Stop Guessing in Real Estate: Systems, Data, and AI That Actually Work

Eric Bramlett (00:00)
investing specifically, the level to which you can organize is, it’s increased exponentially, right? So operating by feel is, in my opinion, inexcusable. ⁓ know, a new investor should look at these tools and say, OK, ⁓ this is how I can make sure that literally nothing falls through the cracks, that I’ve looked at every angle of this property.

Scott Bursey (01:58)
Welcome back to the real estate pros podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey. And today we welcome Eric Bramlett of Bramlett partners who has mastered scaling operations in challenging environments. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Bramlett (02:12)
Hi Scott, thanks so much for having me today.

Scott Bursey (02:15)
It’s just awesome having you here. For those of our listeners who may not be familiar with your world, please give us the short version of how your real estate journey began and where you’re at now.

Eric Bramlett (02:27)
Humbly, right? So I sort of fell into real estate in 2003. I was pretty young, around 24 years old. I joked that I got serious about it about, oh gosh, nine years later in 2012. Probably got a little more serious every year that I’d led up to that. That’s when I founded Bremen Partners and I started off with just myself. We hired one agent a year later and today we’re 153 agents.

And yeah, we’ll approach a billion in sales this year. Hopefully we’ll break the billion mark this year.

Scott Bursey (02:58)
outstanding. And Eric, you built one of the most productive independent brokerages in the country by leaning hard into data and systems. In today’s shifting market, what is the one old school habit you’re refusing to let go and which new school tech is actually worth the hype in your view?

Eric Bramlett (03:20)
Yeah, well, I mean, I would say the old school tool that we’ll probably never let go of and it’s the most powerful tool is simply the telephone. Real estate is a relationship business. I don’t think that’s going to change. If it does change, we’re probably in trouble. So the most important thing any agent can do is stay in touch with your past clients, your referral network, continue to provide great service. And you do that with personal touch. You do that by building relationships.

Yeah, pick up the phone, make a phone call. ⁓ Text messages are fine, probably second best, ⁓ but just make sure you stay in contact with your clients and your sphere. ⁓ Yeah. In terms of…

Scott Bursey (03:57)
Absolutely. And then

the new school that you feel should be worth mentioning.

Eric Bramlett (04:04)
Yeah, I mean, I have. So I fell into internet marketing pretty early in my career, ⁓ probably 2004, 2005. And that’s what I built the business on early on in the business was just we’ve got a pretty dialed program. We don’t buy leads. all from performance marketing. And I was incredibly excited about that in the mid 2000s when I found it.

I have not been as excited about any technology since until agentic AI and very specifically agentic coding. Very specifically agentic coding. I’ve been working with agentic coding for about a year now. And in February, whenever ⁓ Opus 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 was released, just a massive leap forward and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

We’re able to develop tools in 10 to 15 times the speed that we were able to develop them with traditional development. ⁓ And watching things come to life in that amount of time is just really satisfying.

Downsides, I’m not sleeping as much because I am so excited about it.

Scott Bursey (05:56)
Hey, rightfully so, and I think that’s the perfect place to start, Eric. I think there’s a lot of shiny object syndrome, to be quite frank with you, in real estate right now. So, hearing you filter the noise for our listeners is exactly why we wanted you on the show.

Eric Bramlett (06:14)
Thank you, Definitely agree with you. There are lots of shiny objects out there. One of our core values is focus on the effective. We always try to cut through the noise, ⁓ look at what’s really moving the needle, look at what’s actually causing impact, and then sharing that with our agents and promoting that with our agents.

Scott Bursey (06:32)
And Eric, shifting gears slightly, many successful investors eventually hit a ceiling because they can’t effectively delegate. What is the most critical piece of advice you would give a real estate professional right now regarding building and maintaining a high performing scalable team?

Eric Bramlett (06:50)
Yeah, if you’re team building, then hiring is most, it is both ⁓ the most frustrating thing to do and the most important thing that you can possibly do. ⁓ know, hiring right takes a lot of time. You you sometimes get lucky and you find the right person very quickly, but that usually doesn’t happen. It usually takes months. So you get fatigued and you’ll convince yourself why the wrong person really is the right person. And then inevitably that doesn’t work out.

So having the discipline to ⁓ hire very slowly and when it doesn’t work out to also fire fast is very important. It’s the most important skill you can have when you’re building any sort of organization.

Scott Bursey (07:33)
Eric, that’s excellent perspective on leveraging talent to protect your time and focus on high leverage activities.

Eric Bramlett (07:44)
Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Scott Bursey (07:44)
couldn’t agree anymore with

you. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, and it needs to be heard. It’s, it’s so critical, so critical, so vital. Eric, we often talk about the need for operational efficiency besides the traditional CRM, what alternative systems or non-traditional technology are you seeing gained traction among savvy investors for managing and automating their deal flow? And how has Bramlett partners implemented them?

Eric Bramlett (08:13)
Yeah, no question. know, connecting all of your data into, I would say very specifically, Claude, it’ll increase your efficiencies incredibly dramatically. gives you a 360 degree view. So we have literally every important piece of information. It’s combined into one central location, which then has an MCP that goes to Claude.

