AI for Real Estate: 2025 Trends, Tactics, and Tools with Vance Courtney

Kristen Knapp (00:00.857)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen Knapp and I’m here with Vance Courtney, the CEO of Rhino Systems AI. So we’re going to get into everything AI and how you can utilize it in your business. I’m excited. This will be a really unique episode. So thank you for being here.Vance (00:14.542)
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Kirsten.Kristen Knapp (00:16.685)
Yes, so let’s jump right into it. How did you get fascinated in the world of AI?Vance (00:21.986)
This is a really good story. like, you know, 20 years as a system engineer working from DOD, NSA, even in the military and

You know just being fascinated with technology. I’ve always been surrounded around it and you people think AI is pretty new But AI has been around since the 50s. Just not a very good version of it And it’s been interesting because we’ve been working around voice models since 2009 2010 while working at the NSA of like Analyzing voices and working within what they call LLM So I’ve been around it for quite a few years for quite a long time and more recently within a few years of The whole idea of being able to talk to a language model has been over the last

Kristen Knapp (00:40.671)
Wow.

Vance (01:00.56)
few years as it gained popularity.

Kristen Knapp (01:04.055)
Yeah, and like in the 50s, what kind of AI were they using?

Vance (01:07.022)
Oh, it was so terrible. you’re talking about like old school punch card machine type things where they were trying to have it predict and it was so inaccurate on just basic calculations that we actually went into like a cold kind of thing like the cold era of like, I just kind of sat on the shelf and people working on things behind the scenes and in the early 2000s or 2010 and stuff, machine learning had been coming out and that type of stuff. So that’s been happening in the tech space for a very long time. So this is being built out for quite a few years and it wasn’t

Kristen Knapp (01:09.125)
you

Vance (01:36.976)
until about three or four years ago where OpenAI kind of released this idea of like, how do you just talk to it like a human and get some answers back? And that was just the way we interact with that model is what really blew up rapidly.

Kristen Knapp (01:49.507)
Yeah, it felt like it blew up out of nowhere and it felt like that was like the start of it, but it’s been around for a very long time.

Vance (01:54.222)
Thanks

Yes, the technology has been around for a long time. It’s kind of, going to kind of date myself here, but it kind of is like the internet. They had a lightweight version of the internet called DARPAnet where it was government and schools that were using it then it blew up. Kind like Facebook. It was meant for only universities and schools and then it went to the public. so machine learning and AI has been doing that as well in the government sectors and some of the technical space. And then now we blew it to the public. And of course, as you see, it’s just kind like the internet era. I think it’s going to be more impactful than the internet and cell phones that has changed our

and the way we do things.

Kristen Knapp (02:26.703)
I think it’s been so apparent how much it changes things so rapidly. And I think one of the fears that a lot of people have is, it going to take my job? Like, is AI going to get rid of all the jobs? What’s your opinion on that?

Vance (02:35.341)
and

No, I love that, that’s a great question. While AI won’t take all the jobs necessarily the way people are worried about, what it will do is the people using AI will take your jobs. again, this is like, imagine back in the day where, the internet, don’t use the internet, that’s terrible. Now everybody that has a job right now is using the internet in some form or fashion, so don’t be that person who isn’t looking as AI as part of the future happening today. So don’t get left behind, start using it like you use the internet and you won’t get left behind. So again, it’ll only replace

you’ll only get replaced by those that are using AI.

Kristen Knapp (03:11.459)
Absolutely, I do think if you’re not using it, you will get left behind because there’s just so much information to be gained in such a dense amount of peer, like you can just do your job so much more effectively.

Vance (03:22.069)
Yes, 100%. It’s crazy because people are like, why do I want to listen to this? I’m using AI. And most people are getting left behind because they’re just using AI as another search engine and they’re missing the mark. mean, that is like the secret sauce that’s happening out there. Don’t use it like another Google. It does so much more for you.

Kristen Knapp (03:41.069)
Right, and so get into Rhino Systems AI. Tell us more about that.

Vance (03:44.654)
Yeah, no, perfect. So Rhino Systems AI goes out and pretty much helps teams build out and leverage AI. So instead of like, you need to hire developer, you need to hire a technical person, you will come out, we’ll train your team on how to use AI in just a few hours, you’ll be better than 99 % of the people leveraging AI. Again, it’s not just a search engine, it’s a thought partner, it’s an operating system that you can leverage to help you do 10 times more than what you’re doing right now.

