The Chris List™

The 2026 State of Real Estate Marketing Report just confirmed that email is the #1 listing source in the business.

Not social. Not paid ads. Not Zillow. Not cold outreach.

It's not even close.

So the most valuable thing in your business is the thing you keep putting off.

Wild.

Tomorrow at 1 pm ET, I'm walking through our database monetization system​

So you can see what it would look like in your business.

It's called How We Turn Your Database Into More Listings.

Fair warning: it's not sexy. It's just what actually works.

​Click here to RSVP​

Now, here is what is in this week's Chris List:
​
​📝 [C]ontent: The AI layoff talk nobody wants to have

🛠 [H]ow-To: Make studio-grade video with zero crew

🔬 [R]esearch: Gen Z's homebuying trust problem

🎨 [I]nspiration: Why smaller is the new flex

📈 [S]tats: The $1M "starter home" club just exploded

📝 [C]ONTENT

Microsoft, Google, Meta, & Amazon had massive layoffs citing AI. Is it your turn? 🤔

Let's have the uncomfortable conversation nobody in your office wants to have.

In 2026 alone, roughly 120,000 tech jobs have been eliminated so far, and AI was the single most-cited reason.

This isn't struggling companies cutting to survive.

Read the list:

Microsoft cut 4,800 while posting record numbers.

Oracle shed 21,000 over 12 months, up 27% in profit.

Cloudflare cut 20% of staff during its highest-revenue quarter in company history.

Record revenue. Massive layoffs. Same breath.

The quotes are the tell.

Coinbase's CEO said engineers now "ship in days what used to take a team weeks."

Cloudflare's CEO said the people cut were mostly "measurers," the middle layer that reports on work instead of doing it.

Jack Dorsey cut Block nearly in half and said: "I think most companies are late."

Here's the turn, and I'm going to be straight with you because that's the whole point of this newsletter.

If Microsoft and Oracle and Salesforce and Coinbase and Amazon and Meta are finding this much bloat with AI, it's hard to believe there isn't some in YOUR business too.

Nobody enjoys this. Laying people off is the worst part of the job.

So let me give you the version I actually believe in:

The goal isn't to fire people. It's to make the people you have unfireable.

The dream scenario: you keep your whole team, you make every one of them AI-enabled, and each person starts doing the work of two or three.

You stop needing to hire. Payroll stays flat while output triples. Everybody wins.

But let's be honest about the catch.

Inside almost every business right now, there are people who are anti-AI.

Or, more commonly, people who aren't against it but aren't all in either.

They're waiting it out. Hoping it blows over.

That can't be the standard anymore.

Being all-in on AI shouldn't be a bonus skill in 2026. It should be a requirement of employment.

Not because AI replaces people. Because the people who refuse to use it are the ones who eventually get replaced by the people who do.

The kind move and the smart move are the same move: get your whole team trained, get them leveraged, and make "we use AI here" a condition of being on the bus.

The companies on that layoff list waited until it was a cut. You still have time to make it a coaching conversation instead.

🛠 [H]OW-TO

Google's Veo 4 turns you into a one-person production studio 🎬

You've been faking it with slideshow "video tours" and shaky iPhone walkthroughs. That era just ended.

Google's new Gemini Omni (aka Veo 4) is the first AI video tool that actually feels production-ready. Not "cool demo, useless in real life." Actually usable.

Here's what changed:

4K output, not grainy 1080p.

15–30 second clips instead of the old 8-second blips.

And real, intentional audio, meaning speech, ambiance, and sound design that doesn't sound like a robot gargling.

But the killer feature is chat-based editing.

You don't rebuild a clip from scratch when something's off. You just tell it what to fix. "Remove that logo." "Swap the spaghetti for soup, keep everything else."

It changes the one thing and leaves the rest alone.

Think of it like the Nano Banana moment, but for moving video.

Here's the Realtor playbook:

1. Generate B-roll you don't have. No drone? No golden-hour street footage? Prompt it. Describe the neighborhood vibe and let Veo 4 build the cinematic shots you'd normally pay a videographer $1,500 for.

2. Make explainer videos that hold up. It keeps on-screen text and numbers accurate throughout the clip (a rare thing for AI video). Perfect for a "3 things buyers get wrong" or a market-stat breakdown.

3. Fix instead of redo. Shot's 90% there but the logo's wrong or the lighting's off? One prompt fixes it. No re-render, no starting over.

4. Remix one clip into ten. Take a lifestyle shot and blend it into a polished, TV commercial-style listing ad. Same footage, new angle, new post.

The bottom line: the excuse "I'm not a video person" just died.

The tools do the producing now. You just have to hit record on the idea.

🔬 [R]ESEARCH

1 in 3 Gen Z buyers is doing their homework with AI (but they still want you at closing) 🤖

Bank of America just dropped research that should reframe how you talk to younger buyers: about a third of Gen Z used AI tools in the past year for homebuying research.

