Profitable Side Gigs in Virtual Property Staging

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0:32Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at rss.com. There is a new report that AI generated apartment listings are spreading across different platforms, one in particular street easy, because virtual staging is super cheap.

1:14And I think some people are concerned. I know that in the past, there has been issues with spammers and scammers. And also, though, at the same time, I want to show the other side of the coin and talk about an experience I personally have had using these tools to actually make more money for my real estate business. And yeah, we're going to get into both sides of this coin because there's some good and there's some bad. There's a lot going on. We're going to talk about all of it. Before we do, I wanted to tell you guys that our school community guys, for the first time ever last week, we made it.

1:45So it is a free school community. It's free to join. You get five videos for free. We have about a hundred videos in our catalog. So it's normally$19 a month and you can get access to all of our videos where we break down how to grow and scale your business. But if you want to get the latest videos for free, every single week, we do a live stream at about 9 a.m. Eastern time. And if you're on at that time, you can see the latest video every week for free over there. And you can get access to all of the other videos by paying and you get five videos for free. There's three over 300 members in the community.

2:17So tons of people are sharing what they're building, what they're doing, a lot of good insights. You can ask for advice. We see everything, we share everything, and we post all of the numbers about what we're building, how much money we're making from different side hustles in the AI hustle school community. So we'd love to have you as a member over there. You can join. It's free. And guys, we might not keep it free forever. So if you're interested in joining, I would join it now while it's free and available for everybody. Okay. Let's talk about what's going on with these apartment buildings.

2:44The first thing I wanted to mention was, we'll talk about some of the, maybe this is the crazy scam side of it, which is I personally, when I have a couple pieces of real estate in Arizona where I used to live that I rent out. They're my rentals. And I had a problem last year when I was posting one of them where someone just ripped my images off of the listing website, Zillow or whatever, and they reposted them and they just put the price as like half the price. And I had so many people calling me being like, hey, I want to book your rental. I mean, it was all the exact same information. And there's literally people that would be showing up at the house random parts of the day like hey I want to tour it I think that the price was so cheap people were literally just showing up and hoping that they could tour and like book it right then and I was super confused like yeah like I was sending you messages and I was like I don't know what you're talking about anyways turns out I found someone had you know made a fake listing of it while it was actually listed for rent they put the prices half and they said hey like just send the check in the mail or send cash in the mail for the deposit if you want to like secure your spot, whatever.

3:46So it was kind of a classic scam. So all of this to say, these scams have existed for a long time. A lot of people will blame AI on making like fake versions, but there was absolutely nothing I could do. I tried to contact all of the companies like, hey, you should remove this. It's scam. It's fraud. And I mean, they didn't really get pulled down. So I don't really know what to do about it. And yeah, that is a scam that exists in the world. But there's basically nothing you can do, even if they're just ripping real photos. So anyways, A lot of people blame AI photos as being a bad side of this.

4:14And I think it's just important to know that it was just as viable of a scam before. Okay, I want to talk about some of the great use cases of AI in this business. But Jamie, kicking this over to you, what are your thoughts on everything going on with this street easy story? Yeah, well, so being a, I'm actually a licensed real estate agent. I know that when it comes to selling houses, you know, you're trying to present the home in the best light possible. possible. So, and, and sometimes it comes across, there's a little, there's some gray areas you have to tread lightly with too. So like, for example, if there was a house, uh, and the listing description said, you know, easy access to the highway, that might be a good way of saying, you know, all night long, you're going to hear semis driving by because the highway is literally right next in your backyard, you know, like, um, and so you're trying to present it in a way that you know people get excited about it instead of uh you know having a negative all the negative so is that lying in that case not it's i mean it is easy access so that's i mean that's putting in a good light so same thing comes to with these um ai generated staging is like you're trying to give people a vision of what it could look like um as a home because you know when you step into most houses look very similar, just like an empty box.

5:37And so people have a hard time envisioning what it could look like as a home. So I get the concept there. And it's just like, you got to make sure you're not deceiving people. That's where some of these kind of gray areas come in. It's like, well, if you're just decorating it virtually with furniture, that's okay. But what if there's like a giant hole in the wall that you haven't repaired? That would be not honest. You know what I'm saying? So, but when it comes to marketing, you bring up a great point. Like if you're using this, you are going to actually make a lot more money and it's going to be a lot more cost effective.

6:11For example, before all the AI image generation and staging, you'd have to actually pay a staging company to come bring furniture into the house. And that could cost, you know, upwards of a thousand dollars or more because they actually have to have a moving company and all this stuff. So from that perspective, it's saving a ton of money. The last two houses I've listed, I've just taken pictures with my cell phone because iPhones are pretty good. And then I actually haven't, I haven't staged them with, with AI furniture, but I have, I just kind of had to do the color grading and bringing out the shadows and stuff to make the picture itself look good.

