Property AI Report 090 - Complaint Carnival, Flats v Houses & Grok is Good Now?

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Property and AI News
01:59 AI's Role in Increasing Complaints in Property Sector
03:51 Market Forecasts and Asset Class Differentiation
07:56 Legislative Changes Impacting Rental Bidding
11:10 AI and Tech News: SpaceXAi Grok 4.6 and Google Gemini
15:50 Recent Developments in AI Models from Various Companies
19:05 Upcoming AI Models and Industry Predictions
21:12 Tool Spotlight: Claude Cowork in Chrome
22:59 Summary and Closing Remarks

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everybody and welcome to the Property AI Report. This is your weekly digest of all things property and AI, brought to you by me, Mal McAlian, and my good friend and co-host Matt Goddard. Matt, how are you? Great Mal, how are you on this fine Tuesday morning? Yeah, really good. Obviously, we are slightly later than we usually are. We normally do it on a Friday, and we are switching it round to um doing it basically early in the weeks again. This was um, those who've been listening for a while may remember this is when we used to do it. Um but uh yes, so we we're gonna try and get um it every single week um early Monday, Tuesday, and get it out. So, yes, apologies for those that were looking forward to it uh over the weekend. Um, but this I hope will make up for it because we've got plenty to talk about this week. Let us crack into our property news. All right, um, first up in the property news um the use of AI in complaints. Now, probably many people out there listening um have noticed there's been an uptick in the number of really, really, really well-written complaints coming into their businesses because um AI has really lowered the bar for um people to send in very um very well-written reasons why they are unhappy about something that you have done. So the Ombudsman has seen an uptick of 55% in the number of complaints um against state agents um in the first part of this year already, um, and that is bound to be being replicated across um across businesses, not just in our um sphere, but also elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Matt, what do you make of this? It's quite an interesting one because uh you say very well written, and I've seen some very verbose complaints. That's definitely true. But I was actually with the property management department on Monday of last week, and we were discussing like old-fashioned complaint letters that were coming via paper and pen. And but you'd sit there reading nine or ten pages of A4 and then discover that there's not actually any questions being asked or any demands being made. And they they said, Yep, we've we're getting that with AI now, where there's a there's a lot of information and going off and looking into law that's not necessarily applicable to the situation, and and by the end of the the email, there's actually nothing being asked, they've just written a very long trove of information into one one email. Yeah, exactly. And it's like you and I think I've said on the pot before, but is it's someone I was talking to a few weeks back that someone said, I've got this massive complaint email from the tenant, what do I do? And then I like to pick up the phone and speak to them, and it's like you know, we sit behind the complaint emails. But on this particular story, I was trying to get my head around it because there's three or four in the various press articles, wasn't there? And there's a couple of people had come out from the you know, yeah, I think it was Greg had come out, sort of former property mark yeah, former property mark chair, and as one of the incoming property mark chairs saying about how it's bad and everything else, and I was trying to work out why the articles were there. But actually, the ombudsman had said that they uh they'd come out to say you don't need to declare as people writing to the ombudsman that you've used AI in your in your complaint, and that was I think why why bit there's people coming out saying it's it was an issue. But uh I think it's quite simple in my mind, right? If someone's used AI to write the complaint, then you you use AI to write the response. Just let those to do let your agents talk to them.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Exactly, just have this little arms raise. No, I completely agree. I think it is yeah, the the thing that the AI does very well is if you are annoyed about something, so you know, I don't know, it's taken your landlord longer to fix a tap than you wanted, then AI really agrees with you very quickly that that's a that do you have a point? And that can really kind of like help people to kind of think, yeah, actually, do you know I should take this further and I do want some form of like acknowledgement slash compensation slash slash slash. And so I think that's that's really the driver, is it's almost the kind of like slightly sycophantic behavior of AI that basically makes what is a tiny, tiny issue into something rock solid, and then that gets sent in, and then you have to, as you say, kind of deploy AI to essentially um write it back. So, yeah, anybody out there, I think you but basically what you should do rather than having to rewrite this stuff every single time with AI, um is basically just have a kind of bank of uh assess what you're getting, summarize it into like different buckets and go right for the annoyed tenant who thinks that we've been doing something wrong, this is the kind of stopped for the you know, um person who's been um whose property has taken longer to sell than they ideally wanted because they've priced it too high. This is the one to kind of, you know, a lot of these you will have anyway because they will be fairly stock, but uh but yes, it's just the volume that is kind of coming through much more much more plentifully. And as you say, Greg Suman, an ex are president, said that he felt that consumers should be forced to say whether they've used AI to try and stop them from doing it. I mean, there's an interesting story later in on AI and tech news about watermarking and actually, you know, but that the ability to be able to see whether people have used AI. Um, but yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen. The Ombudsman's kind of ruled it out as well. But yes, it is it isn't gonna go away, folks. It's gonna be something that um increasingly is gonna be uh is gonna be more and more people will discover that they are tremendously justified in venting, as you say. Um so yeah, I think uh having some uh some tools for defence um very early on is probably uh gonna be a wise move. All right, next up in our property um and uh property news, sorry, um is uh right move has downgraded its forecast for asking prices for this year to between zero and minus two percent growth. So that's from a baseline of just a smidge up above um above zero. And that's kind of on the back of um a number of other stats that have been coming out this week about to understate the housing market. One interesting one, um I think from Zupla was that um uh flats over the last 10 years have grown by 10% in value, whereas houses have grown by 43% over the 10-year period. So there is, you know, much specifically in this year, um, you know, that the the uncertainty around you know the war, cost of living crises, mortgage rate um uncertainty, you know, are they gonna go up, gonna go down, people coming off their mortgage rate? The actual cost of moving house, you know, is now really being exposed as as a significant one, and there isn't necessarily confidence that you know five years' time your property's gonna be up in value anyway, so it's all gonna pay off. What's your um what's your reading of all of these um property runes this week?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

