Build a Real Estate Empire: How to Scale with Systems, Leadership & Multiple Businesses

What does it really take to build more than just a real estate business… but an entire ecosystem?

In this episode of the Be The Solution Podcast, Maria Quattrone sits down with Keith Pike—broker, attorney, loan originator, and business owner—to break down how he built and manages multiple businesses across real estate, mortgage, education, and law.

This is not about doing more deals.

👉 This is about building infrastructure, systems, and leadership that create long-term scale.

If you're an agent, team leader, or entrepreneur looking to grow beyond transactions and into true business ownership, this episode is for you.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• 🏗️ Build Systems, Not Just Sales
• 🧠 Leadership Is the Multiplier
• 🔄 Multiple Businesses, One Ecosystem
• 📈 Think Like an Owner, Not an Agent
• ⚙️ Scale Requires Structure
• 💼 Specialization Creates Strength
• 🚀 Growth Comes from Expansion
• ⏳ Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset

🔥 Best Quotes

Maria Quattrone:
“Listings create leverage. Leverage gives you freedom.”

Keith Pike:
“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you own a job.”

👤 Guest Contact

Keith Pike
Broker | Attorney | Entrepreneur

Owner of:

•  Elite Real Estate 
•  Motto Mortgage Alliance 
•  Elite Real Estate School 
•  Pike Law Firm 

Real estate is not just about closing deals.

👉 It’s about building something that works without you.

If you want to scale:

•  Think bigger 
•  Build systems 
•  Develop leaders 
•  Expand strategically 

That’s how you go from agent… to owner… to empire builder.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Move Matters

Maria Quattrone 0:00

This is the Be the Solution Podcast, and I'm your host, Maria Quattrone. And today I am with my friend Keith Pike. I've known Keith for I don't know. It's been a while now, maybe close to a decade. Welcome, Keith.

Keith Pike 0:14

Hey, thanks for having me.

Maria Quattrone 0:15

Glad to have you back on the show.

Keith Pike 0:17

I think it has been close to a decade. So probably close to a decade, yeah.

Maria Quattrone 0:21

And we had you on the show a couple years ago.

Keith Pike 0:23

I think back in like 20, I think back in 2020, we're probably going on like six years since I've been on the show.

Franchise Renewals And Hard Decisions

Maria Quattrone 0:29

That's way too long. And we're not going to be going on six years because we're going to be regular regular guests on the show now. Enough of this nonsense. So for those of you that don't know Keith, he uh is a powerhouse in Arkansas. He Keith just moved his five offices of Remax to LPT Realty, four offices of Remax to LPT Realty. And today we're gonna unpack why. Like for what reason did you do this? And we're through three months into this.

Keith Pike 1:06

Three months. Um, you know, uh we just there was just some problems uh when just kind of accumulated over time, right? And I went through two franchise renewals. The first I was there for 11 years. So uh the first one happened in 2021, and then the second one would have happened this year in 2026. And so when you go through renewals, you don't just blindly renew, you have to assess like, is this a company that I want to make a commitment to for at least another five years? And like, is this the best place for our operations and for the agents? And you know, I started to question that honestly the last time I went through the renewal in 2020. And uh 2020 was a rough year, it was COVID, and real estate sales were good, but uh the the brand itself uh was going through some really tough times. Uh they uh had some technology at the time called Bouge, and um I don't know if you went through that whole fiasco. Um did you go you went through the bouge conversion, right?

Maria Quattrone 2:22

I didn't convert to Bouge because I didn't believe in it. So I let it sit there.