6:52So, and then as, as we're showing on the screen here, a lot of times people will put like a real fire going in the fireplace or put a pretty sunset behind the house instead of a cloudy day, you know, when the pictures were taken. So there's lots of things you can do that really make the home look more attractive and get people excited about it, which is what you're trying to do. So, um, Jayden, have you been able to rent out, you have a story in fact, about your most recent rental, right? That I've actually done this exact thing, which I think I recently was renting this home, which if you're watching, you could see it on screen, but otherwise it is a, one of my, one of my rental units and all of the photos that I used last year, I'm not there now, but they were taken with my phone.

7:34I was in a big hurry. And, um, anyways, it took me quite a while to actually get the rental done. And when I was looking at the photos now, because the renters are turning and we're getting, we're getting some new ones in when I was looking at the old photos, I was like, gee, like I can see why it took me so long to get renters. Like the lighting was bad. I had like a random toilet paper roll, like in one of the rooms in the corner, there was like, you know, garbage cans and stuff on the counter of the kitchen. And I think I was just in a big hurry when I took those photos. So what I did this time is I ran all of the photos through ChatGPT.

8:08And there are some other companies, there's one's called there's one called Stucco, there's one called boxbrownie.com. Both of those can can do like the same things. Um, but chat GPT is just as good and it's, you know, you're basically paying 20 bucks a month for it. So I've just used the$20 a month. So in any case, I ran all of my photos through chat GPT and I would, um, chat GPT image has like a cool feature where you can circle parts of an image. So I would say, basically what I would say is generate this exact same photo, don't change anything in it, but just make the lighting look better.

8:38So it would just brighten all of the shots. Um, and I said like, make it look like it's like a listing photo. So Jamie, he, by the way, he has a background as a photographer. He knows how to go and manipulate his iPhone photos, make them look pristine and beautiful. I do not have that skill, or maybe I just don't want to spend the time to do it, to go to like Adobe Lightroom or something. So I just throw it at ChatGPT and just say, make the lighting better. It did that, but then I would also go and I would circle parts where there's like a trash can or something on the counter. And I'm like, hey, just like remove, you know, the stuff next to the toaster and remove the trash can.

9:08And it would generate the image without those. I actually loved that. One of the big things that I had done with one of my listing images is for some reason there was a super ugly bed in the image before. And like when I took the image, it had like this ugly bed in it. Obviously the bed doesn't come with the unit. It's empty. So I actually just highlighted the bed and said like remove this bed. Now when you do staging with like items, you might add like a nice trendy bed to it or things to the room. I haven't really done as much of that or had as much success with staging, like looking really realistic, but I emptied the rooms out, made the lighting all look better, pulled everything off of the counters and, uh, and then posted my new photos that I had of it.

9:47So it looks like way cleaner. And, um, with the brand new photos, I had like 20 people reach out to me. Whereas in the past, I probably had like four or five people reach out over the course of a month and a half. And then I, you know, got one of them and I felt like really lucky for the person that came in there this time. I have no joke. I've had 20 people reach out in about four days. It just looks way better. Yeah. And then I was able to pick a really amazing tenant to, to, to go. I have like a ton of different options where I didn't really have all those options before. And so, yeah, it's a, it's an amazing way to get the perfect photo.

10:21And when I did all of this, my biggest like take or my biggest thought on all this was like, oh no, like all of the photographers that take professional photos, like it's not needed. You could just get amateur photos and just get AI to make them look more beautiful. And same with staging. So like staging companies and professional photographers, I think will be massively disrupted. Now, I also think that like, it's like I'm becoming the stager, I'm becoming the photographer. So the savings goes back to and this isn't really, I mean, maybe for like industrial stuff or commercial stuff. But like, these are things that like normal people pay for.

10:57So I'm actually kind of happy because it's a way for regular people to save money. And so I'm really excited about it, but I understand some people might not be as happy. So photographers might have to go do something a little bit more creative than just home listings. But this used to be like a huge thing that would cost you a ton of money to do. And now AI can really help you quite a lot. Yeah. So not only are you, you know, saving money by not having to pay like a photographer or something to do these, but then you're also generating a lot more demand and you get to choose a better tenant, all that stuff.

11:28So I love that concept. There's another actually low-hanging fruit that Jaden and I in many years past, in another lifetime, both had the same side hustle of flipping furniture. And that's actually how we met just through YouTube, flipping furniture. But people do the same thing with this. Instead of building out a whole studio to stage your furniture in, you just buy it, take a picture of it and then have it virtually staged with AI. This guy I saw on Instagram was buying dressers for 70 bucks and selling them for 250 without doing anything to them. So that could be another quick little hustle.

12:10That's actually a serious way to make money. Jaden and I have both done it and it works. So if you're looking for a little side cash, I'd highly recommend that. But But anyways, guys, we hope you appreciated this episode. If you did, we would love a review wherever you are listening. A rating or review, those really help us out a lot. We're trying to get 150 reviews. And then again, check out our free school community if you want to get some more bonus content and our free weekly live streams. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog.

12:46If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.