The specific one that maybe I'm I'm leaping to to is the fact that the flats and the the only 10% increase for those versus set of houses, and sort of uh extrapolating from that that it's probably related to to leasehold, right, rather than freehold and the challenges of of actually acquiring a leasehold property and how much longer the sales process takes to get those. I think so some wild stats like it's almost six months at times, and and people who've been going through process for for nearly a year to obtain those. And if you know that up front, and maybe you're gonna dial back on a flat and buy a cheaper, smaller, but a house that's freehold, right? And but um what about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, just so it absolutely that, you know, the cladding issue, there is so much noise around flat. And when you buy a flat, you don't just get the flat, right? You get the service charge, you get the the managing agent, you get all sorts of you know, you get your fellow leaseholders, whatever. Um so it it comes with baggage, and that's baggage that can, you know, can make the economics of flat ownership wildly different from what you thought they were, and certainly different from what that the house uh buying a house um involves. So yeah, look, um I think that on that I think it is really it just kind of illuminates the fact that there's almost like different asset classes now. You know, you've actually got a flat as being a different type of asset from a house. Um you know, if your economic calculation is that um that the equity in the property is going to be the really important bit rather than you know any rent or something like that that might come through from it, then uh yeah, I do think it's a very different uh kind of conversation, a very different mindset that would make you choose which of those to to go for. Um and then, yeah, as far as the kind of general state of the market is concerned, you know, property prices looking like they're coming down, it's always transaction volumes, right? You know, that's the most important thing in the industry, not necessarily the headline price. You know, transactions seem to be relatively sort of lumpy um in terms of being able to get through. It's taking longer and longer. I think there was another report out this morning Tuesday, the 18th of August, um, from Zupper again saying that that you know prices are just sorry, um properties are taking longer and longer and longer to move, apart from in Scotland. And you know, that just kind of speaks to the challenges of of the market. I think everybody is hoping that autumn will see finally a bit of a pickup as people come back off a glorious summer of um of holiday and and break and decide that actually now is the time to move after you know two years of of not bothering. But uh but yes, it remains to be seen whether um that that pickup happens. Um but certainly right move is um talking it talking it down a little bit and saying that you know it's actually maybe 2027 before things start to start to look a bit rosier. So that's our second property news story. The third one is um about the Renters' Rights Act and the impact of the Renters' Rights Act. So this um is a story this week about how um the kind of unintended consequences of regulation. And again, those in our industry with long memories will know that pretty much every time a new piece of legislation comes in, then there are enormous unintended consequences. Many of them um actually spoken about way before the legislation itself comes in. So this particular um piece is about um bidding. The inability of um landlords to to allow or agents of landlords to allow uh bidding wars to break out for particular properties means that landlords are actually pricing these properties higher with a view to being negotiated down, basically. Um so you know again it's it kind of just moves the actual process of negotiation a bit kind of further upstream, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, absolutely. It's no surprise either, right? When when you have these market interventions and the government stepping in to bring new legislation, then then then the market reacts. And and and what what do you what is the lever that you can pull? Well, if you're not allowed to to uh bid under the sorry, bid over the price, then you increase the price, right, when you're listing it. And we saw the same thing in in slightly different guys when the tenant fee ban came in and suddenly tenants couldn't be charged things, so landlords got some extra fees, and landlords increased the rent to to reflect that. And this this is just the same thing, uh but in a in a different context, in my mind. It's inevitable and that people find a way. I think what was interesting from the Cheston story as well, I think it's three percent-ish up from one percent, but also that they're seeing 20% extra or increase in applicant registrations in August compared to the previous year, and that seems quite a significant leap, which uh I think I can't really explain that one easily.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yeah, I know, which kind of almost means that if you are pricing higher as a landlord, then maybe the market might come to meet you anyway. So if the if the demands uh the demand is there. Um so no, yeah, I completely agree. I think that you know this um is one of those kind of inevitable kind of side issues that that comes of of interfering in the markets. Um, one thing that I think is gonna be quite interesting is because obviously we look a lot of stats and things like that, you know. Actually, if asking prices have jumped specifically because the actual achieved rents are gonna be underneath, then a lot of the lot of the stuff you see on online. You know, we're just talking about right moves report on um you know house price asking prices, are rent asking prices going to see a sudden like you know, significant uplift, and everyone goes, wow, that that must be a great, great moment in the market. But actually what it is is is just this this knock-on effect of the renters' rights out coming and what does that do to I don't know, rental indices and things like that out there. There's always something you've just got to be mindful of when you do see these kind of different um spikes in in stats as to whether it is a genuine, you know, the market is healthy and and and so on, or if it is just something that actually is um is a manufactured change um as a result of something um legisless legislative uh coming through the coming through the pipes. All right, that is our property news for this week. Let's talk about AI and tech news. All right, um we wanted to start off with uh uh anthropic and its uh IPO um valuation. There's been some um stories from Dario Amadei in the last couple of days um where he's um been out talking about how um he's gonna end up as the the only corporate business left in America by the sound of things. So, yes, essentially um the uh it's it's the IPO valuation um uh says that they're gonna get about 200 billion in revenue in 2028, um, and um basically um it's gonna see the the risks of AI um rising, um, a lot of change in the in a very, very quick space of time. Uh Matt, you've been having a real good delve into this. What's your take?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

