Month: October 2023

Bad Real Estate Agents. Unfortunately they’re out there. There are those that lack training. Those with limited experience. Poor local community knowledge. Zero negotiation skills. Pushy sales techniques.

Not every agent is a bad apple. Many are ethical, informed and professional. Genuinely intent on finding the best possible outcome for their clients.

So, what makes a Bad Agent?

We’ve identified some of the common, underhand tactics of bad real estate agents, that you don’t want to be known for:

1. Pumping the Guide Price

An estate agent may initially post a property at a price lower than value, in order to attract offers. Then pump the price up once they have qualified buyers in hand. This practice can backfire on the agent. Rendering their reputation in tatters.

2. Betraying Trust

Home buying is an expensive and emotive affair.It’s therefore inevitable that buyers and sellers will open their hearts to their trusted agents. Estate agents are famously chatty.

Some, will abuse their client’s confidence. Taking information they glean, and using it to their benefit. Much like Karma, that betrayal of trust will come back to haunt them.

3. Creating a Riot

There are people in life who thrive on drama. Granted, it is the estate agent’s job to get the highest price possible for a property. But encouraging a bidding war and gazumping buyers, ultimately hurts all parties involved.

A milder alternative is to invite sealed bids. That prompts buyers to pitch in with their highest possible offer. And the highest offer wins. All’s fair in love and…

4. The Non-Existent Offer

Even more serious than playing buyers off against each other, is the practice of making up non-existent offers to try and persuade bidders to raise their price.

It’s unprofessional, unethical and particularly damaging both financially and emotionally.

5. False Reassurance on Home Surveys

Misrepresenting a property’s structural or economic condition to a buyer or a tenant, is unfortunately a practice some agents are known for.

Declare any information you have about a property’s condition. Even if that information isn’t favourable to your deal. You may lose the deal, but you will maintain your integrity and win a long-term relationship with your client.

6. The Not-So-Straight Shooter

Sellers will seek multiple opinions on the value of their home, before appointing an agent. Valuing real estate is a combination of both science and art. The price will vary between estate agents.

Some agents will be price bullish to appeal to the seller’s wallet. Some will be price-bearish, in order to lower, and then exceed expectations. Neither are wrong. But there are those agents who knowingly deceive their clients. Avoid being one of them. Be communicative, transparent and ethical in your marketing strategy.

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overwrite.ai is a pioneering, purpose-built real estate AI, creating engagement-oriented content for the real estate industry. overwrite.ai creates the marketing content that powers the real estate industries of the UAE, KSA, Egypt and Lebanon.

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For informative news and views on the world of real estate, proptech and AI, follow overwrite on Instagram and LinkedIn, and keep up-to-date with our weekly NewsBites blog.

Microsoft-affiliated research finds flaws in GPT-4 .

Sometimes, following instructions too precisely can land you in hot water — if you’re a large language model, that is.

That’s the conclusion reached by a new, Microsoft-affiliated scientific paper that looked at the “trustworthiness” — and toxicity — of large language models (LLMs), including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, GPT-4’s predecessor.

The co-authors write that, possibly because GPT-4 is more likely to follow the instructions of “jailbreaking” prompts that bypass the model’s built-in safety measures, GPT-4 can be more easily prompted than other LLMs to spout toxic, biased text.

In other words, GPT-4’s good “intentions” and improved comprehension can — in the wrong hands — lead it astray.

“We find that although GPT-4 is usually more trustworthy than GPT-3.5 on standard benchmarks, GPT-4 is more vulnerable given jailbreaking system or user prompts, which are maliciously designed to bypass the security measures of LLMs, potentially because GPT-4 follows (misleading) instructions more precisely,” the co-authors wrote in a blog post accompanying the paper.

Now, why would Microsoft greenlight research that casts an OpenAI product it itself uses (GPT-4 powers Microsoft’s Bing Chat chatbot) in a poor light? 

To find out more and read the full article, click here

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of overwrite.ai and its owners.

 Kyle Wigger writes for TechCrunch.

This story has been published from an article published on Tech Crunch in October 2023.

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For informative news and views on the world of real estate, proptech and AI, follow overwrite on Instagram and LinkedIn, and keep up-to-date with our weekly NewsBites blog.

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