Do Home Buyers Use ChatGPT to Find a Real Estate Agent?

By Emily Terrell — Top Coach and Speaker at Tom Ferry International. 4 years coaching at Tom Ferry, 9 years prior as a client.

Home buyers use ChatGPT to research the market, but most still choose a real estate agent through a referral. Bank of America found 20% of prospective buyers and homeowners have used AI for homebuying research, while NAR reports 43% of buyers hired a referred agent. This guide shows how AI now vets the referral, and how to pass that check.

Key Takeaways

• Buyers mostly use ChatGPT early in the process, for affordability, process questions, and neighborhood research, not as the final hiring decision.
• Referrals still choose the agent: 43% of buyers used a referred agent and 18% used an agent they’d worked with before, according to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.
• A ChatGPT answer can confirm or undercut a referral, and it draws almost entirely from your own website and Google Business Profile.
• Portal profiles don’t carry over into AI answers; one 2026 study found zero Zillow citations across 1,567 ChatGPT sources.
• AI visibility is a documentation problem: publish verifiable numbers in the places AI actually reads.

What does it mean when home buyers use ChatGPT to find an agent?

When home buyers use ChatGPT to find a real estate agent, they’re doing one of two things. They’re either asking it to recommend agents in a market, or they’re asking it about a specific agent someone already named. The first replaces a Google search. The second replaces a background check.

Most agents only think about the first. I’d argue the second matters more, because the hiring decision still starts with a person, not a prompt.

Why this matters for real estate agents

AI is already part of how buyers get informed. According to Realtor.com (October 2025), 82% of recent and prospective buyers and sellers use AI for housing market information, and ChatGPT is the most-used platform at 67%.

Research isn’t the same as hiring, though. According to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 43% of buyers used an agent they found through a referral, and another 18% went back to an agent they’d worked with before. That’s 61% of buyers choosing their agent through a relationship.

Here’s the thing nobody wants to tell you: a referral doesn’t carry the whole decision anymore. A buyer who hears your name at a backyard barbecue can ask ChatGPT about you before they ever text you. If the answer is thin, generic, or names three other agents instead, you can lose a referral you already earned.

The upside is real too. NAR reported on a Denver agent who won a $1.7 million listing after a seller found him through a Gemini search. By the time they spoke, the AI’s summary of his credentials and content had already built the trust.

“…when it comes to high-stakes decisions, people still want trusted experts by their side.”
— Matt Vernon, Head of Consumer Lending, Bank of America (via NAR, June 2026)

How are home buyers using ChatGPT in the agent decision?

What are buyers actually asking ChatGPT?

They’re mostly asking early-stage questions about money, process, and place. According to Bank of America’s 2026 Homebuyer Insights Report, as covered by NAR, 20% of prospective buyers and current homeowners have used AI for homebuying research. That rises to 28% of millennials and 32% of Gen Z. Those buyers most often used AI to estimate affordability and closing costs, learn the buying process, and research neighborhoods.

Notice what’s missing from that list: “Who should I hire?” Buyers use AI to get smart before they talk to anyone. For an agent who publishes useful answers, that’s an opening.

Does ChatGPT replace the referral?

No. It audits the referral. Relationships still account for 61% of buyer-agent matches in NAR’s data. The same Realtor.com survey found consumers rated real estate agents the most accurate source of market information, ahead of AI.

What’s changed is the step between hearing your name and calling you. That step can now run through a chat window, and you don’t get to see the answer the buyer got.

What does ChatGPT read before it names an agent?

It reads the things you own. In Omni Eclipse’s 2026 analysis of 334 ChatGPT answers to real estate buying queries, ChatGPT named a median of six businesses per city. 98% of the sources it cited were the agent’s own website or Google Business Profile. In U.S. markets, roughly three of every four named slots went to an individual agent or a named team rather than a brokerage brand.

Treat that as one vendor study, not settled science. It still points at the two assets you control completely.

How do you make ChatGPT confirm your referrals?

Treat AI visibility as a documentation system, not a marketing campaign. These four steps are scalable and repeatable, and none of them requires a new platform.

Step 1: Run the referral test on yourself

Your baseline is what a referred buyer sees today. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and ask two questions: “Best real estate agent in [your neighborhood]” and “Tell me about [your full name], real estate agent in [your city].” Screenshot every answer. Note which facts appear, what’s wrong or missing, and which sources are linked. Repeat the test on the first Monday of every month.

Step 2: Treat your Google Business Profile as infrastructure

Your Google Business Profile is the single largest source ChatGPT cited for real estate recommendations in the Omni Eclipse data. Complete every field, confirm your service areas, and build review volume on purpose. Review counts were the justification ChatGPT attached to agent picks most often.