Tech Breakdowns And Vanishing Brand Ads

Choosing An Agent-First Brokerage Model

Keith Pike 2:28

So we never converted to Bouge either, but the company, like you know, had purchased this technology called Bouge. Uh they had uh had made uh several uh tech acquisitions and it was just a mess and it wasn't acting right or doing the things that it needed to do, and uh but they were trying, right? So they they were making investments in technology and things, and they were trying, um, and I did believe that they were gonna eventually work its way out, which is ultimately why I decided to renew back in 2021, is that I thought that they were trying. And um in I think 2023, they ended up giving up on that technology. On um they had another firstio, another tech company they owned called first I.O. And in 2023, they just gave up on all of it and shut it all down. And um also kind of in the midst of all this, they used to, for people that read their franchise agreements, a certain percentage of your monthly fee to remax went into something called an ad fund fee. And um in 2021, they quietly removed that out, they started quietly removing it out of franchise agreements. I'm not sure when they started, that's when it came out of mine. And but the monthly fee stayed the same, and I just kind of had I didn't know what they were doing at the time, just kind of had faith that they were going to continue doing all of the marketing and advertising that they'd always done with that money. I didn't know that they were contractually obligated to use that money for advertising and marketing, and they didn't want to do that anymore, which is why they got rid of that ad fund allocation. And um we saw, at least here in my local market, all the billboards dry up and disappear, and you know, just kind of there was an absence of TV and radio, and we used to see REMAX on the side of buses and things, and that just all went away. They started using that money that was historically going into the ad fund, and it went into, I guess, some sort of slush fund that they used however they wanted. And uh, that was when I went back and figured out they had removed it from the franchise agreements when I had renewed. And um, so when my renewals came up this last time, and then in the meantime, so I renewed in 2021, and then five years, the company was just in steep decline. They had lost a you know, probably 22% of their agent count during that time uh in the United States. They had um um kind of shut down most of the other companies that they had acquired, the tech companies, they had gone to third-party things. Um just kind of seemed like they were giving up and not reinvesting in things, not and meanwhile, the the industry is going through a sea change of um AI integration and um um just operationally and dynamics of other large brokerages and new models emerging. And Remax was just kind of staying the same, not innovating, not investing, um, just shrinking, um, not advertising uh like they were. And I was just like, I cannot sign up for another five years of this for my agents' sake, right? Um, these agents are gonna be held hostage to me making the easiest choice for me, which is to stay exactly where I was. Um, it just wasn't the best place for them. So I made the really difficult decision of leaving a brand that I had been with for 11 years and um sank millions of dollars into, literally, and um made a decision for my agents that I was going to bet on bet on them and put them in the you know the best place I could. And I shopped around to the other brokerages and ultimately landed uh with LPT. It just made the most sense for our agents, to be honest. Not necessarily for me, uh, but for the agents.

Maria Quattrone 6:38

Well, LPT, people don't even know what it stands for listing power tools, and our business is built on listings.

Keith Pike 6:49

I think it's brilliant that they that they named the company after at first. I didn't understand it and why they did it, and I thought I didn't know it didn't make sense to me. But then, like when I realized that like they named the company after the marketing that they help agents do to win listings, that told me they were focused on the real estate agents, right? Like they're the whole company, the whole identity of the company is around the marketing that they provide real estate agents to help them get more business. I mean, that it's not it's not a no, it's not a nonsensical name, it's not a made-up name. Um, it's agent focused, right? And I I learned that and I realized that I just thought it was brilliant. And I affiliated with that because I'm I've always lived by like whatever's the best for the agents is the best thing for me, right? If the agents succeed, I succeed. And this company is about that.

Maria Quattrone 7:47

It's about agent agents first, what's best for the agents, and then what's best for the agents comes down to trickles down to what's best for the consumer.

Keith Pike 7:56

For sure. Yeah. Because if you have more tools to work with, the agents are making their decisions, like what's best for them on what's best for their clients, right? Like the things that are going to help their clients get their houses sold the fastest for the most amount of money, help buyers be educated and you know, find the right houses that meet their needs without going into it blindly, right? So like the agents are making their decisions on where they're going to be and where they want to hang their license based on like what's going to help their clients. Because ultimately, if their clients are being helped, the agents are going to do better. I'm making my decision on what's best for the agents because they're making the decisions what's best for the client. That's going to make me do better, right? So um it's um it's a win-win all the way around. It's a win for the buyers and the sellers, it's a win for the agents, it's a win for me. It's a win for brokers, it's a win for team leaders. So it's a win for LPT, too, to be honest. The brokerage. They provide this if you provide services to that's that gonna that helps everyone win, you're gonna win, you know.

Maria Quattrone 9:02

And it's one team, one person, one agent at a time. The numbers just came out today. Lpt moved from number 10 to number seven.

Keith Pike 9:12

I saw that. It's fantastic. Yeah, in a year or number seven on the number of sides, and uh they broke and took in the top 10 for volume, which is phenomenal considering they were just founded in 2022.

Maria Quattrone 9:24

Only four years old. Yeah, that's so tremendous tremendous opportunity for you know, a system that is purely agent focused, who you know, and I like you looked at other opportunities as well, and thought the one with also you know, the least the the easiest, what's the easy button to push?

