CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania — Coldwell Banker agent Georgie Smigel used to spend hours digging through spreadsheets and old inquiry lists trying to figure out who might be interested in a new listing.

Now she simply asks her artificial intelligence software who is looking for a $250,000 house in a given Pittsburgh neighborhood or suburb.

"And it pops out all these people's names and emails," she said. "We invite them to look at our listings and go to our open houses."

Ms. Smigel said a real estate coach told her a year ago to "start small" with AI — use it to write ads, clean up listing descriptions and other small tasks.

But with help from her two tech-savvy sons, she went further. She has trained her AI tools to power a big portion of her business, from mining prospects to drafting marketing materials and staying in touch with clients.

The payoff has been real. The team Ms. Smigel leads is on track to hit the $100 million mark in sales this year, about $10 million more than in 2024 — and she credits AI for helping her get there.

She's not alone.

Across the country, real estate agents are weaving AI into almost every aspect of the job, and the technology is reshaping the industry faster than many expected.

The use of AI in real estate has evolved into a broad range of tools that that can automate marketing, analyze buyer behavior, generate ads and social media posts, and even draft agreements that once required an attorney.

Agents doing their own marketing are finding they can cut certain professional services from their budgets.

"We don't need our graphic designer anymore, which is unfortunate," Ms. Smigel said. "We can put an ad into AI, ask it to make a special size, ask it to look like this, give a theme, and AI spits it out for us."

Sweeping changes

Big brokerages embraced AI early and haven't looked back.

Howard Hanna Real estate, the Pittsburgh region's largest real estate company, has been using AI in one form or another for years, said Dennis Cestra Jr., president of the company's Pennsylvania market.

"We updated the search function on our website a year ago with enhanced AI capabilities," he said. "Also, we'll be rolling out here fairly quickly for our agents true automation when it comes to marketing."

It seems that every brokerage, property manager and agent is either building or buying their own system, each one tailored to whatever task or problem they're trying to solve.

"It's kind of the Wild West in that everybody's doing their own thing," said Mike Netzel, a team leader at Keller Williams Real Estate in Pine Township, Pennsylvania. "Some are much more systemized and consistent about it."

For Dustin Nulf, owner of Nulf Management Services on Washington's Landing in Pittsburgh, AI has opened the door to sweeping changes in how he runs and grows his business.

When his property management company recently acquired two other management firms, he didn't call an attorney to prepare the sales agreements. He turned to ChatGPT.

"I used ChatGPT to write the sales agreement for the transaction instead of paying an attorney over $1,000 and waiting more than a month to get a sales agreement drawn up," Mr. Nulf said.

AI now touches nearly every operational corner of Mr. Nulf's business.

His maintenance director uses it to turn rough property walk-through notes into organized, room-by-room bulletpoints that can be converted into renovation bids.

His maintenance routing system uses AI to troubleshoot tenant issues via text before assigning the ticket to the right technician — a process that used to eat up hours of staff time.

Even his back office is increasingly automated.

"We use an AI-driven bookkeeping system where we can scan utility bills, and it reads the bills and automatically makes payments and books the charges," Mr. Nulf said.

"It has learned the more we use it and has become better at being accurate over time," he said.

Instant matches

Brokerages also are investing heavily in predictive technology — tools that don't just perform tasks faster, but attempt to forecast customer behavior.

At Howard Hanna, Mr. Cestra said the company now uses algorithms to identify homeowners who are statistically more likely to move in the future. The idea is to help agents be the first to secure listings.

"It's based on their digital footprint and historical data like how long they've been there and what's their equity in the house and their most likely interest rate," he said.

A buyer's agent will already have a good idea of what house and what price a prospective buyer is likely interested in.

"We're already going to be able to go out there and search for those houses before we even contact you," Mr. Cestra said.

"That's what we mean by flattening the process out. You go straight to the buyer with a product they might already want," he said. "Instead of starting the process asking what house and what price you want."

For Ms. Smigel, the power of AI lies not only in how much work it lifts off her plate, but how precisely it connects her with buyers.

Every inquiry her team receives — the price range someone mentions, the neighborhoods they're exploring, the school districts they prefer — feeds into a database that AI can instantly search and match against new listings.

She doesn't need to guess who might be the right audience.

Ms. Smigel has even used her AI tools in her personal life — she asks it to compose music for her.

"I have a song I put on Facebook for everybody's birthday," she said. "It's for everybody I know in real estate or personal who follows me. I wish them a happy birthday with a song I wrote from AI."

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