Not for fun. For one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.

Here's the part that matters. Gen Z isn't reaching for AI because it's trendy. They're reaching for it because they don't trust experts by default.

Graham Paterson put it bluntly: "Gen Z is naturally more distrusting, and since they don't know the buying process, they'd rather ask a machine than a person."

Ouch. But also: useful to know.

They're using it to research the process itself, dig into neighborhoods, and check property values. It's the same reason they trust TikTok's algorithm and Spotify's playlists.

Their whole digital life has been personalized for years, so a generic "trust me, I'm the expert" pitch bounces right off.

But here's your opening.

More than half of prospective buyers still want a human for tours and contract advice.

And the closing? Coordinating inspectors, appraisers, lenders, attorneys, and banks? That's where even the most AI-obsessed buyer wants someone in their corner.

Jessica Li, an Atlanta agent, nailed it: "A competent agent can be the difference between a full-price deal and a concession worth thousands."

The takeaway for your business:

Stop fighting the research phase. You already lost it. Gen Z is going to ChatGPT before they ever DM you.

Instead, position yourself as the human who takes over exactly where AI taps out: the negotiation, the tangible stuff, the "this inspection just went sideways" moment.

Meet them where they start (self-directed, skeptical, AI-first), then prove your value where it actually counts (the money, the contract, the close).

Don't sell them on trusting you blind. Show them the receipts and let them verify.

That's the whole Gen Z playbook.

🎨 [I]NSPIRATION

The greatest ad of the 20th century was about buying LESS 🚙

In 1959, Volkswagen had a problem. They were selling a tiny, weird-looking car built in a German factory to a country obsessed with giant muscle cars and Baby Boomer excess.

Everyone was screaming BIGGER.

VW whispered two words instead: "Think Small." (one version that I loved read "It makes your house look bigger)

The ad agency DDB dropped a tiny Beetle into a massive empty page. Oceans of white space. A car you almost had to squint to find. Then some fine print explaining why small was actually the smart flex.

It became one of the most celebrated campaigns in advertising history. It kicked off the entire "Creative Revolution," the shift from selling products to selling a lifestyle.

But here's the line that should stick with you.

One critic summed up the whole genius of it: "Beetle ownership allowed you to show off that you didn't need to show off."

Read that twice.

Here's the turn for real estate, and it's a big one.

The American Dream 1.0 was Think Big. The 4,000 square foot house. The two-story foyer. More room, more square footage, more everything.

That was the flex for 60 years.

The American Dream 2.0? For better or worse, it's probably best achieved by thinking small.

The starter home that doesn't wreck the budget. The right-sized place instead of the biggest one the bank will approve. The buyer who wants a home that fits their life, not one that owns their weekends and their wallet.

Your younger buyers already feel this. They watched a generation get house-poor chasing "big."

They're not impressed by the McMansion. They're impressed by the person who got in smart, kept their freedom, and didn't overextend.

So steal the VW move in your marketing:

Stop selling the biggest thing you can. Start selling the smartest thing they can afford. Reframe "starter home" from a compromise into a power move.

Your VW-style hook: "The flex isn't the biggest house on the block. It's the one you can actually afford to live in." Or: "Buy the house that fits your life, not the one that swallows it."

Think Small didn't just sell cars. It made restraint look cooler than excess.

Do that for the buyer who's scared they can't afford "the dream."

You're not shrinking their dream. You're right-sizing it into one they can actually reach.

📈 [S]TATS

A record 242 cities now have $1M "starter" homes 😳

Read that again. Starter homes. Seven figures. In 242 cities.

Zillow just dropped an analysis that puts a number on what your first-time buyers already feel in their gut: the bottom rung of the ladder keeps getting higher.

The count of cities with million-dollar starter homes has nearly tripled since 2020, jumping from 80 cities to 242.

For context, a "starter home" here just means the lowest third of home values in a market. So this isn't the fancy stuff. This is the entry point.

Where it's happening:

California still leads with 105 cities. No surprise.

But the real story is the Northeast.

New York jumped from 12 cities to 41. And New Jersey went from ONE city to 26.

Zillow's economist called it straight: the Sun Belt built more housing and price growth cooled off. The Northeast didn't build, so the shortage never got solved.

Supply is the whole ballgame.

Now the good news, because your buyers need to hear it:

The typical starter home nationwide is still just $198,649. Those million-dollar markets are the exception, not the rule.

And the rent-versus-buy math is quietly improving. Buyers now break even against renting after about 6 years, down from 8+ years back in late 2023.

What to do with this:

Use the scary headline to start the conversation, then flip it to hope.

Lead with: "You've seen the million-dollar starter home stories. Here's what's actually true in OUR market." Then show them the local number.

Because a spooked buyer who thinks they're priced out everywhere is a buyer who never picks up the phone.

Your job is to be the one who says: "That's California. Here's your reality, and here's your path."

Fear gets the click. Clarity gets the client.