Keith Pike 9:50

Yeah.

Live Training Rhythm And Real Estate Focus

Maria Quattrone 9:52

Like without getting too deep in the weed weeds about you know the other companies, what's the easy button? Yeah, easy button one where the CEO gets on every Monday morning at 11 o'clock and does an 11 to 11:30, they call motivation Monday, to bring us what's going on in the industry that week in real time.

Keith Pike 10:18

It's you know, it's really amazing. And I just told somebody this today on another Zoom that I was on is I didn't realize how much REMAX was lacking and not doing for us until I joined LPT and realized how much they do. Um, you know, the fact that they have these live broadcasts to every agent three days a week. They have motivational Mondays, every Monday at 10. They have, you know, um Tool Tuesday on you know Tuesdays at 10 a.m., real estate versus Fridays, Fridays at 10 a.m. I mean, three days a week they're doing these live broadcasts where they're trying to help agents do better and be better and know more. Um, the the amount of training and information is pretty constant. And it's honestly what's needed in this industry. And it just didn't realize that was lacking. Before that was all on my shoulders to do that's a lot to do, um, especially with the other responsibilities that you know team leaders and leaders and organizations have, it's really nice to have that coming straight from the top and being disseminated to the agents for you know, it's really a valuable thing, just to be honest. And when I talk to other brokerages, and listen, LPT has this motto of real estate first. And when I was talking to other brokerages, they just did not, they might have said that, but they weren't taking actions that I saw that was that way. Their actions were more based on recruiting or you know, based on fintech, or and I was just like, where's selling real estate coming to any of this stuff that y'all are talking about? And um, it was just a different language that the leaders at LPT were using when they were talking with me. It was all about real estate, and it made sense to me. I mean, we're in the real estate business, right?

Maria Quattrone 12:19

Well, if nobody's selling houses, we have a problem.

Keith Pike 12:22

We do have a problem, yeah.

Listing Marketing Packs That Win Business

Maria Quattrone 12:25

And um we have a problem. So, how can we sell more houses? Right. I looked at it, Keith, and I said, Well, yeah, it's no secret, I'm a listing broker, like that's what I do. 192 listings last year. And I said crazy, you know, I said listing kind of discounted it when I spoke last January with LPT because I didn't 100% get it either. And even though I got the box, because there's this beautiful box you get for every listing, you're just paying for shipping. I didn't, I was thinking of something else I wanted to do, so I didn't give it the full 100% attention that it deserved at the time. And so I got pretty far down that rabbit hole with another company. And then I had to take a step back and I mean look at it. But when you look at that, you just look at the direct the print collateral that you get with the company that you couldn't, as an agent, ever replicate without like a very heavy lift and a very heavy expense.

Ownership Shares Without The Usual Hoops

Keith Pike 13:29

It's 188 pieces of like really high quality printed materials that is free with every listing. That's insane. And no, you're right. I did the same thing. They I had first talked to them. Um honestly, I told I told them this on a podcast that I really wasn't gonna give LBT a chance uh when I was shopping around and um I um was being polite. Uh somebody asked if I would um speak with Robert uh if they set up a zoom with him, and I was just like, you know, sure, I'm not gonna say no to that. I'm you know, I was being polite. And so I took a zoom, and then after that Zoom, they said we're gonna send you some of the sample marketing materials, and they did. They sent me some of the like the magic white box, what they call it, and the and the power pack. And I got it, and you know, when they first told me about it and they were talking about it, I just didn't think anything of it. I first got it, I was impressed. I was like, wow, this is really high quality stuff, and I wasn't gonna make my decision to move based on that, but I just kept going back, and it was always in the back of my head thinking about like this is just some really good quality stuff that could benefit agents. Like, this is all stuff that agents the agent needs to be doing. All agents know they should be doing it, but it's too time consuming and too expensive to do it, you know. And LPD just makes it done for you, you know. You just pay for shipping, it's super in you know, super affordable, super inexpensive. It's really amazing. And speed, it's fast, yeah. Um one of my agents ordered, so you can get these like um like it's I don't know, it's called like a marketing starter kit, and it's like 250 of their like business cards, they come in these little like packs like this, and um these two magazines. Um, this is like the listing presentation magazine and then the nine critical questions magazine, if they're gonna interview other agents, and it comes like in like a FedEx thing, and it's like $27.40. And one of my agents uh ordered it over the weekend and got it on Monday. We live in Arkansas and they're printing this stuff in Florida. I wouldn't even know how that was possible. I was like, I didn't even know I I was dumbfounded. I think they ordered it on like Saturday and it came on Monday. They were obviously printing and shipping over the weekend, but that was really cool. I mean, it's super fast. But so it doesn't really take that long.