Kristen Knapp (04:08.729)
I mean, I think that’s so important, because I’ve even just seen that in my personal life, the way I, because I use ChatGPT, like just like prompting, whether I prompt it in a certain way, how it can help me more, or whether just learning how to actually use it has impacted me a lot. Because in beginning, I was just using it as a search engine, and I wasn’t really realizing how much it could just help me in my efficiency.

Vance (04:14.285)
Yeah.

Vance (04:19.009)
Yeah.

Vance (04:28.183)
Dude. So here’s one little hack I’ll give and this is like part of like what we do in the training. So this one little takeaway will change the game. So chat GBT, it’s a good thing. It’s a master of everything. It’s a chef, it’s a mechanic, it’s a developer. So when you ask it a question, it’s gonna use all of that knowledge and try to filter through it to get you your answer. So do this one thing at the beginning of every prompt, identify it as a role, say you are X.

Be very clear, say you are a mechanic and you’re trying to help me or you are a developer or you are a world-class digital marketer, help me write this blog post. Way better than help me write this blog post. So identify the role and it now limits its data set of information and goes right into it. Some of my favorite is find who’s the best in your industry. So like in sales, somebody’s ghosting you and you want help on how not to be ghosted, they’re not responding, you are Chris Voss.

Right? Based on this text, help me with the next follow-up sequence message. Or, again, I want to write a blog post or a social media post. You can sit there and say, you are Russell Brunson. Help me write this post. Or whoever your favorite digital marketer is, put it out there. We use it all the time, so identify a person and tell AI that it is that person, and it will be world-class at whatever you want it to help you with.

Kristen Knapp (05:42.463)
Absolutely, I mean, because all of that knowledge is public, or you know, when someone’s online, all of their information is public and it’s easy to search so they can, you know, get the voice pretty quickly.

Vance (05:52.77)
Yes, exactly. It’s so important. There’s many frameworks that we can use out there and go through, but just do that one tweak and watch the difference in your problem and just test it. Ask it to do one thing, give it a roll and ask it to do something and watch how night and day different your answer will be.

Kristen Knapp (06:07.413)
Yeah. Well, that’s a good, cause I’ve heard that before and I didn’t understand why you, cause I was like, I’ll just ask the question. It knows the answer, but that makes sense that it’s sourcing so many different industries that you have to more specific.

Vance (06:13.591)
You know what,

Exactly. Right, because like, there’s a difference of like different types of salespeople or what if you want it to be a world-class acquisition rep, like in real estate.

So what do we sell exactly in real estate? It’s like, well, we don’t, we buy. So you want to be super clear on like our strategy. like, I like to use something like your Steve train or your insert your favorite sales person and they’ll know all the stuff because he’s out there, he’s on social media and he’s like, well known of sales in our space. And you can use that to help you on how to acquire and use his techniques as opposed to, you know, use Sandler method or use like Grant Cardone. And it’s like, okay, but are they tied to our real estate or they tied to like business, right?

why I like it, whether it’s Chris Voss or Jeremy Miner. That’s just on the sales side, let alone when you get in the marketing side or some of the other amazing features that you can use.

Kristen Knapp (07:06.851)
What would you say to somebody who’s critical of AI in the sense that we’re not thinking anymore? We’re becoming dumber because we’re relying on AI.

Vance (07:14.029)
you

So here’s the beautiful part, if you just put in something and take it without analyzing it, that may be true. And I will state this, this is gonna be a very blunt statement, so we’ll kinda go with this, but it’s gonna make the people that are dumb dumber, yes, that’s true, but I think it’ll make the people that are smart smarter because you’re gonna question things and be inquisitive about it, and be like, no, that’s not quite right, try this, try this. And as long as you’re analyzing and understanding how it works, and not just copying and pasting and not paying attention, no, I actually think it helps you be, it’ll actually speed up that process.

and it’s the easiest way to learn and I can totally get into that topic but yeah I think it’ll help you out a bit.

Kristen Knapp (07:50.639)
Yeah, get into the topic. I mean, I’ve seen it in my personal growth so much, just how much information I’m able to source.

