By Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando · May 22, 2026
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Here's a number that should scare every agent reading this right now.
Nearly one in seven deals under contract is falling apart before it closes. Not because of interest rates. Not because of the market. Because a buyer got cold feet over a $400 repair, or got spooked by a headline, or changed their mind three days before closing — after you did all the work.
This week on Powerhouse Talk, Tim Harris, Julie Harris, Dan Lesniak, and Kacie Anderson got into exactly why this is happening — and more importantly, what to do about it.
Plus: the AI wearable Dan wore to a listing appointment, the Google announcement that quietly reshuffled the content game, and a deal-saving technique Tim and Julie used back in their selling days that is somehow more relevant now than it's ever been.
Chewy or Hooey? This Week's Headlines
National inventory is up 2.3% year-over-year — but new pending sales are up nearly 11%.
Julie brought this one and called it Chewy — and the panel agreed. On the surface it sounds contradictory: more homes for sale, but also more homes going under contract? That's exactly what a healthy, normalizing market looks like.
After nearly three and a half years of suppressed sales, inventory is finally increasing AND being absorbed. This is not a buyer's market or a seller's market. It's a functioning market — which most agents haven't worked in long enough to recognize.
"We're on the third, maybe third and a half year of suppressed sales. Sales up 11%? That's a great headline."
Zillow went dark in Chicago — over just nine listings.
Dan flagged this one as Chewy — and the backstory matters. The Chicago MLS gave Zillow a deadline to stop suppressing pre-marketed listings. Zillow didn't comply, went to federal court, and got shut down. The entire standoff? Nine homes. Tim's read: AI makes this whole private listing arms race largely irrelevant.
A Claude bot with a Chrome extension can log into any portal you have credentials for and surface every new listing in real time — pre-market, off-market, doesn't matter. The moat isn't as deep as the big brokerages think.
Kacie's competitive angle: if you're ever up against a Compass agent using their private listing network as a selling point, just pull up the data and ask the seller one question — "How does less exposure equal a better outcome for you?" That ends the conversation.
97% of agents are now using AI. True or false?
Kacie called Hooey immediately — and was blunt about it. The agents she's seeing on the other side of deals are slow, under-prepared, and clearly not leveraging any tools. Dan agreed. Tim's take: whoever wrote that article was almost certainly selling an AI product to agents and needed a headline to justify it. Real boots-on-the-ground experience tells a completely different story. If anything, the gap between AI-enabled agents and everyone else is widening — which is exactly why it's a competitive advantage right now.
Real Estate Singularity: What the Panel Actually Used This Week
Julie — Claude cleared two hours of procrastinated ops work in one session. She had a stack of open tabs — accountant requests, reports, things that needed researching and sorting — that had been sitting because they were too time-consuming to touch. She downloaded the relevant documents, sent them to Claude, and had it categorize, sort, and summarize everything. A Claude tool built specifically for their merchant service account handled the accounting side without any manual setup. Two hours of backlogged work, done. Her takeaway: stop treating your to-do list as permanent. Ask Claude what it can do for you before you assume you have to do it yourself.
Dan — building a full agentic AI system from scratch. He spent the week mapping out three to four pages of SOPs covering every process he touches — marketing, recruiting, listings — and handed them to his team to build into an AI agent. The goal: an AI that drafts emails, sweeps his inbox, deletes promotions, summarizes what needs a response, flags unanswered requests, runs listing reports, and handles all pre-appointment prep. Effectively replacing the work of a good listing coordinator — but running in the background 24/7.
He also previewed a new AI wearable called Fieldy — a small device worn as a necklace under a shirt that records listing appointment conversations, generates summaries, flags follow-up items, and connects via Bluetooth directly to an app. No uploading. No listening back. No scribbled notes. Dan's reason for wanting it isn't just efficiency — it's presence. When you're not taking notes, you're making eye contact. You're reading the room. You're actually in the conversation.
Julie put it cleanly:
"That's an example of AI making it possible for you to be more human with somebody."
Tim flagged the training potential: coaching clients have already been recording listing appointments on digital recorders and uploading the audio to an LLM to compare and score against their listing presentation scripts. The Fieldy takes that idea further — and could be transformative for team training.
Google Gemini I/O update — pay attention to this one. Tim flagged the Google developer announcement from this week as something every agent with a YouTube presence needs to understand. Google is shifting preference back to long-form video, away from short-form — and integrating it deeply with Gemini AI. Search results will increasingly surface how-to videos in an AI-enhanced way. For agents who have been building long-form educational content, this is a tailwind. For agents who abandoned long-form for Reels and Shorts, it's a reason to reconsider.
Additionally, Gemini can now take a listing photo and change the season — green summer foliage, fall color, winter snow, spring blooms — at a level that's indistinguishable from the real thing. Kacie has been doing this with Grok for months, and her photography has gotten so sharp that other sellers comment on it unprompted.