Maria Quattrone 16:10

No, it doesn't take that long, and then you know, there's other benefits. The company is pre-IPO right now, so opportunity, you know, with that, which you didn't have.

Keith Pike 16:22

No, I'm gonna tell you what, my agents are they that was a big thing for them that they loved being. Um, you know, before I owned 100% of my REMAX, right? And just the way it was set up, there was just no way that I could really share that ownership where it made financial sense to do so, or that it was even an easy thing to do. I'm sure I would have to pay a ton of money to get you know attorneys involved to like write any of that up. It just wasn't a feasible thing. And um uh now agents can have ownership, they can have ownership with their very first closing. They get shares, you know, starting with your first and third closings. And so, I mean, every agent that's had a closing with LPT is an owner of the company, and that's a huge thing. Um, we had agents that were capped with us, and they chose to have their caps reset and to start paying in, you know, to the company just because they believed in it so much and they wanted shares, they wanted to be owners. And I thought that was a really cool thing. Like, it's not the Keith Pike show anymore, it's not the like where I'm 100% the owner. Like, we're all we're all earning shares together at the same time in the same way, which is really awesome. And you don't here's what really sets it apart with these shares and earning shares. Other companies offer shares in their in of stock, but it's only the very top people that get it. Like, usually usually they make you jump through so many hoops to get it first. The big thing of getting shares is you have to hit your cap, right? And you don't have to hit your cap with LPT to start earning shares. And the second thing is like they'll create more hoops, like you got to attend three events, and those events, and then you get another certain number of shares. And those events typically cost more to register and the travel, the hotel, and stuff to pay to attend than you get in stock, right? And then you have to do other things to get the remainder of the stock, and it's all just kind of designed so that very few people actually go get all the shares, right? And with LPT, there's none of those hoops. Like, all you have to do is sell real estate. And if you sell, if you meet their benchmarks of you know, the first, third, fifteenth, and 35th transaction, like you get all the available shares without jumping through any, you know, unnecessary or overly burdensome hoops. And I think that agents at other companies that have gone there excited about being owners realize they're may never reach that level if they don't reach their cap, or they're not going to get all of it because they can't afford to spend five grand to go to these events that you need to go to um in order to get those shares. You know, it's um I think that they got disenfranchised and um LPT's been a probably a safe haven for them to come to and actually be able to be owners without having to jump through all those hoops. I was excited for my agents just because I knew that I knew that not just the select number at the top were going to be shareholders, they were all gonna be shareholders.

Maria Quattrone 19:33

Everybody has a fair share to do it, and then you know, if you're especially if you're just starting out in real estate, you know, not having any monthly fees is helps a lot to get started, or if you're transitioning from another career and you're you know toggling uh on both sides and real estate and in whatever your career you're at, you know, not having those monthly fees is another thing because if you're just starting out, especially any expense, you know, they add up real quick.

Monthly Fees, Caps, And Team Economics

Keith Pike 20:09

Yeah. And that is something that I liked as well, is that um, you know, when we were when we were with Remax, there was this barrier to entry of this high monthly fee, and um that REMAX charges agents, and so um LPT doesn't have any monthly fees, and so that barrier came down completely. What I like is that uh our team actually does charge a monthly fee for our team members, but we have things that um that monthly fee pays for, right? I mean, like we have four buildings and we have admin staff, we have things that it helped those that monthly fee helps contribute to, and because LPT doesn't have a monthly fee, we're able to afford these services and things for the agents that the agents want, right? Agents can't afford to like have go rent their own buildings and have copiers and have marketing people and transaction coordinators on staff, but as a group, we all can if we're pulling together money, right? And um they want all those things, um, but it makes it an affordable way for it to happen. And um, I monthly fee that I was charging with Remax, I was able to put like slice that in half uh for the agents just because that fee to remax went away. Um, and those things are contributing to the shared services and joint overhead that we all that we all share and the agents enjoy and like. So it's really nice. I like the flexibility. If we, you know, if we were at a company that had a monthly fee, the monthly fee to that the agents would pay would be higher because I would have to increase it to pay for the services those monthly fees are paying for, right?

