by wes

It is time to write one of these again.

Lately there has been a very specific question coming my way. Usually whispered, sometimes joked about, occasionally asked outright. Are these blogs written by ChatGPT?

I get it. The internet is currently one big trust exercise and everyone is side eyeing everything. Even your aunt’s Facebook caption.

The truth is far less exciting.

I have always written. I was doing it back in the early 2000s, then again properly around 2016. None of it went viral. None of it paid my bond. But it is all still floating around the internet if you dig deep enough. Slightly embarrassing. Very earnest. Very me.

Click here too read the vintage ones: https://bit.ly/3ZrL55G

Back then the lens was travel. Airports, hotels, food, my own nonsense opinions. Later fitness crept in. Not in an inspirational quote way, more in a sweaty, frustrated, trying-to-be-better way. Now the lens has shifted again. Work. Property. People. The strange theatre that is real estate. Same voice, different backdrop.

If you read those blogs from 2017 you will see it immediately. Same rhythm. Same sarcasm. Same tendency to overshare just enough to make people mildly uncomfortable. Growth, but not a personality transplant.

So let’s address the robot in the room.

Do I use ChatGPT? Yes. Absolutely. I am not trying to win some purity award. I write my first draft. Sometimes two. Sometimes three if I am feeling particularly dramatic. Then I let technology check my spelling, tidy my grammar and point out where I have repeated the same word seventeen times in one paragraph.

My computer does the same thing with my emails. And thank God for that. No one needs a typo negotiating their biggest asset.

What I do not do is ask a machine to think for me. Or feel for me. Or sound like me. That part still comes from lived experience, bad decisions, good conversations and the occasional sleepless night staring at the ceiling thinking about deals that nearly worked.

Tools should enhance the work, not replace the voice. If the voice disappears, you are just publishing noise.

This has become very clear in real estate lately.

I recently negotiated with a buyer who was clearly leaning heavily on ChatGPT through the process. Every response was technically correct. Perfect even. But deals are not textbooks. They are human. Emotional. Messy. Sometimes you need to think sideways and agree to something that is not standard because that is what gets it over the line.

A machine cannot feel urgency. It cannot read tone. It cannot tell when to stop pushing and when to push harder. At least not yet.

Artificial intelligence is going to be incredibly useful in our industry. It already is. I am testing a few tools to streamline admin, speed up workflows and free up time. Not to replace conversations, but to create more space for them. More face to face time. More phone calls. More actual listening.

That is the part that matters.

So yes, I write. The computer helps. We are not the same thing.

And as long as I am still thinking, questioning and occasionally ranting, these blogs will stay very human. Slightly flawed. Occasionally uncomfortable. Exactly how I like them.