Vance (07:57.1)
Yeah, I love using a complex topic or how to do something. Like normally, actually the reason why I think it’ll make people smarter is most people would stop because they’re not educated or they don’t know how to do something. go update this website. It’s like, I don’t know anything about web pages. You could take a screenshot of an error you’re getting on whatever tool you use. Not even like, like let’s say you’re in your CRM and like, I don’t know Salesforce. I don’t want to get a Salesforce developer. I’ll just leave it as is it’s broken. Or you could take a screenshot of it, paste it in there and now you got a developer and you become at least average, if not better at everything by just

using chat GPT. Take a picture of your motor, you’re having issues with your car, you could solve some car problems. Hey what’s the sound? You can now go in live video mode troubleshooting. It’s making this clicking sound. Here’s my engine, what’s the sound? it could be this, try this, do it. No that didn’t work. You got a mechanic right there so like it helps you solve problems that you wouldn’t have solved before.

Kristen Knapp (08:48.645)
Absolutely, once I was just making a website and there was just something on the website that wasn’t working and I couldn’t fix it on Shopify and I just pasted the code and I was like, how do I fix the code? And it fixed the code for me.

Vance (08:55.148)
Yeah.

Vance (09:00.278)
Yeah.

Yes, so don’t need to know about it and most people would stop. And the beautiful part is if you really want to learn more, could be like, well, tell me why this broke and I like this thing thanks to Reddit. Like explain like I’m five, you know what mean? Like tell it what grade level to help explain it to you. Maybe you’re not college, you know, level, you know, developer. Okay, fine, you’re a high school or middle school developer. Hey, talk to me like I’m a middle schooler learning how to develop code. Why did this work or not? And it will break it down at your different levels and it understands the different levels. And so you can learn at such a rapid rate too.

Kristen Knapp (09:33.207)
And kind of going off of that, what would you say to somebody who is very technically in inclined or not inclined and is intimidated by AI?

Vance (09:41.914)
I love this. If you can Google search or you can launch an app on your phone, you can use AI. That’s how simple this is and it’s not as technically inclined. What people do is they have this sphere and like again, a short session of just training on a few features of where things are. Most people don’t even know that ChatGPT actually has like a built-in like app store. Like apps are going to be like old school things. It’s GPTs. So they call it ChatGPT. But I told you how it’s got all this information.

Kristen Knapp (10:04.261)
you

Vance (10:11.757)
You know there’s like custom GPTs that people built of like how to be a professional like copywriter. So if you want to say write this post, it’ll actually do it in most professional way and somebody’s guideline and created like an app or a GPT for you to use. If you want to have Tony Robbins give you life advice, instead of saying you’re Tony Robbins and you want to put all these guidelines, you can go use that and talk to Tony Robbins as if he’s there and get some advice. There’s all these apps or GPTs that are out there for you to pick up or GEMS as they call it in Gemini, but we’ll stay with the chat GPT because that’s more popular.

GPTs on the left hand side you can go and explore and install like an app and start using it.

Kristen Knapp (10:46.329)
Wow, I didn’t know that. And you said apps are going to be a thing of the past?

Vance (10:49.997)
Oh, I wholeheartedly think so. think that is going to shift. It’s going to be a big, a big change. And a lot of these AI apps that are getting belts out, it’s just going to be, it’s kind of like a, I’m just, it’s hard to fathom to explain it. Like how are we to just get rid of like apps? The apps that you pay for, there’s a tool called lovable.dev. If you haven’t had a chance, take a look at it. lovable.dev. You can talk to it and it’ll build out the app for you. You talk to something and it builds an app for you. So if there’s an app that you got to pay for, but you just want the

feature that it does, talk to AI and it’ll build it for you. You don’t have to be a developer and it’ll publish to the website. It’s phenomenal. My 12 year old built out a little Etsy storefront to be able to talk about her own, she makes like, whether it’s from bracelets to yarn and just different things and she made a little storefront for it within a short period of time and trust me, she doesn’t code. She’s on the creative side. She likes to do arts and crafts. She is not on the technical side and she can talk.

to it and build out a storefront anybody can. Yes it’s really neat.

Kristen Knapp (11:53.209)
Wow, that’s so cool.

Yeah, so there really aren’t any limitations on your skill set.

Vance (12:00.109)
No, it’s not. It’s just understanding what’s available and learning it, right? We’re just in the learning curve right now. And then some people are just kind of resistant because they hear AI and it sounds super technical in nature. And the reason why chat GBT is having such wild success and I even think Google will help with this as well is it’s so easy to use. It’s just a text box to start with, but there’s just a few features that if you just look around, like I challenge everybody to take a second, look on the left side of your screen, go into the settings. I guess there’s a settings, go look in your settings and see there’s not very many, but you

can go take a look. There’s just a few things like memory. Like you can actually have it not remember certain chat features or turn off memory or temporary chats. There’s tons of little features in there, but just go browse around because most people are just so used to like search, type, answer. Just glance around and you’ll be surprised at what’s actually available because it’s a super simple interface.

