you know, I’m willing to pay for that because I think ultimately it, it helps me, you know, be a better entrepreneur. So the best use has been, that I found recently, is AI as a thought partner, never as a decision-maker, and certainly not a replacement for responsibility.

One thing I will say, I still use ChatGPT a lot for thinking, drafting, you know, putting content together that’s in my voice and so forth, but I’ve become a huge fan of Claude and specifically Claude on the desktop because it’s so naturally [00:13:00] agentic, right? The, the whole thing that I’ve connected Microsoft 365 to it.

It, it has a Chrome connector. It can act on your behalf and literally run through websites and, and pull information from websites on your behalf as a quote agent. Claude is fantastic. I know that ChatGPT has its own version, but I’ve really, uh, started to rely on Claude and it… And I’ve got so much work in there that it knows me, it knows the business, and Chat I just happen to use for other things.

But when you run a business like real estate business, property management and I’m not saying we’re the only ones with a lot of moving parts, but we have a lot of moving parts. And the coolest thing is, I think, is, AI can help… It helps me and it can help you sort of slow down, think more clearly, think more concisely and get to better decisions.

AI doesn’t execute. AI doesn’t hold itself accountable. We people, we do [00:14:00] that

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. So I think that’s really important, the part about executing. You know, we’re not– we’re a pretty lean team, I guess, relatively speaking, but we’re not taking the people out of it. You know, we’re continue to, continuing to hire people in the background. Um, so let’s focus on that one a b- little bit. AI does not execute.

Why do people need to hear that? 

Chris McAllister: Because I think people get carried away and they think AI’s just gonna take over and start doing stuff. I just don’t see that. I mean, I can make Claude do stuff, but it’s at my, direction in, in that moment in time. Yeah. AI can draft an email, but it doesn’t own the relationship.

It may not even know what kind of relationship with the, that you have with the person that it’s drafting an email to, right? It can help you prepare for a meeting, but it never sits across from the client. You know, it can, it can help you summarize an issue, it can help you think through an issue, but AI never is going to take responsibility for the outcome.

It’s not gonna make the phone call, right? It’s not [00:15:00] gonna have adult conversations and deliver bad news. It’s not gonna do the negotiations. It may give you some negotiating ideas, right, once you, you give it the context, but it’s not gonna negotiate a s- a, a solution or a deal for you. It’s not going to, call up an owner or, or a, a s- a buyer who lost out on their third house this week, um, and calm them down, right?

It’s a… It doesn’t do that. People do that. And real estate is and always will be, you know, it’s a business of trust, and owners trust us with their assets, tenants trust us with their homes, buyers and sellers trust us with the, you know, the biggest financial decisions of their lives, and our agents, they trust us with their careers and, and our team members trust us for their livelihood.

They trust us at ROOST. They don’t trust AI. So AI can support work, but it can’t replace the accountability behind it. Whatever payoff we’re getting or will get from AI it’s not because of AI [00:16:00] alone. It’s AI working in cons- you know, it’s our very great people and our best people using AI as a tool to be better thinkers, leaders, advisors and so forth.

So, I think AI is gonna continue to help us with better thinking, better tools, more disciplined action, I don’t want our team thinking, “Oh, AI will handle this. I don’t have to worry about it.” I want our team thinking, “AI can help me re- prepare so I can handle this opportunity better.” 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I love that.

And, you know, right now we don’t… Not that we never would, but right now we don’t use necessarily an AI chatbot for anything. We don’t use AI on our phone calls. We don’t use AI in our email replies just naturally. I think that there’s a challenge there with, you know, people expect kind of instant gratification.

They want so- Yeah … they want a person to answer the phone right away. Um, sometimes ours rolls to voicemail if we’re on another call. Uh, so I do think that there’s… We’re in a, a weird time [00:17:00] where we’re kind of, trying to anticipate user expectation, client expectation, and meet that, but also keep the humanity and, you know, the responsibility with actual humans on our end.

Um, so that leads me to wonder: What will AI not replace at ROOST moving forward, do you think? 

Chris McAllister: I guess tactil- tactically, AI, I don’t believe will ever replace uh, the platforms that we use, especially on the property management side of the business or, or even things like, um, DotLoop on the agent and buyer seller side.

You know, A- AI will never replace AppFolio, right? It’ll never replace Tenant Turner. It’ll never replace Property Meld. You know, and it’s interesting, Property Meld and Tenant Turner both are starting to roll out some AI chatbot tools for maintenance requests and people walking through maintenance issues with tenants.

