One of Wyky Jean's buyers fell for a house from its listing photos. Then they walked through it. The photos had been staged with AI, down to structural changes that would take six figures to build. The walkthrough was a letdown.

That story set the tone for the second AI Industry Night on Wednesday, October 7, at Codefi's Cape Hub in Cape Girardeau. Cara Dirnberger, Codefi's Director of AI Programs, hosted a panel on AI in real estate with three people who use it in their work:

• Wyky Jean, a realtor with EDGE Realty in Cape Girardeau for five years, who flipped homes before that and now works mostly with investors.

• Pam Dannenmueller, seven years with EDGE Realty's Sikeston office, after 14 years as a teacher.

• Brian Holdman, Codefi's CTO and a software developer for almost 30 years.

Their answers kept landing in the same place. AI takes the back-end work. The agent keeps the relationship.

Where AI saves agents hours

Neither agent uses AI every day, and neither has tracked the time. Both said it adds up to hours.

Pam starts with listings. She enters the address, bed and bath count, and key details, and AI drafts the MLS description. Then she asks for a lighter Facebook post from the same facts. On showing days, she gives it the addresses of seven properties and asks for the best route.

Wyky's rule is to get the data right first. "We know AI is driven off the data," he said. With investor clients, he often has to send the same update to ten buyers at once. He gives AI his key points and tells it to use his tone. An hour of email becomes 15 to 20 minutes.

Showing buyers what a space could be

Some buyers can't see past dated paint or worn floors. Pam takes a photo during the showing and asks ChatGPT for gray walls and wood flooring. The buyer sees the room as it could look, and gets more excited about the property.

Wyky did the same with a pool area that was all rock and weeds. His clients wanted a cabana, flowers, and green space, and AI rendered the options from one photo. The difference from the staged listing photos: these images are shown as ideas, in the room, next to the real thing.

A downtown renovation, run from notes

Wyky is running a commercial renovation in downtown Cape Girardeau: roof, wall tear-outs, floors, HVAC, each with its own vendors. He connected AI to his project-tracking platform, which runs on a Kanban board. He writes his notes with the same titles as the board's blocks, and AI fills each block with tasks, people, and vendors. As work finishes, he sends updated notes and it updates the board. The connection runs behind the scenes, not by clicking around his screen.

The bigger win was research. The project includes a parking lot, and the estimate called for one sealant product. Wyky used AI to look into it and found long-term health concerns. He asked the contractor about other options, brought the facts to his client, and the client picked the less hazardous product.

"I'm not overstepping on their trade or their license," he said. He wanted to walk into the client conversation with facts, not guesses.

Wyky uses both Claude and ChatGPT. "Sometimes I make them tussle with each other," he said. Brian added a tip for anyone using AI heavily: plan with a higher-tier model, then hand the finished plan to a lower-cost model to carry out. The plan gets the most thought, and the routine work uses less of your plan's limits.

Where it fell short

An attendee asked whether anyone had gotten AI to give a coherent read on the market. Pam's answer was no. Her team tested it on a St. Louis listing outside their market and loaded in everything they had. AI came back with $250,000 to $375,000. Without walking the property, that range doesn't help a seller.

She also borrowed a friend's paid AI account to build a full marketing plan for a listing. Most of what it suggested, she'd already done.

The staged photos were the sharpest warning. Wyky expects more buyer pushback as AI staging spreads. If someone drives to ten showings, he said, the images have to match the house.

The part AI doesn't touch

Asked about the pushback some restaurants have faced for AI-generated marketing, both agents said they keep AI off anything client-facing. Pam still designs her own open-house flyers. "I want people to see me for who I am," she said. Wyky keeps AI on the back end for the same reason.

Real estate still runs on phone calls, title companies, appraisers, and face-to-face meetings, Pam said. AI shortens the tasks around those conversations. The hours it frees go to her kids on some days and, for Wyky, to the work that's urgent and important to others.

Brian put it another way. AI hasn't changed how he talks to people. It changed how he listens. When someone says they spent half a day cleaning up a spreadsheet, he now thinks about the 15-minute version.

Next: November

The next AI Industry Night is in November, with a new industry on the panel. Come even if it's not your field. Every session surfaces tools and habits that carry across jobs.

Also open now at the Cape Hub:

• AI Builders Lab: office space for people actively building with AI, with mentorship included. Apply by emailing coworking@codefiworks.com.

• Codefi AI Skills training: workshops and tracks for founders, business teams, and career changers.

AI Industry Nights: November

The next panel meets at the Cape Hub in Cape Girardeau in November. Come with a question.

Learn fast. Build right. Gain traction.