I Used AI for a Year as a Realtor: What Actually Made Money

A year ago I started pointing AI at every corner of my real estate business I could find — videos, software, social posts, cold calls, my CRM, even the slide decks I hand clients. Some of it was a waste of time. Two things weren’t, and those two are where about eight of this year’s deals came from. That’s the part nobody tells you about using AI in real estate: it can do almost anything, but only a couple of those things actually put money in your account.

I’m William Zhang, a real estate agent here in Austin and the founder of Real Estate AI Society. This isn’t a list of shiny tools — it’s a year of me testing AI on a real book of business and being honest about what drove revenue and what just felt productive. The full walkthrough is in the video, then I break down all six uses below and the two that actually mattered. If you want the prompts and the AI system behind these, they’re free in the newsletter.

The Six Ways I Put AI to Work This Year

Before I get to what worked, here’s the honest inventory. These are the six things I actually used AI for, day in and day out.

First, I made YouTube videos with my AI clone — my face, my voice, no camera. Second, I started building my own software again, both side projects and real estate tools. Third, I created Instagram and Facebook posts, including carousels and virtual staging for my listings. Fourth, I put AI on the phones, both as a receptionist for missed calls and as a cold caller for leads. Fifth, I moved my day-to-day operations onto AI — CRM, follow-up emails, the little tasks that eat a morning. Sixth, I used it for client visual assets like buyer guides, seller guides, and presentations.

That’s a lot of surface area. But “AI can do it” and “AI made me money” are two different lists, and the gap between them is the whole point of this post.

AI Clone Videos: The Content That Sells One-to-Many

I’m a big believer in creating leverage, and content is the most leverage I’ve found. Cold calling sells one-to-one — a good day is one or two connections and maybe a single appointment. Content sells one-to-many. Someone watches a long-form video, sticks around, and by the time they reach out they already trust me.

I lean on this two ways. The first is my AI clone. I built realagentclone.com so you can take a photo of yourself and a 30-second voice clip and produce short-form videos for Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube without ever filming or editing. I use that same clone to make long-form YouTube videos, and I’ve got an editor who can run with it without me on camera. I was hesitant about this at first, so I tested it for about three months at two to three videos a week. It’s closed about two deals so far with another under contract — better than I expected. One recent video on why Austin is one of the strongest buyer’s markets in the country created a client we’re under contract with right now.

The trick with clone content is to treat it like a faceless channel. Your AI version shows up on screen for a few seconds here and there, but most of the video is custom b-roll — the city, the neighborhood, the concept you’re explaining. Nobody wants to stare at a synthetic face for ten minutes. Mix it right and the video reads as authentic. I went deeper on the caveats in my honest review of AI clones after five months.

The second way is plain real-person content, the kind in this video — and even there AI does the heavy lifting. It researches the topic, builds the slides, designs the thumbnail, and uploads the finished file. I used to spend 10 to 15 hours per video when I first started. Now my prep time is about 30 minutes, then I film and hand it off. That’s the leverage: I show up, talk, and the system handles the rest.

Claude as My AI Operating System for Real Estate

The second thing that actually moved the needle wasn’t a single task — it was consolidating everything onto one platform. I started using Claude as my AI operating system back in March. It’s the same engine behind the 5-part Claude system that’s closed deals for me this year.

Before that I was stitching tools together. ChatGPT for research and scripts. Gemini or ChatGPT for thumbnails. A separate tool for lead magnets. Lovable for websites and funnels. ElevenLabs for the calling. It worked, but I was the glue holding five tools together. Now Claude handles almost all of it, because it’s the best agentic platform I’ve used.

Here’s what I mean by agentic. With a chat tool, you ask a question, it answers, and you go back and forth — it’s basically a smarter search box. Claude understands the end result I’m after and uses whatever tools it needs to get there: building a presentation, browsing the web, reading my files, pulling from memory. When I asked it to build a deck on how I use AI in my business, it already knew my goals and my past work, so it produced something specific without me spelling out every step. Having that operation layer handle the administrative load is the difference between feeling buried and feeling like I have a team. If you want the frame for how deep this goes, I laid it out in the 5 levels of Claude for realtors.

The Four Uses That Helped, but Didn’t Close Deals

The other four are genuinely useful — they just didn’t move revenue the way content and the operating system did.

Building software is the one I’m most bullish on long term. In a past life I was a tech consultant and a product manager, so I had the fundamentals but was never a strong coder. Now AI writes the code and I describe what I want in plain English. That’s how realagentclone.com exists. For most agents the play is smaller and still worth it: a home-buyer app, a relocation landing page, a custom sign-up flow for an ad campaign. Work you’d have paid a developer $100 an hour for, you can now prototype by talking to Claude. I started in Lovable for fast prototypes but moved to Claude — better value per token, especially for actual code.

AI on the phones is promising but not there yet for me. My missed calls route to an AI receptionist that takes a message or runs a quick consultation and books straight onto my calendar. A friend also built a cold-calling tool I’ve been testing on probate, expired, and for-sale-by-owner leads as an AI appointment setter. Some callers hesitate the moment they realize it’s AI, so I’m still working out the handoff. I’ll share real numbers once I have them.

Operations and client visual assets round it out. AI runs my Follow Up Boss sequences and a stack of tiny automations — hand it an edited video and it writes the SEO description, designs the thumbnail, and uploads to the right channel. For clients, I’ve replaced gamma.app with Claude for branded buyer and seller guides, neighborhood breakdowns, “what to do this weekend” lead magnets — the small touches that make a follow-up feel personal.

If you’re trying to figure out where each of these tools fits, I keep a running comparison on the AI tools and Claude skills directory.

What I’m Doing Next

The takeaway from a full year is simple: content and the operating system made the money, so that’s where I’m doubling down.

More video, including a niche channel I just launched where I’ll post AI clone videos to open a second lead source — agents need more than one. More software, because building a custom funnel or app for your niche finally makes sense when you can do it by talking to Claude. And more content beyond video: image posts, carousels, long-form, LinkedIn as a funnel. I’ll write up the LinkedIn play once I have results worth sharing.

If you want to build this out yourself instead of piecing it together over a year like I did, I’m running a live cohort in July where I set up the whole real estate AI operating system with you — the clone, the content engine, and Claude as the operations layer. You can grab a founding seat here. And if you just want the prompts and the AI course to start, they’re free in the newsletter.