Don’t leave review requests to memory. Trigger them automatically from your CRM when a deal closes. In Follow Up Boss, that’s an action plan tied to the closed stage.

Step 3: Put your numbers on your own website

AI quotes numbers and skips adjectives. Replace “trusted local expert” on your about page with your transaction count, sales volume, years licensed, neighborhoods served, and review total. If your production data lives in MLS, export it and let AI draft the summary. I walk through that workflow in How to Integrate AI With MLS Systems. Update the page every quarter.

Step 4: Answer the questions buyers ask AI first

Publish content that answers the research-stage questions buyers are already typing into ChatGPT: affordability, process, and neighborhoods. Put it under your name, on your site, with question-based headings and direct answers in the first sentence. Video counts too, because transcripts are indexable text. That’s why YouTube Shorts belong in this system.

A compliance note: your website and Google Business Profile are advertising. In Texas, TREC’s advertising rule (22 TAC 535.155) requires your broker’s name on it. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) prohibits fake reviews and buying positive ones. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm the specifics with your broker.

Common mistakes

Quoting vendor statistics as fact. Some widely shared figures claiming that roughly two-thirds of buyers now pick agents through AI come from companies that sell AI visibility services. Use NAR, bank, and portal survey data in your listing presentations. Your credibility is on the line every time you cite a number.

Assuming your Zillow reviews cover you. Portal profiles still generate leads, but they didn’t show up as cited sources in the Omni Eclipse data. Your AI presence is your website and your Google Business Profile.

Leaning on your brokerage’s brand. ChatGPT answers “best agent in [city]” with people and teams far more often than company names. Your brokerage page isn’t your personal footprint.

Writing adjectives instead of numbers. “Dedicated” and “experienced” give AI nothing to quote. “112 homes sold in Stone Oak since 2019” does.

Testing once and calling it done. AI answers shift month to month. A single screenshot tells you nothing about the trend.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do home buyers use ChatGPT to find a real estate agent?

Some do, but most don’t use it as the deciding factor. Bank of America found 20% of prospective buyers and current homeowners have used AI tools for homebuying research, mostly for affordability, process education, and neighborhood research. The agent decision still runs largely through referrals, and a ChatGPT answer can either support that referral or undercut it.

What percentage of home buyers use AI in their home search?

Estimates range from 20% to 82%, depending on how the question is asked. Bank of America’s 2026 Homebuyer Insights Report found 20% of prospective buyers and homeowners have used AI for homebuying research. A Realtor.com survey of 1,000 recent and prospective buyers and sellers found 82% use AI for housing market information, with ChatGPT the most-used tool at 67%.

How do buyers usually find their real estate agent?

Most buyers find their agent through people they trust. According to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 43% of buyers used an agent they found through a referral, and 18% used an agent they had worked with before. Together, that’s 61% of buyers choosing an agent through a relationship rather than a search engine, portal, or chatbot.

How does ChatGPT decide which real estate agents to recommend?

ChatGPT relies on sources the agent controls. In Omni Eclipse’s 2026 study of 334 ChatGPT answers, 98% of cited sources were the agent’s own website or Google Business Profile. The answers most often justified picks with review counts, years in business, and sales volume, which means specific, verifiable numbers carry more weight than marketing adjectives.

Does my Zillow profile help me show up in ChatGPT?

Not directly, based on current evidence. Omni Eclipse’s 2026 analysis of 1,567 ChatGPT citations for real estate buying queries found zero citations to Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, or Trulia. Portals still drive leads and traffic, but a strong portal profile doesn’t transfer to AI visibility. Your own website and Google Business Profile do the work there.

How can a real estate agent check whether ChatGPT recommends them?

Ask the questions your clients ask. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and type “best real estate agent in [your neighborhood]” and “tell me about [your name], real estate agent in [your city].” Record whether you appear, what facts are cited, and which sources are linked. Repeat monthly, because AI answers change more often than Google rankings.

Bring this to your team or event

Emily Terrell speaks at brokerage events, real estate conferences, and team trainings on AI, systems, and social media — the exact playbook in this post, delivered live to your audience. As a Top Coach and Speaker at Tom Ferry International and an active agent closing 70+ transactions a year, Emily speaks from the stage about what’s working right now, not theory. Recent stages include NAHREP and eXp Con. See her keynote topics.

Book Emily to speak at your next event:
Email: eterrell@yourcoach.com
Phone: (210) 400-9191
Web: coachemilyterrell.com

For real estate agents who want to implement this: Get the weekly real estate prompt library at weeklyrealestateprompts.com or follow @coachemilyterrell on Instagram for daily systems and AI breakdowns.