Maria Quattrone 21:57

Yeah, absolutely. And It makes it not only easier for people, but if you're looking at you know the whole picture, it's like okay, if you want to recruit, recruit. If you do want to recruit, you can build a downline. Right? You could decide what your cap is. You can do the 5k or the 15k. That's up to you. Doesn't matter if you're on a team or not on a team. That's another thing. Because if you were on a team and then you wanted to get off the team, then you have to go back at other places to the higher.

Keith Pike 22:34

Yeah, your cap would go in. Yeah.

Maria Quattrone 22:37

There's all these other things, and when you look at the whole entire picture together and with a forward-thinking company of a CEO who built a billion-dollar company in the mortgage industry, and you look at at the end of the day, who do you want to ride along with?

Keith Pike 22:57

You know, you know what I find refreshing to be honest, is that you know, Robert did not come, Robert Palmer did not come from a real estate background, right? And so a lot of these other companies that started branched off of companies, or they were once with companies that were with other companies that were with other companies, right? They at one point they were all with these old, they were all with Cobble Bankers and Century 21s and Remaxes, and then they branched off and became Kyler Williams and EXP and different things, right? Um, and each time they branched off, they carried forward some bad habits and some ways of doing business. That when Robert started LBT, he didn't have those bad habits, so he just made it to he made the rules of things that made sense, as opposed to being like, Well, this is how things have always been since the 70s, you know. Um, which is really nice when I was interviewing other companies and they had these certain policies or certain ways of doing things, and I would challenge it and be like, That doesn't make sense. Why? And they would just be like, I don't know, it's just the way that it is, you know, that's just the way it's always been done. I know exactly where it's from. Like, that's some bad crap that you got from the company that you broke off from, that broke off from another company that originated that policy in the 70s, and nobody knew why, but it's the way things have always been done, and that's the way that when the company broke off, they were the way they did it because that's the way things have always been done. And when that company broke off and created something else, even the cloud brokerages inherited some of that crap that just was legacy way things have always been done, and um, it's just refreshing that this company did not start off from a company that had just been ingrained with bad habits and and the way and the mentality of this is just the way things have always been done. They it's the it's the this is what makes sense, and this is the way things should be because this is right, it was um, I mean, one one of the things is like um like transaction management software, like there's two different transaction management softwares that agents can choose from uh currently, which is uh Sky Slope and Dot Loop. And um, you know, most companies like you can choose, like there's just one, like this is just the one we use. And you know, Robert was like, well, if we can feed that into you know another system, the back end system through AI, then why can't we um why can use why can't they have options, right? And um it's just the reason that the other companies is like it's just well that's just the way it's always been done, you know. I just like it. It's it's about the agent, and if the if the company can make it happen and it makes sense, like that's what they do. They kind of get out of the way.

Maria Quattrone 25:50

Exactly. Let people let the agents do their thing with their with their consultants. Let them sell some real estate with their clients and let's sell some real estate, yeah. And then if you want to build the biggest team ever, Robert's all about somebody building a thousand agent team, go do it. They have a vision a solo agent and do five sides a year, then go beat, do the do that.

Individual Definitions Of Success

Keith Pike 26:14

Exactly. He call it uh like the individual definition of success, and I like it. That's part of like their kind of you know, pillars of principles that they have of you know, if you don't want to be, if you don't want to do a hundred transactions a year, that's not what they're gonna expect of you, right? There's some people that have no desire to have a life where all they do is uh is work, right? There's some people that like their individual definition of success is 15 transactions a year, and that will provide them the money that they need, and that's all that they want to do. Like that is their that's what would be success in their eyes, right? And honestly, I mean 15 transactions is you know for a lot of people in several areas of the country, that's six figures a year. Like that's a that's that's plenty of money for uh, you know, a lot of real estate agents. That would be a lot of real estate agents would be thrilled with that, right? Um it's it's kind of refreshing, and even their Desi awards that LBT gives, um, you know, breaks their recognition down by zip codes, and so that like um it's not just about the agents that live in Florida and New York and California or the big places where it's it's where the the is about like the areas that have the highest volume or the highest populations. Um like they're recognizing people like down to the zip codes, which is I think a really cool thing. Uh, a lot of other companies recognize it by you know really the whole country, and those awards are typically given to the people on the east and west coast because they have the highest price points, California, New York. Yep, yep.