Kacie's photo and video stack:
Grok — for enhancing listing photos to ultra-luxury quality, twilight upgrades, and dramatic lighting effects
Infinite Creator — $185 for AI-generated listing videos from your existing photos, including seasonal changes and dawn-to-dusk lighting transitions, in 13–17 minutes
Claude + Canva integration — voice commands that build complete presentations directly in Canva without ever opening the editor
Tim's Claude build of the week: He created an interactive version of the Real Estate Treasure Map — their signature business planning tool normally reserved for paid coaching clients — using Claude in about 30 minutes of back-and-forth conversation. The output included fully functional forms, dynamic outputs, and an interactive planning interface. He estimated it would have cost $5,000 to $10,000 to have a developer build it from scratch. It'll be linked in the newsletter for subscribers.
The AI hot seat — one tool every agent should use by Monday:
Kacie: Grok — for listing photos and marketing materials. "I get so many compliments on all my stuff."
Dan: Grok or Gemini — specifically for listing photo enhancement. He used it for pre-marketing and already had five to six showings booked before the listing went live.
Julie: Claude — for clearing your desk and getting your operations out of your way so you can do everything else.
Tim: Your to-do list — take it, go through it, and ask AI to handle anything it can. The smaller items are already gone. The bigger ones get done faster.
How to Keep Your Deals From Dying
The panel's verdict was unanimous: it's bad agents, not flaky buyers.
One in seven deals dying is the highest cancellation rate in roughly 25 years. And almost every person on this panel — Tim, Julie, Dan, and Kacie — said the same thing independently: this is an agent skill problem, not a market problem. The agents who grew up in the 2020–2021 market have never had to work through a difficult inspection, negotiate a repair credit, or manage a buyer who has time and options. When that situation arrives, they fold.
The anatomy of a dying deal, according to the panel:
It starts with weak pre-qualification. A buyer who was barely committed in the first place will find any reason to exit once something uncomfortable comes up. Julie: if you don't want to save deals at the 11th hour, stop taking deals you shouldn't be in.
Expectations were never set. Dan's point: agents keep hoping buyers will just overlook inspection issues, then act surprised when they don't. You have to tell the buyer — before they go under contract — that things will come up on the inspection, that this is normal, and that your job is to help them negotiate through it, not to react to it.
Agents give up too fast. Julie: "If the buyer still wants to buy and the seller still wants to sell, your job is to figure out how to keep it together." A lot of an agent's commission in this market is earned between contract and close — not before it.
Communication — real, human communication — is the differentiator. Tim noted the brutal irony: the agents best positioned to survive this market are the ones with old-school skills that social media made look irrelevant for a few years. Setting the table at the first meeting. Knowing the seller's real motivation. Walking the buyer through what to expect. These are things you cannot outsource.
The Buyer Remorse Pills Play
Tim closed the show with a technique from his and Julie's active selling days that the entire panel immediately wanted to steal.
Every time they got a buyer under contract, their buyer agents would give the buyer a small medicine vial — the kind you can order from Amazon — filled with M&Ms. The label said: Buyer Remorse Pills.
And the script went like this:
"Chances are, maybe later today, tomorrow, or the next day, you're going to have a little bit of buyer's remorse. It's completely normal. It's natural. All you have to do is take one of these — and all your fears go away."
Then you shake the vial, let them laugh, and move forward.
The deeper purpose isn't the joke. It's the pre-programming. You've just told the buyer that fear is coming, that you already know about it, and that it's not a reason to back out. When they call you three days before closing in a panic, they already have a frame for it. You've made the fear expected and manageable — not a signal to exit.
Pair it with a transaction checklist that keeps the buyer focused forward: their upcoming inspections, what to expect at each stage, what they personally need to handle. The busier they are looking forward, the less time they spend catastrophizing online.
Dan's immediate reaction: he's adding M&Ms to his buyer process this week. A coaching client in Atlanta had already taken it further — she had her logo printed directly on the M&Ms in her brand colors, custom-ordered through M&M's own website.
🚨 Special Announcement: Next Week's Guest
The CEO of eXp Realty, Leo Pareja, is joining the panel as a co-host — not as an interview guest, not in a stage presentation format, but as a full co-host being asked the same real, unscripted questions the panel asks each other every week.
Tim's framing: Leo isn't just the CEO of the largest agent-owned brokerage in the world. He also sold thousands of homes himself. It'll be a rare opportunity to hear directly from the person running the platform — in the same format, with the same energy, as every other episode.
Don't miss it.
Your Action Plan This Week
Implement the Buyer Remorse Pills. Order the vials on Amazon. Put M&Ms in them. Order custom-labeled ones if you want to go further. Use the script. Do it this week.
Set expectations before the inspection — every time. Tell every buyer, before they go under contract, exactly what they should expect to find on a home inspection and how you'll navigate it together. Make the conversation happen before you need it.
Download Grok or open Gemini and upload your best listing photo. Ask it to make it twilight. Ask it to make it summer. See what comes back. Then use it.
Take your to-do list to Claude today. Go through it item by item and ask: can AI do this for me? The answer will surprise you more often than you think.
Tune in next week. Leo Pareja, CEO of eXp Realty, joins the panel. Real questions. Real answers.
▶️ Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/TDP8Q4lv2qU?si=tIInBir4aWvg64KI
— Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando
Hosts, Power House Talk
whylibertas.com/harris
whylibertas.com/dan
whylibertas.com/heller
whylibertas.com/kacie-anderson
whylibertas.com/orlando-montiel
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