In the late 1990s, Barbara Corcoran made a bold bet on emerging technology. She spent thousands — a small fortune at the time — filming video tours of her brokerage’s listings to create a library of VHS tapes for buyers. While other brokerages were still lugging around binders stuffed with listing photos in plastic sleeves, The Corcoran Group was on the cutting edge of technology — or so they thought.
The fact that some younger Realtors might need to Google — sorry, ask ChatGPT — what a VHS tape even is, sums up our industry’s relationship with AI. A few early adopters are thriving, but too many are still watching from the sidelines, waiting another six months for today’s AI to become tomorrow’s VHS tape.
Rajeev Sajja, SVP of Digital Marketing and Innovation at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (BHHS), has an AI strategy that will help your business grow today: custom GPTs. We recently sat down with Sajja to learn how powerful custom GPTs are for Realtors, and his (surprisingly easy) step-by-step workflow any agent can use to build one.
Meet your new hyper-intelligent real estate assistant
Custom GPTs are personalized versions of ChatGPT that you can build using OpenAI’s tools. Think of them as AI-powered employees trained on your brand voice, internal procedures, lead scripts, fair housing laws or anything else you would use to train a human employee. Here’s Sajja:
“A custom GPT gets that specific task to the finish line faster because it has all the inherent knowledge. It’s almost like having a trained assistant that’s only good at listing descriptions versus a generic assistant that’s good at a lot of things.”
What custom GPTs are good at in 2025
While this will probably change in the next 15 minutes, as of today, Sajja thinks custom GPTs are ideal for automating the mundane, data-heavy tasks that keep you from the personal, creative work that made you want to become a Realtor in the first place.
Here are a few use cases for custom GPTs that work astonishingly well today:
- Listing descriptions
- “Hand-painted” pictures of your listing you can frame for a closing gift
- Market updates
- Improving listing presentations
- Social media captions
- Analyzing competitors’ ads and marketing materials
- Creating PPC ads
- New agent training
- Writing blog posts
- Roleplaying scripts and objection handlers
Want to see just how powerful a custom GPT can be? Check out Sajja’s REAIF Listing Appointment Wizard.
What custom GPTs still struggle with (for now)
As amazing as they are, Custom GPTs have some limitations. For now, at least, they cannot log in to your CRM or any third-party real estate software. To do this, you’ll need to build an AI agent, which is still a relatively complicated process — for now.
ChatGPT almost works for virtual staging, but it’s not quite there yet. It makes too many bizarre mistakes. Trying to explain how the laws of physics apply to couches in your follow-up prompt to fix them is beyond frustrating.
Collov AI makes it easy. Starting at just 22 cents per image, Its proprietary AI lets you declutter and virtually stage your listing (or any listing) with just a few clicks. No physics degree required.
Building your first custom GPT with Rajeev Sajja’s 4P + R.I.S.E framework
Ready to build your first custom GPT? Head over to Openai.com and sign up for a ChatGPT Plus account. Once you’re signed up, click on “GPTs” then “Create.” This is where you will add your instructions and upload your training data.
Pro Tip
A custom GPT is only as good as the instructions and training data you give it. Provide it with a 50-page PDF script book and detailed instructions on how you want it to respond, and it will perform well. Give it vague instructions, and you’ll get vague results.
Luckily, Sajja has an easy-to-use framework for writing your custom GPT prompts: 4P and R.I.S.E.
The 4P framework is a general approach to writing any prompt for AI. It helps you remember to format your prompts so ChatGPT understands them and reminds you to always check over and polish your results to give it your voice.
The R.I.S.E. framework is what you’ll use build your custom GPT. Here’s a quick breakdown of each step in the R.I.S.E. framework to create a custom GPT that writes listing descriptions:
Rajeev Sajja’s R.I.S.E. framework |
|
|---|---|
| Role |
ChatGPT performs better when you assign it a specific role: “You are an experienced real estate content marketer who specializes in writing engaging and evocative listing descriptions that tell the story of a home.” |
| Input |
Upload as many examples as possible of what you want. This can be email sequences from brands you admire, scripts or examples of competitors' pay-per-click ads: “Here are 20 examples of listing descriptions I would like you to emulate and a PDF copy of my state’s fair housing regulations.” |
| Steps |
Next, give the AI explicit steps to get the job done: “Start by asking me to tell you the listing’s address, beds, baths, neighborhood amenities and the tone I would like for the listing description.” |
| Expectations |
Finally, give ChatGPT your expectations for the finished product: “The listing description should be MLS-ready, 1,500 characters long, avoid cliches and jargon and ensure it is compliant with fair housing regulations.” |
In the “Create” tab, use the R.I.S.E. framework to give ChatGPT instructions on what you want your GPT to do, and upload any documents you’d like it to reference. ChatGPT will guide you through the process and even suggest improvements along the way. As you work, test your GPT in the “Preview” pane. Continue refining your instructions — with ChatGPT’s help — and reviewing the results in the Preview pane until it behaves the way you want.
Next, head over to the “Configure” tab to fine-tune your GPT. Here, you can give it a name, review or upload new training documents, connect APIs and add conversation starters — clickable example prompts that let users interact with your GPT by clicking a button instead of typing.
Once you’re happy with the results, click “Create” to publish your GPT. You can choose to keep it private, share with anyone you send the link to or publish it to the GPT store so other Realtors can use it.
How to future-proof your AI-powered real estate business
Still sitting on the fence, waiting for today’s AI to become tomorrow’s VHS tape? I won’t mince words. You’re going to get left behind. It might not happen today or next week, but if you don’t start learning AI now, it’s inevitable.
Smart agents are already using Sajja’s frameworks to build custom GPTs that save them hours of work each week, and give them a laughably unfair edge over the fence sitters. Want to join them? Visit Sajja’s website, Real Estate AI Flash, to test his useful custom GPTs, join AI webinars and meet like-minded agents across the country who are revolutionizing real estate with AI.
Not ready to commit? Download Sajja’s 37-page AI playbook below. It walks you through everything you’d want to know about enhancing your business with AI. It’s time to get off the fence.
Your turn
Know a visionary agent or broker who’s thriving despite the odds and has actionable insights to share? We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us here: vetted@housingwire.com.