There's quite a lot to unpack on this one, especially across the various anthropic stories. I think starting with Amade and um sort of coming out all guns blazing, he sort of said the the issues with AI more than anything in in the I think he took to Twitter, which he very rarely does, but he said actually it's mate there's a big risk and AI is not delivering, which you know they they can be quite outspoken, can't they, uh anthropic, and you know, tell us that the war's gonna uh the world's gonna end, and that they're late the latest set of adverts were very much about these sort of dystopian futures that uh sort of alluding to AI causing them. But he said he said in in one of his talking points was that he that uh the problem is that they've overpromised and and that they've underdelivered so far in terms of curing cancer and the sort of the shifts around that side of things. I think one of the starkest points he made, which maybe doesn't it does throw it slightly is he's he's saying that I'm probably gonna be the only tech business left by the end of it all, and you know, one the one one AI to rule them all, and which is quite a daring thing. But I guess when you're going to 200 billion is the the aim by 2028 and a 2 trillion IPO, you've got to sort of you know punch big, haven't you? But uh the I think the biggest part of it is saying that actually it's nothing to do with AI, it's just nobody trusts anyone anymore, and it's been decades in the making. Which what do you make of that, Mark?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

I mean, wow, you know, like the it there there's a lot of mixed messaging going on here, isn't it? It's like there's nothing to worry about, but by the way, we're gonna be the one uh the one AI uh company left, so you can trust us. And then yeah, just this whole kind of idea that that essentially we we don't trust each other anymore, and you know, the world is polarized, we're going through a phase as a species of basically just being mean to each other, so therefore we're we're being mean about AI, whereas actually, you know, previous generations would have absolutely embraced this and would have seen it in the same light as they see electricity and the railways and things like that as as opportunities. And I think that is it is interesting, and then you know you can then go back to to like the Luddites, you know, spinning journey and all that sort of stuff, and actually, you know, raging against technological um improvements. You can look at um the automation in factories and things like that, you know, where again people were were pretty anti it because they were worried about jobs. Um so I I think I I don't know if it's necessarily a unique thing that people are anti-AI or concerned about it. I don't think it's been packaged very well, like you say, you know, the big kind of promises of um, you know, cures for cancer and you know, massive scientific breakthroughs, there have been some, and there's some real green shoots of opportunity that that others will others will happen. There have been some amazing maths problems that have been solved that mean precisely zero to to most people, but apparently really, really excellent. Um but uh but yeah, I think that um until we see some significant benefits, sorry, uh until society sees some significant benefits across the board, then the anti-AI stuff is still gonna be still gonna be prevalent. I do concede a little bit that we're probably a lot angrier than we used to be, but you know, in large part that's probably because of tech businesses, right? It's probably because of his predecessors and Zuckerberg and others, getting us all onto social media shouting at each other. Um but uh but yes, I I have some sliver of sympathy for his his argument, but yeah, I do think that generally he's just gotta be better. You know, you've got to make the argument better, you've got to you know articulate what's uh the benefits of data centers and things like that are, rather than kind of you know just saying just have them. And uh yes, I think that that that balance is gonna have to to swing um a little bit. But yeah, he's he's an interesting guy uh with many interesting things to say. Not all of them I remotely agree with, but yeah, I I I do think having the debate is important.