And I can ask literally any question, a broad question I can ask is, how is the business doing and what should I worry about today? And ⁓ it’ll tell me anywhere, anything from what’s your email deliverability look like? What are your open rates? How does it compare? Is that a problem or are things fine? To our recruiting pipeline, to productivity of the agents. ⁓ It gives you incredible insights. It allows you to strategize incredibly well. For investors, mean, no question about it. ⁓

allow the system to learn how you work and bring every deal you have into the system. Your deal flow should be piped in there automatically. You should analyze deals through Claude with any other tool that you need, statistical analysis type tools. And it will allow you to make decisions much more quickly than you would otherwise and to also make these decisions very confidently.

Scott Bursey (09:36)
Pre-Shades is shedding light on those operational efficiencies. It’s clear technology is evolving quickly.

Eric Bramlett (09:44)
Yeah, definitely.

Scott Bursey (09:46)
And Eric, when investors

are looking at a deal, comprehensive vetting is paramount. How does Bramlett Partners approach risk assessment and market analysis to keep investors better informed so they understand and mitigate their exposure to perhaps risk before they sign on the dotted line?

Eric Bramlett (10:42)
Yeah, mean, using that strategy effectively, right? ⁓ So we bring in a couple of different statistical tools into Claude. And when we’re looking at a property, can certainly, we can ping those tools. It’ll tell us what the market looks like, know, what negotiating leverage we have with that regard. The more data you give it about the specific property, the better you’re going to do, ⁓ you know, down to seasonality, down to the time of acquisition versus

the estimated time of sale, how that’s going to impact it. Those are the tools we use. We trust them quite a bit. It’s been very fast. They’ve only been around for a couple of months, but they perform incredibly well. And I only see our organization leaning more and more into these tools.

Scott Bursey (11:30)
That deep dive into market and research modeling is fascinating. And I guess looking ahead, if you were advising a brand new investor starting today, what core skill shift do you believe will define success in real estate investing over the next three to five years perhaps, and how should they prepare for it?

Eric Bramlett (11:35)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, mean, think that

investing specifically, the level to which you can organize is, it’s increased exponentially, right? So operating by feel is, in my opinion, inexcusable. ⁓ know, a new investor should look at these tools and say, OK, ⁓ this is how I can make sure that literally nothing falls through the cracks, that I’ve looked at every angle of this property.

⁓ As an investor, I have flipped a number of homes in my life and I own a number of rental properties. When you’re new, it’s very normal to overanalyze. I don’t think that’s really over analysis necessarily. I think it’s a lot of diligence that you tend to let slip as you progress throughout your career. ⁓ The intuition of a new investor of really looking at every …

angle of every property ⁓ makes a lot of sense and you can actually continue to do it. You can do it as you progress through your investment journey.

Scott Bursey (12:55)
Well said, and Eric for our listeners, what golden nugget or takeaway would you like to leave with them today?

Eric Bramlett (13:04)
Yeah, I mean, I think I would say the technology is exciting and you shouldn’t ignore it. ⁓ But don’t ignore the relationships, right? The relationships are still going to be the most important ⁓ asset that you have. Right. So as an investor, you know, the people that you know that can help you source deals as a real estate agent, you know, your friends, family, sphere of influence ⁓ for everybody, you know, your network, right. Who advises you those those relationships are still the most important asset that

that any business owner has. ⁓ And don’t let those fall through the cracks if you go down the rabbit hole as I have and leaned into this new exciting technology.

Scott Bursey (13:45)
Those relationships are everything in this business. And before we let you go, we’ve got to know what’s your vision for, let’s say, the next 10 years, decade down the road.

Eric Bramlett (13:49)
Right.

for us personally.

Scott Bursey (14:00)
Personally, as a Bramlett Partners as a company, either as a company would be fine. And then maybe personally as well, because you know, so much so that time, the personal aspect of things really parlays into the business aspect of things.

Eric Bramlett (14:03)
As a company, yeah, as a company.

Yeah, definitely. ⁓ Well, I’ll say personally first, right? ⁓ I

think that challenges and improvement, that’s what life is all about, experiences. So ⁓ continue to try to be a little bit better today than I was yesterday. That’s kind of a core value that I personally have. ⁓ For the business, it’s to continue to focus on quality, right? ⁓ Do things really, really well. We focus on, our North Star is client service, and how can we continue to be a little bit better for our clients

today than we were yesterday. Where that takes us in 10 years, I hope we’re pretty dang good. I feel like we’re pretty good now and hopefully we can be even better tomorrow in 10 years from now.

Scott Bursey (15:43)
Absolutely, Eric. Couldn’t agree with you anymore. We wake up in the morning and we all have a decision to make. Are we going to strive to be a little bit better today than we were yesterday? That’s fantastic. And thank you for sharing. Eric, before we… this has been just outstanding. But before we let you go, for our listeners who want to learn more about Bramlett Partners, what’s the best way for them to connect?

Eric Bramlett (15:56)
100%.

Thank you. It’s been great being here. I appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (16:12)
and reach you and your team.

Eric Bramlett (16:15)
Yeah, definitely. You can Google my name or the company will pop up. ⁓ You can go to Bramlett Partners. An easy way to connect with me is if you’re on LinkedIn, you can look me up and definitely I’d love to connect with everybody out there.

Scott Bursey (16:30)
Once again, thank you for joining us today and sharing those vital insights.

Eric Bramlett (16:35)
Thank you, Scott. It’s been a ton of fun.

Scott Bursey (16:38)
It’s been more than a pleasure. And for our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We have more conversations coming up with exceptional operators, just like Eric. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.