Kristen Knapp (12:51.361)
Absolutely. that’s awesome. then so let’s get into how you started using this for real estate investing and how you kind of got like how what was the impetus of that?

Vance (12:58.944)
Yes.

Yeah, so this is fantastic of like, so like how to leverage AI inside for like real estate investing or how I got into real estate investing.

Kristen Knapp (13:09.473)
Yeah, how you decided to leverage AI for real estate investment.

Vance (13:12.417)
Yes.

So first things first, like if you have training material and videos and transcripts, how many times do you have it where you maybe you’re training an employee, they watch the video, but then they come and ask you questions and they come and ask you maybe even the same question over and over. Imagine if you got the build out, you’re in a custom chat that references all your training, because maybe you do sales a little bit different than say Steve training. Maybe you have a little bit different of a process. You put this inside this custom chat and now my team, they can interact with it and get their questions or training for acquisitions sped up night and day policies of like

a question of like, do I get the holiday down that slows down like group chats big time? They can go engage, get the answer they need and they didn’t disrupt workflow. So just those few little things from right that I would start off with right off the bat that would help of just the business, the sales, whether it’s running comps and ARVs, like you can build out your custom GPTs to go run out and run comps from you. Again, from even social media posts, if you’re not active on like social media for brand awareness on a deal you bought or deal you sold or somebody you helped,

Kristen Knapp (13:47.333)
Mm-hmm.

Vance (14:13.148)
you can build out automation but also AI to help write the post for you automatically and post it daily. Like there’s no shortage of ideas.

Kristen Knapp (14:18.809)
Yeah, I mean, that’s amazing. And you said that you are recently launching something new, correct?

Vance (14:26.155)
Yeah, so actually, just for the clarity, we’re getting ready to test this out, but just yesterday, what was launched and it was an open AI just released was called agent mode.

So agent mode is where, you know how like sometimes you’ll type, hey look for some information and get you in, then you gotta go do some work with it? Well what if AI could just do the thing for you? What if you could say, hey go look for some fun places to go, schedule me a time and book me an appointment, here’s my budget. Now it’ll open up and like run in a browser and you can actually see it. It’ll go search all the websites for you, it’ll find the places based on what it knows about you, it’ll even book the reservation, put it on your calendar and do it all for you.

You don’t have to connect to it. Same with building out a presentation. Hey, I got a big presentation I need to go do and it’s got to be on this topic. Go research it and build out a presentation.

What if you got all this data that you got and you’re all these on, here’s an example, maybe you only have funds to buy one multifamily deal, okay? But you got like 20 deals to go analyze, slap it in here, have it run performance for you, build out a spreadsheet and give you a recommendation on what you want, which one to purchase and why. It can do all of that. Even if it’s not 100 % accurate, because people get hung up, yeah, but it’s not perfect. Well, even if it did 90 % of the work and you just did the last 10 % of looking at the data, verifying it, it did 90 % of the work. That’s that 10X of activity.

That’s that you’re delegating to an assistant that doesn’t cost you the assistant or the errors or the problems that it’s going to make like another person would. It’s going to be consistent. It’s going to produce a result and you still need to audit it. But man, if I can have 90 % of the research done, there’s a lot of work people don’t do because they know the work it’s going to take to do it. So even if I can have something do 90 % of it and I only do 10 % of that workload, I’m probably likely to do the work.

Kristen Knapp (16:06.233)
Definitely. Wow, that’s so interesting. you know, as the market is evolving, how do you see it evolving in the real estate investing market? And, you know, on the other end of it, where do you see people who aren’t utilizing this kind of AI? Where do think they’re going to be?

Vance (16:23.501)
Oh, that’s the biggest part. They’re going to be the people that are still going to the county records manually, mailing envelopes manually, writing the yellow letters manually. Like if you’re in that space as an investor, you’re probably left behind, right? Because that’s the old ways of doing it. Even just like five, 10 years ago, or about 10 years ago, like writing a letter, right? Putting it in there and spending weekends licking envelopes versus using a process or a system or a tool. estate’s a little bit behind on that front. But again, I’m going to give a shout out to the objectionproof.ai, a thing that automatically

will analyze your sales call give you a scoring system. Automatic through AI, almost like you have a sales manager for every call. Not some of the calls that your sales manager can get to, but every call gets auto analyzed and automated. You’re to get left behind by people that are able to improve every call versus one out of 20 calls. I mean that’s a big difference. So it just allows for whatever you’re good at to be done faster.

