The Chris List™

On July 22nd, I'm joining Phil Stringer, Justin Benson, Mickey Neuberger, Byron Lazine, The Broke Agent, and more for BAM BBQ, a free 2.5-hour virtual event that's basically the AI playbook for real estate agents.

We're covering how to use AI for client conversations, content creation, and the systems that save you hours every week.

No fluff. No theory. Stuff you can use the same day.

It's free. It's virtual. It starts at noon ET.

​RSVP here before you forget and then get mad at yourself next Wednesday.

Now, here is what is in this week's Chris List:
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​📝 [C]ontent: The ChatGPT flyer pandemic is here
​🛠 [H]ow-To: Instagram's new photo comments feature is a gift
​🔬 [R]esearch: AI makes your writing better and your ideas worse
​🎨 [I]nspiration: An airline weaponized World Cup ticket prices
​📈 [S]tats: The CMA speed gap that's costing you listings

We are living in a ChatGPT flyer pandemic 🤮

You've seen them. You just didn't know you were seeing them.

The Fourth of July barbecue invite. The concert poster on the telephone pole. The going-out-of-business flyer in the skateboard shop window.

All different businesses. All identical design: big flashy text on a dark background, AI-generated images, random checkmarks and arrows everywhere, a bulleted list of generic icons, and that unmistakable "I spent 30 seconds on this" energy.

404 Media just put a name on it: the ChatGPT flyer pandemic.

It's everywhere. Drug delivery ads in Berlin. World Cup party posters in France. Junk hauling services in South Carolina. Fundraiser flyers in Texas.

All stylistically indistinguishable. All screaming "I asked ChatGPT to make me a flyer" without saying it.

A parody flyer went even harder: "YOUR FLYER LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE. Hey if this is your flyer, I'm not going, I'm not donating, I'm not sharing. Don't ask me."

And that parody? It was also made with ChatGPT. Because of course it was.

Why This Matters for Agents

You know exactly what the real estate version of this looks like.

The "Just Listed" graphic with AI-generated text, five random icons, a weird gradient, and a photo of the house that looks overly edited.

Multiply that by every agent in your market posting the same thing on the same day.

When everything looks the same, nothing gets noticed.

And people are starting to actively distrust content that looks AI-generated. It signals low effort. "If you didn't care enough to make a real flyer, why would I trust you with my house?"

Here's the play: Use AI for the thinking. Use a human touch for the output.

Let ChatGPT write your listing copy. Let it research your market data. Let it draft your email.

But when it comes to the thing people actually see, the flyer, the post, the sign, the ad, put in the 30 extra seconds to make it look like a person made it.

Better yet, stand out by going deliberately low-fi. A Claude Design template with your actual brand fonts and colors. A quick selfie video instead of an AI-generated image.

Even a hand-written note on a door hanger.

In a world drowning in ChatGPT flyers, the most disruptive thing you can do is look like a real human made it.

Because right now? That's rare.

Instagram now lets people comment with photos. Here's the playbook. 📸

Instagram quietly rolled out one of its most useful updates in years: users can now post images directly in the comments on any feed post or Reel.

Not a link. Not a GIF. An actual photo from your camera roll with an optional caption.

For agents building a personal brand with other agents, buyers, and sellers following them, this changes how you can drive engagement.

Here's the move (courtesy of my friends at BAM)

Post a question that your agent audience actually wants to answer with a photo.

Five plays to run this week:

1. "Drop a pic of your best closing gift." Instant idea-sharing thread. Agents love stealing a good closing gift idea.
2. "Comment your home office setup." Relatability content that gets agents talking. You'll see 40 different setups and know exactly what to post next.
3. "Show me your most recent SOLD sign photo." Celebration content that writes itself. Other agents engage, sellers see momentum.
4. "Drop a pic of the weirdest thing you've ever seen at a showing." That thread will run for days.
5. "Comment a before and after from a listing you staged or prepped." Free social proof from your network, in your comment section.

Because photo comments require more effort than a like or a quick reply, the algorithm treats them as high-value engagement signals.

More reach. More visibility. More people discovering your account.
​
​For consumer engagement, consider things like:

• Picture of your landscaping
• Photo of your kids
• Pics of your pet

If you see this feature in your app, use it this week.

First-mover advantage on new Instagram features is real. It never lasts long.

AI-assisted writing has 8x fewer original ideas ✍️

Georgetown neuroscientist Adam Green has been tracking a quiet crisis hidden inside college application essays.

His team analyzed more than 370,000 personal statements before and after ChatGPT launched.

The finding should make every agent stop and think.

