“This story is insane”: Florida man claims he used ChatGPT for every step of selling his house for nearly $1 million

A Florida man is making headlines after he claims to have used ChatGPT to help sell his house and skip paying a realtor.

Robert Levine recently told NBC6 that he "wanted to challenge myself to use A.I. for the entire process" of selling his house in Cooper City, Florida. 

What did that actually entail? Levine says ChatGPT walked him through planning, pricing, and marketing. It guided him on when to start packing up the house, which rooms to repaint to get the most value, and what day to list the home to get the most eyes on it.

Within 72 hours, he claims that he had five offers on the house. The final sale for $954,800 took place just five days after the property was listed.

There's no doubt that Levine considers the endeavor a success. Not only did he get to avoid the commission fee that he would have had to cough up had he gone through a real estate agent, but he also told Fortune that his house sold for around $100,000 more than agents had suggested.

Should you use ChatGPT to sell a house?

Tech bros and bots are foaming at the mouth over the story, positioning this as proof that AI is going to be some serious money maker for the average person.

But some people who actually listened to what Levine said and thought about the whole thing for more than five seconds were left scratching their heads, wondering why this was being seen as such a big deal.

"This is no different than a for sale by owner," @wellconnctd wrote on X. "has existed for decades. Nothing ground breaking about this."

When you actually dig into what ChatGPT did for Levine, it sounds as if it mostly amounted to looking up basic information like real estate trends, tutorials on listing the house online, and other things that are widely available via a quick online search.

Coming up with a timeline for the process, which Levine claimed was the most useful thing ChatGPT did for him, is something most humans would be capable of on their own by exerting a little bit of brain power.

One thing ChatGPT did for Levine that he probably couldn't have done on his own was draw up a contract for the sale. However, he also admitted that he hired a lawyer anyway—something that's probably for the best, considering how ChatGPT functions.

The former homeowner responds

For his part, Levine seems overall thrilled about the sale of his home, as he should be. He seems equally thrilled that he's drawing attention to the usefulness of AI.

In fact, he recently wrote a LinkedIn post (or, based on the style and format, perhaps ChatGPT wrote it for him) praising AI and how he says it made him "more capable" in the process of selling his home.

"I didn't do this for publicity—I did it to challenge myself," he wrote. "At ComOps, we spend a lot of time helping clients turn insights into action using AI."

And if you were one of those people who found yourself wondering why some guy relying on ChatGPT as a complex search engine to sell his house raved about it to the point of it somehow being considered newsworthy, learning that he's the CEO of a company that clearly wants to normalize AI usage might just provide an answer.

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