And, and Tenant Turner is starting to use some AI I guess those chatbots that you can [00:18:00] pull up on the web, but also you can speak to an agent on the phone that, that’s an AI agent to get information on potential rental properties and so forth. Those things- Could help us be more efficient and free more time up for other things.

But until I actually see them working and there’s a track record, you know, we’re just– we’re, they’re just not there yet, and I don’t think it’s on brand for us. But I think what’s interesting is those core pieces that make up our, our tech platform, call it a tech stack if you want me to sound like a tech bro those things aren’t gonna change, right?

So the big ones, AppFolio, Tenant Turner, Property Mel, Microsoft Office 365, you know, Z inspector, it’s not gonna replace any of these core platforms, right? These platforms are the operating backbone of the company. They are where the official records live, you know, where work orders are tracked, leasing activity is managed, inspections are [00:19:00] documented, and the business is.

AI, a Claude or a ChatGPT or a Gemini, I don’t think they will ever be a source of truth for us or any other company. Our core platforms will remain the source of truth, but AI is this super cool productivity layer on top of those systems that, you know, helps me and it’ll help our people Work with information more effectively, but it will never replace the system of record, right?

If AppFolio says one thing and AI says another, AppFolio wins, period, right? AI can help us summarize and communicate, but it will, it will never become the official record. Just because it has a super polished paragraph answer doesn’t mean that that information is, is accurate.

Does that make sense? I mean, we’re talking about other people’s money, right, with AppFolio and accounting and so forth. That’s not something that, uh, you know, they’re gonna have [00:20:00] to pry that out of my cold, dead hands. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something that you know, having a blind trust that AI is always right, I think is something that we see kind of socially, globally people coming to terms with, that AI is…

You can’t just assume the AI is always telling you the truth, that the, that everything that AI says is accurate. You really do have to put the human back into it to verify, uh, before moving forward. The other thing that it reminds me of is, you know, your does this make business better core question.

Right? That’s what we… That’s what you ask, um, and as a result, we all ask about every kind of decision that we make, whether it’s content, whether it’s website, you know, technology, whether it’s the, the tools, the tech stack, if you will. You’re just missing your I think your vest- My hoodie

uh, to be a tech bro or a finance bro. Um, no, I, I just think that those are really good points to make because there are some risks with AI. So talk to me about where you see the biggest risk with AI, [00:21:00] AI. 

Chris McAllister: I think the biggest risks show up anywhere where, where decisions affect somebody’s housing, right?

Their application, their, the selection process. I mean, I, I’m not saying AI might not have a place in that, but at the end, that… I- in fact, I think it’s, uh, it’s against federal law to just re- simply rely on AI to evaluate somebody’s application. Uh, that requires human intervention and a final decision made by humans, right?

So, relying on AI for somebody’s roof over their head, you know, their financial future, their legal rights and so forth, or, or any access, access to any opportunity, especially as it revolves around You know, housing, I think that’s a big risk to, for companies to, you know, delegate that, those kinds of decisions to AI, and I think it’s against federal law.

Tenant screening, for instance, g- uh, that’s not something that y- AI can help. AI can do research [00:22:00] and so forth, it can provide information, it can g- you know, but it can’t make a decision. Fair housing compliance, pricing any licensed activity. You know, don’t forget, we realtors, we, we are licensed by the state we do business in, right?

Laci LeBlanc: Wait, wait, wait. Claude doesn’t have a real estate license- It does not … for every state, is what you’re telling me? 

Chris McAllister: It does not, no. Anyway, all these kind of decisions require careful human review. We cannot outsource judgment to a black box, and we won’t. We also have to be careful with data. You know, ROOST handles sensitive information every day: owner financials, tenant records, applications, leases, maintenance issues, transaction details, private client communications.

That’s not something that, we can just, toss out there to, to the AI world, willy-nilly. AI tools are starving for data, but that doesn’t make them entitled to o- ours. So you know, we’re not, uh, interested in… We’re not gonna trade privacy for convenience, right? If that makes sense. [00:23:00] A- and that applies to everything we do.

If it comes from ROOST, if it’s got our name on it, our logo on it, one of our names on it, it’s our responsibility. Anything that’s generated, we review it, we edit it, we verify it, and most importantly, we own it, right? I think AI also magnifies habits. Y- you know, or, or you know, someone is careless, AI can help them become careless really, really, you know, a whole lot faster, right?

If you’re already you know, going on the wrong path, it can speed you up on the wrong path. But if somebody is thoughtful, disciplined, accountable, and, and actually thinks this stuff through, you know, AI can help them become that much more effective that much faster. And that’s why this is not just about tools, Laci, it’s about the standards behind the use of those tools.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s ever-growing, it’s ever-changing. As new tools become available, as the, the world changes alongside AI, [00:24:00] then some of this could, is de- is undoubtedly going to change too, right? Yeah. Um, but as of right now, I think… And, and this is something that’s not gonna change. The standards are not gonna change, right?