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Good. All right, so um next up on our um AI and tech news, a couple of uh releases. We always like to just make sure we're covering what is happening out there. Um so we've got um SpaceX AI, which really doesn't roll off the tongue, um, has now debuted Groc 4.6, um, which um again um is um is another quite slightly remarkable model um for you know Elon Musk um is likes to defy expectations and um Grok 4.6 is is pretty good. Um I think it's sort of the the it comes in number three now, um which for a very um cheap model that he's he's basically banking on yeah the the the cost effectiveness of what he does um is is pretty good. What's your take on this one?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

More than anything, if we sort of take a step back and and look at last year, 2025, when we started, Google wasn't really the races, and then arguably 2025 ended up being Google's year, and sort of those the three main large language models of and you know, there's the open AI, the anthropic, and and the Google ones, and then take it back even just a few weeks, and Google's gone AWOL, and so you've just got uh you've got Claude and Chat GPT, albeit within their their various the appropriate harnesses, sort of slugging it out, and then suddenly SpaceX is back with Grop 4.6, and it's uh it's just how quickly things can shift in a matter of weeks, right? For still no still no new Gemini. Um, you know, Anthropic and Claude with their Claude and OpenAI and Chat GPT still duke it out, but SpaceX come in hard. And I think what was really interesting was SpaceX debut and Grop 4.6 was not just the model but Gropbox as well, which from everything that I've looked at, I've not actually used it yet, is the most accessible sort of open claw equivalent agent out there, and it's actually something that's really so accessible. A lot of people who aren't techies and aren't using it for business are using it in their personal lives, and so it's definitely worth having a look at not just Groc 4.6 but Grocpot just to be able to like get it organized in your personal emails and following up on counter appointments and that sort of thing because you obviously you've got your your team of uh open claws doing various things, but obviously you're you you and I live and breathe this, but actually there was uh testimonials from plumbers who'd started using Grokpot to organize their lives.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Wow, yeah, and and again, you know, I I think a lot of these it it's about testing, try it. It is something that can really make a difference to bits and pieces of your of your operation, of your kind of administrative life, uh your personal life, as you say. So yeah, I th I think it's it's good to um to know what these things are capable of because it can really kind of reframe how you're doing a lot of um a lot of stuff out there. Um so yeah, we we've had 4.6, uh got 4.6, we've had um BLM, um sorry, GLM 5.3, which is one of the uh Chinese open sources, which again is is blowing things away. The interesting thing about this one is this model 5.2, so the previous version of this was the one that um Hugging Face when they were attacked by uh OpenAI's new model, they couldn't use um any of the the Claude or the Chat GPT to try and defend themselves. So they used this Chinese model to actually get out of uh the situation. And so yeah, they've released a new new model as well. So again, you know, things are continuing to build. It's it's a little bit quiet. I mean, it's August, you know, the sun's out. Um so you know, it's it's not quite as uh busy as it was um sort of over the early part of the summer in terms of releases, but yeah, I think uh people are building up for quite the autumn um and winter in terms of um new models coming through. But uh yes, it will be uh an interesting, um, an interesting battle, and we still await um Chad GPT's Astra model, which apparently is is better than um um uh um than Anthropic's Mythos. And then you heard on the Grapevine Matt, I think that even model two.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