Maria Quattrone 28:01

So if your average price point is 1.5 million, because that's how much it costs and the same house at 1.5 million is probably like 500,000 here. You could never catch up, yeah.

Keith Pike 28:13

No, that's exactly right.

Maria Quattrone 28:15

So you could never catch up.

Keith Pike 28:16

So I and I also think LBT recognizes that, and their whole the way that they do their awards is different than other companies because that's what makes sense. It's not just the way things have always been done, it's not the way that every other company has been recognizing people since the 70s, which I like it. Fresh, a fresh view, and it's nice, it's it's nice that the company is an outsider coming in, shaking things up.

Maria Quattrone 28:45

Sometimes you need a different perspective, right? I agree, you need a different look at it, you know. Yeah, especially when you're so much in the trenches and you came from the business, yeah. You can't see the far through the trees.

Keith Pike 29:02

I think a lot of the people that are shaking up the industry right now are kind of outsiders. Um, the people that are making the headlines in the industry right now are outsiders to the industry. So I think it's a good thing. I think the I think it's to break some of the the stuff that's been happening back since the 70s.

Maria Quattrone 29:21

Well, I think everything that's happening um, you know, with AI and all this other stuff that's going on is going to be, I think we'll be sitting here a year from now in a different place.

Keith Pike 29:33

Oh, yeah, for sure. A thousand percent. Yeah, the uh the the the that technology has changed in the past few years with the rapid adoption of AI has been crazy. Um, but now that AI exists, it's just going to accelerate the change, right? And um, because AI is going to help facilitate the rate of change. And uh I don't think it's gonna replace real estate agents by any means. Uh it will replace maybe some of the things that we do and maybe who's doing it. Um, but uh I don't think it's gonna replace the experts um that are out there in the field because this is a relationship business. And um it's this is a very a you know, you know, face-to-face, belly-to-belly toe to business. And um and that's what's what consumers expect. And I think that there's a there's there's a real estate agent. I think it's changing. I think that it'll continue to change in the same way that used to the pla the the job of real estate agent was to find listings for buyers because they had the MLS book, right? Before we had an MLS system, there were books, and they had the book of all available listings. Well, the job of real estate agents changed when the portals started up because buyers didn't need the real estate agent to find houses anymore, they could find their own houses, so our jobs shifted. We weren't eliminated by any means. There's more real estate agents than pretty much that there's ever been. Um, and people use real estate agents at a at a higher than they ever have. But what we do for clients changed. Our job shifted from finding, you know, searching for houses through books and then eventually through you know the MLS website to you know educating buyers and sellers, helping them navigate, you know, the transaction, giving them you know expert advice, you know, doing the doing the marketing. You know, it just should something completely different. And um it'll ship it'll continue to show AI replacing some of the administrative tasks that real estate agents have had to continue to do. Um, most the people that are going to be replaced by this in the real estate industry are probably the virtual assistants. A lot of real estate agents, high-performing real estate agents use virtual assistants to do some tasks that AI is really prime to do. And uh so that piece of it that you know the agents have been um for years now have been, you know, kind of quote, offshoring, uh, will probably be done by AI. Would you agree with that?

Maria Quattrone 32:21

I do. I think there's a lot that AI could take over. I also believe that it's critical both in mortgages and in real estate that agents are creating their brand and that they create their brand through video, through posting, through social, through community. And it's gonna be more important than ever over the next 36 months that they do that. Because one of the things is that consumers don't trust mortgage and real estate. Part of the reason they there's a lot of why they don't trust, and this new generation definitely doesn't. So connecting with them online and through video and through podcasts is going to be critical to that agent's future growth in the industry.