And I’m happy to say just so it’s super clear, that the content that we generate- is not triggered by AI for the most part. You know? Like, we might ask AI, “What are, um, you know, what are smart landlords doing right now? What are owners worried about right now?” Right? If we’re gonna try to come up with a podcast episode, and that might give us some ideas, but the content in and of itself is, comes from our brains, and is outlined by you mostly.

And we use that AI to, to make it better. So it ca- but it can make business exponentially better, or I guess if you’re not great at what you do, it could make it exponentially worse, and it’s something to keep in mind. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. It’ll magnify your intentions for 

Laci LeBlanc: good or bad. Exactly. Exactly. People still matter.

Chris McAllister: Um- And it’ll reinforce your intentions for good or bad, too, you know? 

Laci LeBlanc: I think that’s the part that’s the scariest for me, is that [00:25:00] people do go in thinking, A, AI is completely accurate and everything that I… Like, it’s just always right, and B, that not everybody gives it that, please push back, you know?

Please- Yeah … please, if I, if I don’t see the whole picture, give me the whole picture. Not everybody has that relationship with their AI, uh, and that’s kind of scary, but, you know, we’ll figure it out as we go, like with most things. Uh, but since this episode is airing across all three of our podcasts, what should agents, what should owners, and what should clients each take away from it?

Chris McAllister: Well, I think for agents listening, AI should improve your practice, but it can never replace your relationships, right? It can help you draft a list-listing description. It can help you prepare for a buyer meeting or, you know, turn a market update into an email to your database. I mean, the research that, you know, AI can do on your behalf is amazing because it will, go to whatever National Association of Realtors has, has researched and generated and, uh, any other, [00:26:00] database in the world, quite frankly.

And a little trick on this, when you ask it to do that in your prompt, say, “And I wanna see the link to the proof,” right? You, you want AI to give you footnotes. So if you’re gonna ask AI to do research, this is what I do, but I tell it, “Okay, show me the link.” And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked the link, and it either had nothing to do with what it, what was, it was saying or it was a, a dead link, right?

But the times that it, that the links are accurate, a-and then it’s also super freaky when it apologizes to you for, hallucinating or whatever. But, tell it, “I need to, I need you to show your work.” And I think that’s probably the one tip I would give to everybody today is when you’re using AI, make it show your work.

If it’s basically offering up something as fact, ask it, “Show me the proof. Where’s, where’s your footnote?” Anyway, I digress there. But, uh, you know, as far as AI for agents, it’s never a shortcut around [00:27:00] relationship building, but I think AI can make every agent a far more knowledgeable and more effective agent.

For landlords and, owners of property, I think AI should mean, you know, potentially better visibility, better communication, better decision support, right? It can help summarize things like maintenance history. It helps us prepare for owner portfolio reviews and organize owner updates. But, you know, just because we’ve got a super polished, easy to read AI-generated email doesn’t mean that, you know, your property’s being managed well, right?

So if you’re getting some really nice looking emails from your property manager, but the numbers aren’t moving you know what question to ask now. But anyway, a property manager still has to protect the asset and own the outcome. AI can only help. It can’t do it for us. For, for buyers, sellers, tenants, uh, clients, technology does not eliminate the need for trust.

It makes trust that much more important. So again, AI can provide [00:28:00] information, people provide judgment 

Laci LeBlanc: In that spirit, what is the challenge that you’re giving to every ROOST team member, uh, regarding AI? 

Chris McAllister: Every ROOST team member needs to learn how to use their ROOST team AI accounts to improve their own workflow.

Some of our team members have a, a ChatGPT business seat. Some others have a, a Claude seat. A few of us have both. We want people to use the tools, right? We… A- and whenever we do have a, a big team meeting, we go around the table, and aside from share your wins for the last quarter, it’s give me a, give me a situation where you actually used one of these AI accounts to to get to a better outcome.

We wanna share the wins on this, right? And we wanna make the tools available to everybody at ROOST and that’s what we do. I also wanna make it clear that we’re not asking anybody to become a programmer. I mean, you don’t have to be a programmer to use AI. We’re not asking anybody to come, you know, become an expert app builder or [00:29:00] AI anything, but I am asking everyone to learn to use AI pretty much for everything.