That's it, and amongst all his other stuff, Amadei was raging about. They they dropped a nice, quiet, messy article on Friday saying that they've got Model 2, which they're using internally, but is so dangerous they're thinking about not releasing it. I I think you might have heard that one before, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Same, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, basically trying to attract the ire of Donald Trump and his um his people again, no doubt. Um, but yes, also with some BDIs on the IPO uh coming up pretty soon for sure. Um all right, next up on our um AI and Tech News. We touched on Google a little bit. Um they've they're making the claim now that more than one billion people are using the Gemini app every month. Wonder whether this is actually the um the the the the Chat GBT equivalent or whether this is just I I've got a Google app that they force me to use every time I want to log in uh my two-factor authentication. Always a little bit sus about some of these things, particularly I don't know, is it particularly Google? Probably right now, um, because they've obviously their surface area is so vast, you know. If if you log into Chrome or if you log into uh you know anything, then it will ask you to kind of go and use various different um Google tools. Um so yeah, um yeah, but I mean I think the the kind of broader point is that uh AI use is continuing to to grow um and that a lot of people are starting to use it in their their day-to-day lives. There's also um other news around Deep Seek releasing an official V4 Pro model, and so that's kind of coming out. We've got Alibaba's Quen 3.8 Max is coming through. So lots and lots of different ways to use these models. Um and yeah, um Matt, what's your take on all the kind of the movements that are are taking place and perhaps particularly the growth in Google?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

It's just uh this production line of news features, isn't it? As you say, it's the summer, but still things coming, and I think Google's got to keep dropping positive news stories. Um we can try pick between the figures just because we're we're waiting to see where where they've gone. And um, we talked about at length last week the the changes in staffing, didn't we? And so yeah, I've got in the Chrome tab here, I've got an Ask Gemini button in the top right, and it's yeah, it's it's it does specifically say it's the Gemini app. So all those AI overviews you get back when you're Googling, I would dangerous to assume, isn't it? But I expect that it's not that. But you know, a billion, what's that? A Sick for the World using the Gemini app when we've already got a Sick for the World using ChatGPT as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

I know, yeah, that is a lot of people, although probably quite a wide uh crossover in terms of Venn diagram of those two cohorts. Um right, that is our AI and tech news for this week, and let's have a look at our tool of the week. All right, um, this is um our focus on Clawed Cowork coming to the Chrome side panel. So um this uh if you are using Chrome, um obviously, as Matt just said, you can get um the uh the Gemini app very, very easily, but also you can now get Clawed Cowork if you want uh your Claude history and memory and understanding of you to work alongside you. So, Matt, have you been checking this one out?

SPEAKER_00 22:35

I have and specifically because um like mostly the stuff that I listen to is when I'm running, so it's like trying to understand the difference. And this particular one, I think I was going heavy along the seafront and uh I was trying to understand why this was different to Claude's a panel that's been in Chrome for the best part of six months to a year, and it is that very put a bit the the key difference is it's co-work that's there rather than clawed crowd. So Claude in Chrome before you would ask it a question, it would summarise the article you're looking at or the information. Whereas this is co-work, which is an agent, and so you can actually get it to do tasks off the back of it, it'll have the tooling you've got available to you as well. So it's pulling in, as you touched on, memory, but also usage projects, and actually from within web pages, you can immediately get it to actually start going off and and interacting with your emails, your calendar, your Slack, you know, all those different things that you'll have connected. So it's a live and breathing agent in the page rather than through the sort of the almost old-fashioned large language model that's just going to summarize a newspaper article that you read and yeah, no, it's it's it's again you know wildly different from just your basic sort of um chat feature.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

So yeah, no, it's if you haven't tried Claude Cowork, um, then it's definitely worth having a look at that and perhaps in your in your browser as well. All right, that is all we've got time for this week on the Property AI Report. Thank you very much indeed for listening in. Um we will be back in seven days' time, um, so early next week um with the next Property and AI Report. Um, thanks very much indeed for listening in, and we will see you there. Take care.