Kristen Knapp (17:16.653)
Yeah, absolutely. And so kind of just going back, how did you get into the real estate world?

Vance (17:22.957)
So this is a funny thing. When I first joined the military, I was given some really good advice. Hey, you want two retirements? And I’m leaning in like, yeah, I want two retirements. You’re to get the military retirement. But if you move every few years, just hold on to the property. The government will give it to you, VA loans, right? Just hold on to the properties. And after 20 years, you got a handful of properties and you can retire off of two incomes or two retirements. I’m like, all right, let’s do that. On 2018, I reflected back and I’m like, this could take a long time and I don’t like the slow way. So then it was like, go figure out how to get deals.

I realized after losing 40K on your first deal, we can talk about that another time, right? I was like, okay, there’s gotta be a system and a process for it. And I’m being an assistant engineer, quickly identified that it’s a repeat process. So for the first few years of building the business, we didn’t take a single rental. And the goal was build the system, build the process, and then cherry pick from it. And so that’s kind of how I got into it is like, I wanna go faster, I want deals, bought a turnkey property, lost 40K, wasn’t a good thing. How did they find a deal? Let me repeat that process.

Kristen Knapp (18:22.499)
Well, I think that’s so important. think that a lot of people, especially getting into the real estate industry, think it’s just gonna be a bunch of money all the time and everything’s always gonna go well.

Vance (18:31.089)
yeah.

No, far from it, right? mean, that’s the, the kicker is learning from those mistakes as they happen, right? I was just chatting with another person that lost 45K on a deal and it was all due to like holding and it took much longer and so it’s just kind of planning and budgeting for those kinds of things and learning from your lessons. Don’t repeat the same mistakes and don’t give up because again, there’s money, you’re gonna pay either way, whether you pay a program or you pay a coach to speed learning curve or you do it yourself and pay with time and do it right or you pay

through with the mistakes that you learn and you just got to learn from them. Don’t let it take you out the game.

Kristen Knapp (19:07.799)
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s such great advice. And so what’s next for you with this company? You just launched something brand new, but do you have anything else coming up that you’re excited about?

Vance (19:17.709)
Yeah, so a couple of things that I’m super excited about is like some of the lead management that we’re working on and building within Joe Holmbier, which is going to be awesome. So that’s another fun product that we’re working to build where to actually handle and do lead intake for you. It’s not there to close yet. There’s a lot of tools that promise to manage your leads, but at such a premium that I’m like, that better close deals, right? Like I think I was looking at Aircall AI agent. It’s pretty cool. But at, what was it? 99 cents per minute. I had to double check that. 99 cents a minute.

like, okay, that’s $60 an hour. At $60 an hour, that better be a closer, not just somebody to handle a lead intake call. And so what we want is the cost of a VA, the quality of a US person, but available like a machine 24 seven. And that’s what we’re trying to focus on building for lead manager.

Kristen Knapp (20:03.097)
Wow, that sounds awesome. And where can people find out more about you?

Vance (20:07.949)
Sure, on social media for sure. like, you know, reach out to Facebook. You can also reach out directly to me at like vcourtney at rhinosystems.ai. love to, anybody wants to talk shop strategize or wants to just have clarity on what they can do and what they can use AI for. Cause that seems to a big hang up. It’s like, I know I need to use it in my business, but where and how? I’d love to jump on a 15 minute call just to help with the strategy.

Kristen Knapp (20:30.317)
Yes, everyone please take advantage of that. That’s so generous to give out your email address. So this has been awesome. mean, this went by really quick, but you gave such great information about AI. I actually learned a lot on this call.

Vance (20:41.741)
Thank you so much. That’s awesome. And of course, like love this passion about it. I always say use AI to become your unfair advantage right now because people are taking too long to implement right now.

Kristen Knapp (20:52.687)
Totally. I mean, I think it’s such great advice and I absolutely agree with it. Yeah. So thank you so much for being here today, Vance. And everybody, if you love this podcast, please subscribe and please check out Rhino Systems AI. So we’ll see you back next time. Okay. Bye.

Vance (20:56.641)
That’s awesome.

Vance (21:05.14)
Awesome. Thank you, Pearson. Bye.