I’m asking every team member to be open-minded to ways to become more effective and, and quite frankly, more valuable. So use it to organize your thoughts, use it to draft a clear email, use it to summarize a complicated situation before you escalate it, use it to prepare for a phone call or a meeting. You know, use it to turn your messy notes, you know, into a clean update.

So start with the places, start with your own friction, start with the things that just become chores. You know, what are the things that you have to write and rewrite over and over? Is there a certain kind of email that you struggle to draft? Are you having trouble finding the right words to have a, you know, a tough conversation with somebody?

AI can help with that. And what situation is just taking too damn long to summarize, right? What, what meeting do you wish you were better prepared for? There’s a million things. You know, use AI to [00:30:00] create a better first draft, a better summary, a better checklist, right? Then, you know, you review it, you edit it, you add to it, you take away, you verify it, you make it yours.

The team members who learn to ask these questions of their AI I guarantee you our folks are gonna become more and more valuable, not less valuable because of AI. You know, uh, if any way, I, I fully expect, I know our folks get offers all the time and that’s not gonna change, especially as they become more and more valuable.

It’s our job just to make sure that they always wanna stay with us forever. I know that’s a little crazy, forever, but you get my drift. But- 

Laci LeBlanc: I love forever. Yeah. Forever sounds great. Sign me up, Chris. 

Chris McAllister: So AI shouldn’t make us careless. It should make us sharper. It should, it should not make us less accountable.

It should make us more accountable. It shouldn’t make us less human. It should make… It should give us room to be more human, and I guess that’s really the message that I want our ROOST team members to [00:31:00] hear 

Laci LeBlanc: Fantastic. Well, I’m on board, so that’s- All right. Well, thank you … great news for everyone. Uh, and now comes my favorite part of the podcast is the sum it up in, in a few sentences.

What is the bottom line of the ROOST AI manifesto? 

Chris McAllister: Bottom line is AI will change real estate, but it will not change what matters most. Owners still want their properties protected. Tenants still want safe, functional homes. Buyers still want guidance. Sellers want clarity. Agents want support. Team members still want meaningful work, right?

They wanna make a difference. They wanna make a contribution. And at the end of the day, every client I’ve ever met still does today, always has, always will want to work with somebody they trust. AI can help us hopefully further automate backstage functions, you know, so our people can spend more time engaged with our clients and customers.

That’s, that’s really the goal is how do we automate the stuff that, feels like busy work but is [00:32:00] still critical so we can free up more time to, to do things that AI will never do. Again, I don’t see AI ever replacing our core platforms, AppFolio and so forth. It’s certainly not gonna replace our judgment or relationships, and it’s gonna help us with execution, but it’s not gonna replace our involvement and execution.

So faster, clearer, smarter, more consistent, I think that’s gonna be, you know, get better and better. And, and capacity, right? You know, that sort of bigger brain attached to your brain it does create more capacity, more space. You know, if you’re open-minded, you know, and you, and you, and you have that mindset of, you know, sort of abundance versus scarity, scarcity, it is gonna help you challenge your assumptions.

And I do think it’s gonna help us serve people better, and I know it’s already helped us get better at, at what we do in the real estate business. So again, the tool is not the point. AI is another tool. Service is the point. Better tools, better judgment, better [00:33:00] service. That’s how, you know, I really believe we roll now, and that’s how I expect we’ll be rolling in the future 25 years from now when, uh, you know, AI is just something we don’t even think about anymore.

Laci LeBlanc: Fantastic. Again, sign me up. 

Chris McAllister: All right, you’re signed up. All right. I wanna thank Laci. Thank you for being here with me. Thanks to everybody who’s listening to this special ROOST Real Estate Company podcast. And again, you can find this on Connect, Practice, Track, and Grow, Landlord Property Playbook, all things real estate.

And you can read the full AI manifesto at ROOSTrealestateco.com, learnwithROOST.com. If you’re a ROOST team member, get in there and then you start using that, uh, AI chat account or Claude account. And, you know, maybe this week, the one thing you wanna type in there and ask is, “Knowing what you know about me, what’s one repetitive backstage task you can help me with right now?”

You know, that’s a, that’s a great question, and I think everybody will be surprised what [00:34:00] comes back. But anyway, start small, use your judgment, verify the result, and do it again. So again, anybody listening, agents can, and learn more at learnwithROOST.com. Owners, investors can learn more at investwithROOST.com, and everybody else can learn about ROOST at

ROOSTrealestateco.com. So thank you, Laci. 

Laci LeBlanc: Thanks for having me. 

Chris McAllister: And, uh, thanks to everybody out there who’s, uh, listening to me ramble on today. I hope this was helpful for everybody. 

Laci LeBlanc: We’ll see you next time.