🌳 The latest wealth flex is a 100-year-old tree


The Chris List™

Join me later this month for a live breakdown of exactly how AI is being used to generate more listings across YouTube, social media, and email.
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During this 2-hour workshop, you'll learn:
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​1. The AI tools actually worth using for social media, and the ones wasting your time ​
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2. A real system for turning AI-assisted content into consistent, qualified listing leads
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Plus: every attendee walks away with a free downloadable playbook covering the exact tools, prompts, and workflows covered on the call, so you can start using them the same day.
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​Click here to save a spot

Now, here's what is in this week's Chris List:

📝 [C]ontent: Billionaires are buying million-dollar trees
​🛠 [H]ow-To: Steal my Grok Bot newsletter operating system
​🔬 [R]esearch: 134 years of housing data from newspaper ads
​🎨 [I]nspiration: Milka put the neighbor's name back on the door
​💡 [S]wipes: 3 in 5 homes sold below asking

📝 [C]ONTENT

The latest wealth flex is a big tree 🌳 💵

Rich property owners are not waiting for saplings.

They are buying what is referred to as Instant Old trees.
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Mature oaks. Palms. Banyans. Baobabs.

Reported prices: a matched banyan pair at about $250,000 each.

Canary Island date palms around $50,000.

One African baobab client paid $500,000.

Someone even built a privacy screen of 100+ mature American hollies that cost $1M+.

Vibe of the flex: "My tree is bigger, my crane is taller."

They are not buying shade. They are buying time.

Why this matters for agents:

Buyers judge the curb appeal and the trees before they judge the kitchen. Instant Old is not only a billionaire hobby.

It is something you can suggest when a luxury yard looks thin.

Two ideas for this week:

Guess-the-price outreach. Text, email, or green-screen Reel a photo of a mature oak or palm and ask: "What do you think it costs to transplant a tree this size?"

ADD Instant Old for thin luxury yards using AI. Do not only admire the estate next door. Price the option into the plan (just make sure you disclose it is AI).

It must be nice to drop so much green on green, but one can only wonder what these big trees are compensating for...

🛠 [H]OW-TO

How I run three newsletters with Grok Bot 🤖

Most "AI agent" stacks are a pile of chat windows and tabs.

Here's the new operating system I use for The Chris List, B.I.T.S., and ellavate, courtesy of my new favorite AI tool, Grok Bot.

My Chief of Staff is the only one I ever chat with.

I never DM the other specialists.

The CoS routes the work, wakes the right seat, and brings every result back to one thread, so I am not hunting down five chats.

Here are the Bots I built that the CoS runs for me (each newsletter has its own five "person" team):

Researcher: hunts story options, submits briefs, and finds URLs
​Writer: first draft in my voice (I gave the CoS all my Claude prompts I had already built, as well as a link to analyze all past newsletters)
​Editor: polishes everything before anything hits my eyes
​Designer: Creates the graphics for each section
​Social: X and LinkedIn after copy is created once I sign off on the final newsletter

I also added several custom Grok Bots to the team:

Critiquito: design critique before images ship
​SEO & AEO: keyword and AI-answer blog posts for any section I deem worthy of long-form
​last30days: what people actually said in the last 30 days only about a topic

I was doing all of this in some capacity, but it was hacked together in several tools.

Now I save time every week without sacrificing quality, thanks to Grok Bot.

Do this today: create your Chief of Staff, have it spin up the five specialist jobs for a marketing task you do weekly/monthly, and ship one full loop.
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Don't let your personal feelings about Elon stop you from taking advantage of this amazing new approach to AI agents.

🔬 [R]ESEARCH

The Fed priced 134 years of housing from newspaper ads 📰

The Philadelphia Fed's Historical Housing Prices Project turned 2.7 million newspaper real estate listings into quality and inflation-adjusted price series for 30 U.S. cities from 1890 through 2024.

By 2024, Philadelphia sat at 134% of its 1890 real level. Los Angeles sat at 1,062%.

From 1946 to 1970, real U.S. city prices rose about 0.6% a year. No major boom. No major bust.

"Always goes up" is a post-1970 story, not a 134-year one.

Fun fact they uncovered: New York City permitted more homes in 1927 than in the entire stretch from 1965 through 1987.

Why this matters for agents:

You do not need newspaper research to put YOUR city in the same context.

Steal the long series as a frame, then use free modern data to back it up.

Pull FHFA HPI for your metro from fhfa.gov or FRED.

Then add one local receipt: Census Housing Data or Redfin's Data Center.

🎨 [I]NSPIRATION

Milka put the neighbor's name back on the door 🍫

20% of Polish people (Poles) do not know a single neighbor's name.

Door nameplates, formerly commonplace, had quietly disappeared after 1989. No name on the door. No obvious way to begin a convo.

So Milka, (a chocolate bar company) decided to bring them back.

They worked with a craftsman who had spent 45 years cutting those plates.

They put 50,000 packages on apartment doors across seven cities. Each one had a personalized nameplate and a bar to share with the person next door.

Reach on social media hit 21 million. A neighbor-edition run of 3.7 million bars sold out.

This week, put your name, your face, and one true closed address on the map.

Use door hangers, a mailbox drop, or one street of porch visits.

Maybe even "pop by" some of your best past clients' places with some Milkas in hand.
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The world could use more neighborliness right now, and you can be the one who sparks it.

📝 [S]WIPES

3 in 5 homes sold below ask 📉

In August, 59.5% of U.S. homes sold below original asking price.

West Palm Beach 85%. Miami 83%. Austin and San Antonio 82%. San Francisco about 30%.

New listings hit their highest level since 2022. Total homes for sale hit their highest level since 2020.

One national number. One local number. One swipe.

Subject: Most homes are selling under ask

Nationally, about 3 in 5 homes sold below their original ask in August (59.5%). In [METRO] it was about [X]%.

I can show you three live comps that took a cut, and what a clean day-one price would have saved them.

Want that?

Action item: Fill [METRO] and [X]% from this Redfin table.

Send it before the next seller asks for 2021 pricing.

Thanks for reading the entire list 😁
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Don't forget to save your seat for my 2-hour workshop:
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​The Modern Agent's AI Playbook: How Top Agents Are Using AI Across YouTube, Social & Email to Win More Listings

​Click here to save a spot

Chris Smith

p.s. if you can not attend live rsvp anyways and that puts you on the list for the recording

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The Chris List

Chris Smith is the bestselling author of The Conversion Code. He co-founded the SaaS marketing platform Curaytor, an Inc. 500 fastest-growing business. As a C-level executive at dotloop, Chris helped lead them to their acquisition by Zillow for $108 million. The Conversion Code has become required reading for marketing courses at colleges like Johns Hopkins University, and Chris Smith is a sought-after lecturer and speaker whose credits include NYU, as well as sold out events with Gary Vaynerchuck and Hubspot, among others. His work has been featured in Adweek, Forbes, Fortune, and many other publications.

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