Tech with Ty

[T]echnology: Curious Like a Cat
[E]ducation: Wall Street Just Got Grounded
[C]oaching: It’s Not a Database. It’s a Contact List.
[H]ow To: Google Maps to Glamour Shot

[T]echnology: Curious Like a Cat

You know those cinematic before-and-after property videos that look like they cost thousands to produce? The ones with the smooth transitions, the twilight shots, the perfectly staged interiors?

You can make those now. From your listing photos. With zero filming.

Here’s How:

Here’s the short version. You grab your listing photos, drop them into an AI image generator to create renovated versions in a consistent design style, animate the before-and-after transformations, generate a music track, and edit it all together into a polished property video. The whole thing is built with AI…from the renovation designs to the animations to the soundtrack.

The tool doing the heavy lifting is called Calico AI. It handles the image generation, the video animation, and the audio…all in one place. You feed it your existing listing photos and it generates high quality renovated versions that stay visually consistent across every room. Then it animates smooth transitions between the original and the redesigned spaces.

Think about what this means for your business. You could take a dated property that photographs terribly and show buyers what it could look like with a renovation…before any work is done. You could create scroll-stopping social content for every listing without hiring a videographer. You could walk into a listing presentation with a transformation video of the seller’s own home.

This is the kind of marketing that separates you from every other agent posting the same static MLS photos.

[E]ducation: Wall Street Just Got Grounded

The other day the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by a vote of 89 to 10.

89 to 10. Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren got 89 senators to agree on something. That alone should tell you how serious the housing crisis has become.

So what’s in it?

The big one: Institutional investors who own 350 or more single family homes are banned from buying more. There are some exemptions for build-to-rent and rent-to-own programs, but even those require the investor to sell within 7 years. This is the government finally saying what we’ve all been screaming…stop letting Wall Street buy up the neighborhoods our clients want to live in.

But the rest of the bill matters just as much. It expands FHA loan limits. It funds down payment assistance, closing cost help, and interest rate buydowns. It incentivizes local governments to update zoning laws to allow more housing. It creates a pilot program to convert vacant commercial buildings into affordable housing. And it cuts red tape that’s been slowing construction for years.

For your buyers: More help getting in the door. Better financing. More homes being built.

For your sellers: More qualified buyers means more demand…especially in that first-ime buyer range where investors have been competing with families.

For you: This is the kind of thing your clients need to hear from you first. Not from the news. Not from their uncle on Facebook. From you.

Reality check: It still has to pass the House. So it’s not law yet. But 89 to 10 sends a strong signal.

[C]oaching: It’s Not a Database. It’s a Contact List

I saw the post above and the other day and it almost made me spit out my drink: “If your CRM doesn’t know who owns a home…it’s not a database. It’s a contact list.”

That hit different.

Because most agents I talk to have a CRM full of names, phone numbers, and maybe an email.

That’s it.

No homeownership status. No purchase date. No estimated equity. No life events.

You’re not working a database…you’re scrolling through a phone book. And you’re wondering why your “sphere” isn’t generating referrals.

A real database tells you who bought in 2019 and is sitting on six figures of equity. It tells you who’s been in their home for seven years and might be ready for a move. It tells you who just had a kid, who just got promoted, who just got divorced. That’s how you show up at the right time with the right message. Stop collecting contacts. Start building intelligence.

I know this seems like a lot of heavy lifting and many CRMs are starting to build this functionality in, but even if you’re not neck deep in a CRM, have AI start helping you clean up your database. This is something that tools like Claude Cowork were made for!

[H]ow To: Google Maps to Glamour Shot

If you’re not ready to dive into virtual renovation video creation, this is something everyone can do…

Go to Google Maps. Pull up a listing address. Grab a screenshot from street view. Now drop it into Gemini and hit it with this prompt: “Turn this image into a high end real estate photo. Blue hour photo with lights from the home creating a stunning image. Do not make any structural changes to the home or the driveway. Remove the car from the driveway.”

What you get back is a twilight photo that looks like you hired a photographer with a drone and waited for golden hour. From a low resolution Google Maps screenshot. With the click of a button.

Now imagine walking into a listing appointment with that as the cover page of your presentation…before you’ve even listed the home. That’s the kind of marketing that wins listings. Check out the full walkthrough above!

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-Ty Morton + Abby G