AI Prepares Consumers, Agents Protect Them

AI is powerful, but your smartest move is pairing it with a seasoned, local – and human – agent.

Real estate has always rewarded the prepared, but now consumers have a new preparation tool: AI. Balancing the power of this tool with the experience of a knowledgeable, professional agent is how smart consumers navigate a real estate win.

For those new to using AI, the good news is that it can help you feel more confident in a process that can be confusing, jargon-heavy, and high-stakes. It can crunch numbers and search for specific information about neighborhoods in an instant, delivering clear summaries, side-by-side comparisons, and a strong starting point for smarter questions.

In fact, a new report from 1000Watt – a respected real estate marketing company known for its research – found that 44% of recent buyers and sellers used an AI chatbot during their transaction, and among those who used it, 87% described their usage as moderate or heavy, meaning it shows up repeatedly throughout the journey.

But it’s critical to remember that AI is not the decision-maker. It can’t walk a property. It can’t read the room in a multiple-offer situation. It doesn’t understand the local factors of the market you’re actually in, whether that’s a condo building’s quirks, a neighborhood’s micro-trends, or how timing and terms are playing out.

Here’s the strategy that wins: use AI to get familiar with the process and organize your thinking, and rely on a savvy, experienced local Realtor® to make sure AI is deployed effectively for the best outcome, especially at the moments that decide the deal.

“Being knowledgeable is table stakes. Adding judgment is the value,” the 1000Watt researchers report.

Use AI for “pre-game.” Use your Realtor® for game time.

AI is great for preparation: understanding the timeline, learning the vocabulary, building checklists, and comparing options. The 1000Watt report describes AI appearing “repeatedly throughout the process,” supporting preparation, comparison, and decision validation.

But consumers themselves draw clear boundaries around where AI belongs. 1000Watt reported that 47% are uncomfortable using AI to negotiate offers or counteroffers, and 47% are uneasy relying on AI for final buying or selling decisions.

That’s a helpful instinct. Use AI to rehearse and prepare, but when you’re choosing strategy – offer terms, inspection negotiations, appraisal gaps, legal consequences – that’s game time. This is where to pause the AI chats and talk to your Realtor®. A strong agent becomes the central voice of intelligence not because they “control the information,” but because they can interpret and apply it under pressure.

Calm the two biggest stressors: price and paperwork.

When consumers were asked what they most want AI to improve, the top themes weren’t flashy; they were practical:

Pricing confidence & market clarity (31%)
Understanding the process, documents, and legal language (24%)

That’s the heart of the real estate anxiety loop: Is this a fair price? What does this document mean? What am I missing out on? What happens if I get this wrong?

AI can be a surprisingly good translator. It can summarize a disclosure, define terms, and help you generate questions you didn’t know to ask. But it can’t guarantee accuracy, and it can’t know what’s “normal” or “negotiable” in your specific situation.

This is also where local experience matters most. “Comparable” isn’t just a number on a screen; it’s condition, location, timing, and the small but important details that can change value. In the DMV, that might be the difference between two similarly-located condos with very different condo fees or amenities; the difference between a historic home with unique constraints and a renovated one with modern systems; or how micro-location – sometimes by just a few streets – can shift pricing, timing, and buyer interest.” AI can explain the concept; your Realtor® can explain what it means here.

A private rehearsal room for the questions you’re not ready to ask out loud.

One of the most human findings in the report: 45% of AI users asked a real estate question they’d feel uncomfortable asking an agent.

Why? People didn’t want to seem uninformed, feared judgment, wanted to explore options quietly, had privacy concerns, or didn’t want to reveal urgency. Specifically, the reasons cluster around vulnerability: 19% wanted to explore options they believed an agent might discourage, 19% worried about appearing uninformed, and 18% were concerned about being judged.

AI helps here because it’s low-pressure. You can practice questions, test scenarios, and organize your priorities. Then you can bring that “rehearsal” to an agent who can turn it into an actual plan and make sure the answers are grounded in reality and achievable for your goals.

Rely on local experience for what listings don’t tell you.

Consumers also want AI to help reduce the grind of searching. In open-ended responses, one theme was finding, filtering, and comparing the right homes (15%), plus speed, organization, and reducing friction (7%).

AI can help you compare listings side-by-side, clarify tradeoffs, and create a simple “tour scorecard” so you don’t forget what mattered after seeing house #6 over a jam-packed tour. But it won’t reliably detect the subtle stuff: the reality behind the photos (which are often being edited by AI, sometimes to disturbing results), the building-specific patterns, or how a “great listing” reveals itself once buyers start poking at disclosures and inspections.

As 1000Watt puts it: AI prepares consumers, their agent protects them.

AI Guardrails: Build a reality-check loop

The report notes that consumers use AI to verify information provided by an agent (13%) and to estimate home value or compare prices (14%), among other moments in the process. And the conclusion is blunt: consumers “verify relentlessly.”

That’s the correct posture. AI can be helpful but still be wrong, overly generic, or oddly confident about something it’s guessing – and sometimes getting wrong (referred to as “AI hallucinations”). This is where experienced agents provide the most value: turning information into judgment, framing, and action at the moments that matter most to their clients.

A simple loop keeps you safe:

Ask AI for a summary, checklist, or comparison.
Cross-check with real data and documents.
Have your Realtor® interpret what matters and what’s missing.

1000Watt’s report also showed that consumers worry most about accuracy (54%), privacy/data security (50%), and over-reliance (48%) when AI is used in real estate, and caution is well-founded.

Some rules for AI research:

Don’t paste sensitive personal data – SSNs, account numbers, pay stubs, tax returns, loan details – into chat tools.
Don’t treat AI as legal, tax, or financial advice.
If you paste contract language for summarizing, remove names/addresses and personal details first.
Treat AI tools like “a public conference room,” not a locked filing cabinet.
Use AI to generate questions and summaries; use your Realtor® as the verification layer and decision guide.

Bottom line: AI can help you move faster and feel more in control, but a seasoned local Realtor® helps you avoid expensive blind spots and guide the transaction through to a clean settlement. Bring your AI notes/questions to our Corcoran McEnearney experts, and we’ll help you verify what’s true, what’s missing, and what matters most on your real estate journey.