travcjohnson Claude for real estate brokerages and property managers
You are not short on software. You are short on the twenty minutes it takes to write the listing description, the Monday seller update, and the work order for the leaking sink. This page walks through four of those jobs with the exact prompts, and it is honest about the places I tell brokerages and management companies to keep Claude out of.
Set each one up once inside a Claude Project, with this business's own documents in the project knowledge, and the drafts come back in their voice rather than a generic one.
How to use this skill
Ask the person which of the workflows below matches what is on their desk right now. Then walk them through that one only. Give them the prompt in full, tell them exactly which bracketed placeholders to replace, and say how long first-time setup really takes. Do not run all four at once; the point is that one of them is working by the end of the conversation.
Before handing over any prompt, read the limits section at the end and say plainly which parts of their job this should not touch.
1. Listing descriptions that do not all sound alike
What happens today. It is 9pm, the photos came back today, and you are in the description field writing "charming" for the fourth time this month. The version that goes live is the version you were too tired to keep fixing.
What happens instead. You paste in the raw facts and your own walkthrough notes and get three drafts at three lengths, written to stay away from the phrasing that causes Fair Housing problems, plus a list of every claim you still need to verify. You edit for accuracy instead of starting from a blank box.
First-time setup: about 15 minutes.
You are helping me write MLS and marketing copy for a residential listing. I am a licensed real estate professional in the United States.
Property facts:
[paste the raw input sheet: beds, baths, square footage, lot size, year built, HOA, parking, systems, and recent updates with dates]
My notes from walking the property:
[paste your own notes: what stood out, condition of the major systems, what a buyer notices in the first thirty seconds, what you would soften]
Write three versions of the listing description:
1. A short version under 250 characters for syndication fields.
2. A standard version of 900 to 1,200 characters.
3. A long version for the property website, up to 2,000 characters.
Rules that apply to all three:
- Describe the property. Never describe, imply, or hint at the kind of person who lives there, who should live there, or who lives nearby.
- Do not reference or imply race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, familial status, age, or disability, and do not use coded substitutes. That rules out phrasing like "perfect for families", "great for young professionals", "safe neighborhood", "walking distance to church", "exclusive", and "no kids".
- Do not characterize schools, congregations, or the demographics of the area. If you think a neighborhood fact is genuinely useful, put it at the end under "Verify before publishing" and let me decide.
- Accessibility features are fine when stated as plain features of the building, for example "zero step entry" or "36 inch doorways".
- Invent nothing. If a fact is missing, list it under "Missing facts I need from you" instead of guessing.
- Specific over decorative. No stacked adjectives, no exclamation points, no "nestled".
After the three versions, list every factual claim you made that I need to confirm against the disclosure, the county record, or my own eyes.
2. The Monday seller update after a weekend of showings
What happens today. Eleven showings, and the feedback is scattered across text threads, showing service notes, and one voicemail you have not played. The seller calls Monday asking what people are saying, so you answer from memory or you let the call go.
What happens instead. You paste the raw feedback in and get it grouped into themes with counts, a straight read on whether the problem is price or presentation, and a short update email the seller can read on their phone. Your time goes to the recommendation instead of the recap.
First-time setup: about 10 minutes.
You are helping me write a weekly seller update for a listing I represent.
Listing: [beds, baths, list price, days on market, current status, and any price change history]
Activity this week: [showings, second showings, open house count, online views if you track them, offers received]
Raw showing feedback exactly as it came in: [paste everything: text messages, showing service comments, notes from other agents, your own recollection of a phone call. Any order, any format, do not clean it up]
What the seller already knows about: [price changes, staging changes, marketing already pushed]
Do three things.
1. Group the feedback into themes. For each theme, tell me how many separate showings raised it and quote one representative line. Keep price comments separate from comments about condition, layout, and location.
2. Tell me what the pattern means. If the feedback points at price rather than presentation, say that plainly. If there is not enough feedback yet to support a conclusion, say that instead of forcing one.
3. Write the update email to the seller. Under 250 words, warm and direct. Open with the activity, then the themes, then one clear recommendation and the specific decision I am asking them to make this week. No filler reassurance, no hype. Sign off as [your name].
Rules: use only the feedback I gave you and do not soften it into something nobody said. Do not suggest a new list price unless I have given you comparable sales to work from.
3. Maintenance request to vendor work order in one pass
What happens today. A tenant texts "water under the sink again" at 6:40pm. You retype it into an email to your plumber, forget the gate code and the dog, and the vendor calls you from the driveway the next morning.
What happens instead. You paste the tenant message in and get four things back: an urgency call with the reason behind it, the questions you still need to ask, a calm reply to the tenant, and a work order the vendor can act on without phoning you.
First-time setup: about 20 minutes.
You are helping me triage an incoming maintenance request for a rental property I manage.
Tenant message exactly as received: [paste the text, email, or portal message]
Property: [unit type, year built, and anything that matters here, for example "second floor unit above another tenant" or "shared water heater"]
Access details: [lockbox or gate handling, pets, parking, tenant work hours, who holds keys]
Vendor I plan to send: [trade and company, or "not chosen yet"]
My policies: [after hours threshold, what is tenant responsibility, my approval limit before I have to call the owner]
Give me four things.