Post-ChatGPT essays had richer vocabulary, smoother sentences, better transitions.

Human judges actually rated them as MORE creative.

But the underlying ideas? Up to 8x fewer genuinely new concepts than human-written essays.

More polish. Less originality. And nobody caught it because the writing looked better on the surface.

A separate study on short stories found the same thing: AI-assisted work was rated more enjoyable to read, but the storylines were dramatically more homogeneous.

The weird characters, the unexpected settings, the offbeat angles? All quietly filtered out.

Here's the uncomfortable part for anyone in marketing: AI predicts the most likely "good" next word based on everything it's been trained on.

That means it naturally drifts toward what's already worked. It is, by design, a regression to the mean.

The Realtor Takeaway

If every agent in your market is using AI to write their listing descriptions, their email subject lines, their social captions, and their market updates, they all start sounding like the same agent.

That's actually good news for you, if you use it right.

Think of your marketing like a portfolio: roughly 75% can be AI-assisted.

The research, the drafts, the templated emails, the routine content. Let AI handle the heavy lifting there.

But reserve at least 25% for ideas that only you could come up with.

The weird open house concept. The unexpected collab. The subject line nobody else would write. The story from a closing that made you laugh out loud.

That 25% is where your brand actually lives.

AI can't write the IKEA Allen key moment. It can't pitch the sparkling water house. It can't come up with the "Scroll Stoppr." (all campaigns featured previously in The Chris List)

Those ideas came from humans who were willing to look dumb for a second.

In a world where everyone's using the same tools, originality isn't just a style choice.

It's a competitive advantage.

An airline just weaponized World Cup ticket prices 🌎✈️

Air Transat looked at the insane cost of 2026 World Cup tickets and found their opening.

With Canada co-hosting this summer, ticket prices have become one of the loudest complaints in fan culture.

So the airline skipped the usual sponsorship play and went straight for the pain point.

They built a real-time cost comparison. Live match ticket prices, pinned right next to the cost of a flight to the home country you're rooting for.

The pitch is simple: for the price of one seat in the stadium, you could fly to Brazil, Portugal, or wherever your team calls home, and actually experience the football culture on the ground.

No logos on jerseys. No official partnership fees. Just a live, reactive idea that plugs directly into a conversation fans are already having.

Why this works: they didn't create demand. They found existing frustration and redirected it.

Steal This for Real Estate

This is basically begging for the rent vs. buy comparison you've been sitting on.

Pay your landlord's mortgage vs. pay your own mortgage.

Build their equity vs. build your equity.

Build a live (or "live-feeling") comparison tool: current average rent in your market next to what that same payment buys in a mortgage.

Update it monthly. Post it as a recurring series, not a one-off graphic.

Even simpler: a single-page site or a Reel where you plug in a renter's actual number and show them the flip in real time.

Air Transat didn't sell flights. They sold the regret of not taking one.

Your version sells the regret of writing a check to someone else's mortgage for one more year.

The CMA gap that's costing agents listings 🏠

RPR just surveyed 244 active REALTORS about their CMA workflow, and buried inside the data is a number that should make every listing agent uncomfortable.

84% of agents say responding quickly to a pricing request is extremely or very important.

Only 7% actually respond within an hour.

That's not a small gap. That's the distance between knowing what matters and doing it.

And it's expensive.

26.6% of agents say their response time has possibly or definitely cost them a listing.

More than one in four. Gone before the conversation even really started.

Here's why the gap exists:

76% of agents say finding the right comps is the most time-consuming part of building a CMA.

Not the report. Not the presentation. Just identifying the right comparable properties in the first place.

After that, 59% say adjusting for property differences eats the most time, followed by reviewing and narrowing the comp set at 55%.

Nearly half of all agents spend an hour or more just building the CMA itself.

Only 41% respond same-day or faster. The majority are getting back to sellers the next day or later.

Here's the kicker on AI: 72% of agents want AI to explain the similarities and differences between the subject property and comps. That's the single most-wanted AI feature in the whole survey.

But 79% name accuracy as their top concern. They want the help. They just don't fully trust it yet.

The Realtor Takeaway

Speed wins listings. The data says it. The lost business proves it.

If you can get a credible pricing range in front of a seller within an hour of their first call, you will win more than your share of appointments.

Not because you're the best agent. Because you showed up first with a number while everyone else was still pulling comps.

The agents who figure out a faster CMA workflow, whether that's a pre-built comp search, an AI-assisted first draft, or a "rough range + full CMA to follow" approach, will have a structural advantage over the ones still spending two hours on a report the seller needed yesterday.