You know, according to HousingWire, I came across an interview with Jeremias Maneiro, a trainer who's worked with thousands of agents on implementing artificial intelligence. His perspective really resonates with what I see happening in the industry right now. The core issue he's identifying isn't that the AI tools themselves are lacking, it's that brokerages often introduce the technology but fail to build it into agents' actual daily routines. When you just hand someone a shiny new tool without the groundwork, it becomes another item on their to-do list rather than something that genuinely changes how they work.
Maneiro runs a significant training operation where he works with roughly six hundred agents annually, and he's developed a framework around what he calls "habit" rather than just tool adoption. According to his experience, the first ninety days are critical. If an agent walks out of training asking how they can make money from an AI tool, that's actually a red flag that the implementation hasn't stuck. What needs to happen instead is agents need to see the connection between the tool and their daily workflow, almost like a lightbulb moment where they realize they're going to change how they operate.
One of the biggest mistakes brokerages make, according to Maneiro, is ending training at "here's how to use it" without ever showing agents the actual jobs they can hand off to these tools. He emphasizes something he calls stacked learning, where you teach one simple application in week one, have agents actually use it, then meet again and build on that foundation. It's ongoing and hands-on, not a one-time demonstration.
Maneiro also stresses that agents need to get better at framing their questions to these systems. Just asking an AI for a generic marketing strategy isn't nearly as effective as providing all the context about the property, the ideal buyer profile, and the neighborhood characteristics. That personalization and specificity is what separates an agent's AI output from everyone else's.
Looking at the bigger picture, Maneiro's philosophy is that AI should handle the administrative work and the tasks agents weren't naturally great at, freeing them to focus on what machines absolutely cannot do: that human relationship with clients. The ROI proof comes when you can show clients that you're using these tools to deliver better service and that becomes part of your unique value proposition when they're deciding who to hire.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area is that the agents who are getting ahead aren't the ones with the fanciest technology subscriptions, they're the ones who've actually integrated AI into how they think about their business. The competitive advantage is going to those who can show clients, "Here's how I'm using these tools to serve you better," rather than those who are still trying to figure out what the tools do.
