I’ve seen this movie before. Having worked in the industry for 20 years, I know exactly how most agents end up.
When social media first became popular in the real estate industry, posting wasn’t the issue. The problem was that most people didn’t have a strategy. They posted just for the sake of posting, scrolling while telling themselves they were working, and confusing activity with progress.
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This distinction is important because social media itself has proven to be incredibly valuable.
Agents who used this strategically with focus and consistency built a real long-term advantage. They remained visible. They deepened their relationship. They built an audience and attention and are still reaping the benefits. For them, social media was not a waste of time. It was a weapon.
But for many agents, it became something else: a dopamine machine disguised as business development.
They open Instagram or Facebook to “market,” indulge in some destructive scrolling, create a post, tweak a caption, check for engagement, and walk away with a good feeling that they did something important. Meanwhile, databases cooled, pipelines thinned, and agents who remained focused on money-making activities quietly stole market share.
That’s why I think AI is so dangerous right now.
It’s not because the AI is bad. I think AI is really cool, and I think it’s going to be a huge benefit for people who use it strategically, just like with social media. In some cases, this may already be the case. However, most agents are still not leveraging AI strategically. They use it in a way that makes them feel productive.
And it’s not the same thing.
According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Technology Survey, this gap is impossible to ignore. According to NAR’s Realtors Property Resource, 68% of agents now use AI tools daily or several times a week. However, only 17% report that AI is having a significant positive impact on their business. 46% felt no noticeable impact at all.
It’s not a recruitment issue. It’s a matter of strategy. And it rhymes with something we’ve all seen before.
I know it because I’ve lived it
AI is even more fascinating than social media because it gives you something tangible. dashboard. Workflow. Sophisticated email. Landing page. Custom GPT. Something that looks and feels like progress.
The brain rewards completion. Forward motion feels good. And AI is very good at creating both senses, even when your business hasn’t moved an inch.
I work in marketing technology. I understand AI and agent workflow on a level that most agents don’t. And I still spend countless hours of truly invaluable time helping AI agents build dashboards, research tools, and copywriting workflows. Then I spend hours refining it. I’m adjusting it. It is being improved. Because the output kept increasing and it felt like progress.
At some point I had to ask myself an uncomfortable question. “Am I actually saving time here, or am I just really enjoying the build?”
Because the tools continued to improve. The process that was supposed to fix it remained broken. And the pipeline didn’t care how close the automation was to completion.
That is the trap in its purest form. AI helps you create, build, automate, and prototype things, delivering small wins at each step. Your dopamine machine has been upgraded. But spending three hours to save 15 minutes, two weeks building something that will never be deployed, or a month honing a system that never closes deals is not real progress.
This is where agents need to be brutally honest with themselves.
Are you using AI to enhance your actual work, or are you stuck in a loop of feeling productive while silently giving up work that actually makes you money?
Ask yourself one question. Are you abandoning a money-making activity for something you expect to make money someday, once it’s finally done?
This is because many agents are buried in that “someday”.
We see this especially in agent AI and build-heavy experiments. Once someone starts building workflows and internal tools, the output will continue to improve so it never feels unfinished. So they continue. And please continue. It becomes a permanent state that is almost practical.
Pipelines, on the other hand, don’t care.
Work that is still important
While agents are trapped in a limitless dopamine machine, market opportunities are expanding, not shrinking.
The number of expired listings is up 83% year over year. That’s no joke. This is a structural shift in the market, representing a large and growing number of aspiring sellers who have already tried and failed to sell.
According to current data from REDX, 44.6% of all expired and canceled listings end up being relisted with an agent, on average within just 36 days of expiration. That period is short. Sellers who relist are not waiting around. They’re making decisions quickly and they’re making decisions based on who shows up.
It’s not a technical issue. It’s a matter of perspective. Agents who contact homeowners during that 36-day period will get the listing. The agent is refining an automated workflow that is not yet live, but it is not actually live.
The same calculations apply to FSBO, pre-foreclosure, and vacant rentals. The opportunity is there. The question is whether you are in front of it.
Real estate agents need to set aside optimal time for activities that directly generate revenue. That means calling and following up with the people most likely to need a real estate agent right now, being visible in your area, and doing consistent, focused outreach to sellers before others do.
AI needs to support them. You need to sharpen them, speed them up, organize them, and strengthen them. But don’t let that drive them away.
I’ve seen this pattern before. Agents who were successful on social media were not the ones who spent the most time on social media. They were the ones who used it intentionally after their core business was already taken care of.
The agent who wins with AI is not the one who tinkers with it the most. They will be the ones who continued to do the hard, human work of making money and used AI to amplify it.
That’s the mistake most agents make when it comes to social media. Please don’t make it again.
Curtis Fenn is president of REDX, a real estate exploration platform based in Orem, Utah. Connect with REDX on Instagram and LinkedIn.