Why AI Misses Street-Level Truth

Keith Pike 33:04

Yeah. You know, um a big reason that that that people aren't to completely trust AI is that AI can be manipulated, right? It only knows what's fed into it. And um, we've seen this with, you know, um, you know, Chat GPT doesn't have access uh to Google or YouTube because Google has a competing platform called Gemini. It doesn't want its the competitor to have us to it, and um so Chat GPT only knows things outside of what Google and Gemini like it knows it might know everything else, but it doesn't know anything that that that might be YouTube and and Google. So like its knowledge is is not full, and things there's things that have access to um, you know, uh with like grok, it like it's the only platform that has access to what's happening on the platform of X. So like none of the other AIs know what's happening on there, what's being talked about, or any of that crap, right? And so each of those platforms give you different answers and responses based on the information that's available to them. And any of those people that are in charge of any of those language models can can alter the responses controlling those language models, can control the output, right? Like it they can put guardrails on and control the output of it. Um, so there's there is a distrust that completely. So you don't want to, as a buyer seller, to completely trust what AI says because it has very limited information, it could be biased one way or the other based on information that it has access to or doesn't have access to. And none of it has access to the none of them have access to the MLS directly. They might have access to portals, some of them have access to only some portals. So it doesn't have a complete picture of what's going on. And a real estate agent would, right? A real estate agent can um be able to you know parse through the information and know what's good and what's bad, and um without having the slanted um raw data um bias I feel like that AI might have. Um I've seen AI give um like estimates of quotes on price per square foot for a certain house, and I have I know where it is, and yes, a few blocks away there is a nice neighborhood. That neighborhood I would never move into, right? It is not getting 220 a square foot. It like it's they're they're getting like the a square foot, but Chat GPT will give you based on its comps, it doesn't know it's not there, it doesn't know the condition that neighborhood is in because of the lack of the POA that went defunct that is not making sure that people aren't painting their house pink and um you know making sure that people keep their lawns mowed and there's not cars up on you know jacked up without tires on it out front, right? It doesn't know those things, so um it's taking nearby cops of a new construction neighborhood nearby and being like, oh well this one's built, you know, this one's similar to square footage, is how much it must be worth. No, it's not.

Maria Quattrone 36:27

It doesn't also know, you know, you have a very experienced agent who has been in the business for a couple decades, and all the sales they did and all the experiences they went through is you can't take that away from somebody.

Keith Pike 36:43

It doesn't know, I mean, it doesn't know some factors, at least yet, like of like, yes, that there's it's four bedrooms, it's square feet, it's on this street, but the slanted driveway, the the master being upstairs with all of like the preference might be that the master's on the main level. Um, it doesn't know that the the kitchen doesn't feel right, and this closet, the master closet's small for like what the other options are. Um, real estate agents know that. Like they can they can smell the cat urine carpet, they can see the horrible peeled wallpaper and the you know guest bathroom, they can they can see the paneling, you know, they can see those things, they can smell those things, they can feel it, they can feel like that this this kitchen feels a little cramped. This master bathroom's not nearly the size it needs to be, right? Like this layout's really kind of weird. Um, well, we have one. Uh actually it's our listing that we have right now. And by all the comps say that like what this out this house should be considered, you know, 249, 249,000. It's an older house. Went through uh went through and um, but when you go out there and see it in person, there's like a big dirt mound in the backyard where a neighbor or somebody like built a deck and um didn't know whose it's kind of a rule didn't know whose land this was and just dumped the you know dirt there and it's just been there for you know years. And there's a there's an R V on it on the corner of the lot, it's not fenced in of the lot that actually belongs to the neighbor. And there's another car that's like broken down that's been that looks like broken down for 20 years. Um and those are all things that AI can't see, and the real estate agent has to see those things, right? It's those are those are be prompted into AI, but the average buyer and seller doesn't know exact that to tell it absolutely everything and how to say everything, right?

Maria Quattrone 38:55

No, it's true. It's you know, I said I was like, you need to walk the property, you need you need to block, like you know, we live in an urban area, and if there's a botago in the corner and you got six guys hanging out passing to each other, probably gonna press the value of the house. Just saying.

Keith Pike 39:15

And AI doesn't know that and can't see it, and can't like it, just you know, um you know the house that has the six pit bulls next door in the yard, and the they sit out there all day barking, you know. Oh, you know, you this house, another one with it, right across the street, like you're you look out the front door, and there's a street, and across the street is where the entire neighborhood brings the trash bins, like because the the trash pickup doesn't go down any of the streets, and so they all have to wheel them, and it they that's like there's some of them that are just lined up literally at the front porch, like the front door of this listing. Those this all thing you can see it on the satellite imagery too, which I find hilarious. Um, but you wouldn't know what it was. You can I know what it is because I like I know what's happening there, but that's all things that AI doesn't know or get. It doesn't know that, like, it's not a good thing to have all the trash cans lined up for two days basically every week out of you know, right outside your front porch for the whole neighborhood. I wouldn't want that, would you?

Maria Quattrone 40:21

Certainly not, which then get worse. The house will sell, but at a price that's much less than a weekend at a certain price, it would be fine.

Keith Pike 40:30

At a certain price, we'd be fine, right? If I get a good deal on that, I'll look at some trash cans all day long, you know.

Maria Quattrone 40:37

It might be the difference between that buyer buying the house and or not even qualifying. So there's a lid for as I say, there's a lid for every pot, right?

Favorite AI Tools And Final Takeaways

Keith Pike 40:45

There's a buyer for every house at the right price, but you're not gonna necessarily get it at the highest comp that it could go for without all these things that are just factors, but they're not data point factors, right? Absolutely, that's why a data point in in the MLS or about the trash cans being wheeled out front for the whole neighborhood. I mean, I didn't even know that was a thing until this house. I couldn't believe that all the way down the street would wheel these like green trash cans all the way down the street and put it there. Like it must take 15 or 20 minutes, round trip for some of those people to do it. Because most people here, I mean, we're not in a big city like you are. Like, this is very rural. Like people have driveways and they wheel their trash out to the front, like the end of their driveway once a week, and the trash comes and picks it up from their you know, the the dumpster. Yeah, and then you wheel it back. Well, this is like where the track the the trash the trunk truck doesn't do that. You wheel it down to the end of the street and line them all up in a row, and it just does them all at one time and right in front of this house. That's just there's just no way, but those are all things that aren't data points, they're not data points, AI can't get them.

Maria Quattrone 42:01

And be so before we wrap up, Keith, real quick, what's your favorite um AI tool you're using today?

Keith Pike 42:07

You know, the one that I'm um playing with the most right now is Perplexity. I recently subscribed to it. Um, they have their own called Comet, and Perplexity rolled out what's called computer, and computer normal language models like ChatGPT and Gemini, um, and even regular perplexity uh is prompt based. So you would prompt, you would skip questions and things, and it you basically pry the information of it. Computer is going to be the like it'll the future of AI. Instead of prompting it to get what you want out of it, you just tell it and then it goes and does it. So, like you can tell computer, I want a complete website set up where I can sell my new audiobook or whatever it is, right? And I want to I want a uh database and you you tell the what you want, and then it goes and does all of it. Um, you can say um the first time I did it was actually when I was coming to Philadelphia um a couple of weeks ago. I got on Perplexity Computer and on Comet, which is its uh web like its web browser, I I typed in that I wanted um business class train tickets, uh midday from Philadelphia to Manhattan. And it went out there and figured out the website it needed to go to, and it added everything to the cart. And had I had it or something is stored in there, it would have checked out for me. It would have just bought everything, but it added everything to the cart. And um all I had to and I watched it happen, like it was doing it real time in in front of my face. And all I had to do at the end when it stopped was hit pay and enter my credit card information. So Really cool, yeah. So that's my that's and I'll have to try that one.

Maria Quattrone 44:04

I've been liking Claude AI.

Keith Pike 44:07

Yeah, what I like about Perplexity is it it has Claude in it, it has Chat GPT in it. I don't know if it has Gemini in it, I don't think it does, but it has some of the other models in Perplexity. Um so the responses that come back are coming back from those models as well. And it's only 20, it's $20 a month. Really? Yeah, it's all right.

Maria Quattrone 44:28

I'm signing up today.

Keith Pike 44:30

So right now I'm doing the the I pay twenty dollars a month just because that's been my go-to for at least a year, and uh and then I pay Perplexity the $20 a month. I've been playing with the computer to see all the things that it can do because it's getting smarter every day, too.

Maria Quattrone 44:46

That's amazing.

Keith Pike 44:47

Yeah, check it out.

Maria Quattrone 44:48

I will I'll be checking theater today. Don't sign it up. No check it out. I have just real stuff I'm getting on right now for my uh my new launch, more listings now. Um yeah, that'd be good. Yeah, yeah. It was great, my friend, having you today. Thank you for unpacking and being so upfront, you know, about your transition and about your thought process and going through the transition. And we're gonna come back in a few months and see again after the summer.

Keith Pike 45:23

Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, that'd be great.

Maria Quattrone 45:25

Thank you, my friend. Always enjoy being with you.

Keith Pike 45:28

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Maria Quattrone 45:30

My pleasure.