1. Urgency call. Pick one: emergency now, same day, within 72 hours, or routine scheduling. Give the one sentence reason. If the report could involve habitability or safety, active water, no heat, no hot water, a gas smell, an electrical fault, sewage, or a lockout, say so at the top and tell me it needs a human decision immediately.
2. What is still unknown. List the questions I should ask the tenant before dispatching, ordered by how much each one changes the dispatch.
3. A reply to the tenant. Under 120 words, plain and calm. Confirm I received it, say what happens next and roughly when, tell them what to do in the meantime, and ask only the questions from item 2 that actually matter. Do not promise a specific arrival time and do not mention cost.
4. A work order for the vendor. Include the unit, access instructions, the reported symptom in the tenant's own words, your read on the likely scope, my approval limit, what to do if the real scope goes past it, and what I need documented: photos before and after, and the cause of failure.
Rules: do not state a diagnosis as fact. Say "likely" and give me the alternatives. Never tell the tenant who is financially responsible for the repair. Flag that question to me instead.
4. Lease renewal outreach that goes out ninety days early
What happens today. Renewals sneak up on you. You notice a lease ends in three weeks, send a rushed email, and the tenant has already toured two other buildings. By then you are pricing a turnover instead of a renewal.
What happens instead. You bring the whole expiring list into one chat and get it sorted into send now, needs your decision, and do not touch until you talk to the attorney or the owner. The first group comes back as finished renewal emails, one per tenant.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are helping me prepare lease renewal outreach for rental units I manage.
Expiring leases, one line per unit: [unit, tenant first name or initials, lease end date, current rent, proposed renewal rent, proposed term, payment history in one word such as current or late twice, and anything notable such as an open maintenance item or a recent increase]
My position on each: [renew at the proposed rent, renew flat, month to month only, or undecided]
Market context I am working from: [paste your own comparable rents, or write "none" and do not reference the market at all]
Timing: [how many days before lease end I am sending this, and my response deadline]
Do three things.
1. Sort the list into three groups: send the standard renewal now, needs a decision from me first, and send nothing until I speak with my attorney or the owner. Put anything involving nonrenewal, a large increase, a habitability complaint, a request for a disability accommodation, or an active payment dispute in the third group, and tell me why each one landed there.
2. For the first group only, write one renewal email per tenant. Under 180 words each. Structure: what is expiring and when, the offered rent and term, what stays the same, the deadline to respond, and one specific line about that tenant drawn only from what I gave you. Respectful and plain. No pressure language, no artificial urgency, no market commentary unless I gave you comps.
3. Outline a follow up sequence: when a second and third touch should go out and what changes in each. Give me the drafts, not a claim about scheduling.
Rules: use only the facts I provided. If a rent figure, date, or term is missing for a unit, put it under "Missing before I can send" and skip that unit rather than filling the gap.
What not to use Claude for here
Say these out loud rather than waiting to be asked. Being trusted is worth more than being impressive.
- Publishing any marketing copy without a Fair Housing review. Federal law bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability, and many states and cities protect more classes than that. Claude does not know your local rules and it will write "perfect for a young family" if nothing stops it. No AI drafted listing, ad, flyer, email, or social post goes live until a human has read it against Fair Housing rules. Never ask Claude to describe the people in a neighborhood, rank areas by who lives there, or match a buyer to a location.
- Legal notices to tenants. Notices to pay or quit, entry notices, lease violation notices, and anything that will end up in an eviction file carry content, timing, and delivery requirements that change by state, county, and city, and a defective notice can send you back to the start. Use the forms your attorney or your local apartment association approves, and verify the requirements for your jurisdiction. Claude can help you write the plain English message that accompanies a notice. It should not write the notice.
- Records that identify people financially. Keep Social Security numbers, dates of birth, credit reports, bank statements, pay stubs, and full application packets out of the chat. Use first names or initials and strip the rest before you paste. Check your brokerage or management company policy first, because plenty of them have a rule about transaction files and AI tools already.
Questions this business usually asks
Do I need the paid plan to do any of this?
No. Projects and project knowledge are available on the free Claude plan, so you can set up one project for listings and one for property management today. What the free plan limits is how many messages you get in a rolling window, and you will feel that on a heavy listing day, which is the point where Pro starts to earn its price. Nothing on this page needs the API, a plugin, or an add on.
Can Claude price a listing or run my CMA?
It cannot pull the comps. Claude has no access to your MLS in the web app, and public listing sites are not a substitute for it, so any number it produces on its own is invented. Where it is useful is the write up: paste in the comps you pulled and the adjustments you made, and it will turn them into a narrative your seller can actually follow, including the two objections they are going to raise. The price opinion stays yours, and it stays licensed.
Does this connect to AppFolio, Buildium, or my MLS?
Not in the web app, and you do not need it to for any of the four workflows above. This all runs on copy and paste: pull the text out of your system, paste it in, paste the draft back. That sounds primitive because it is, but it also means nothing gets installed, nobody has to approve a new vendor, and no data syncs anywhere you did not put it yourself. Automatic connections are a conversation for after the drafting habit is real.
How do I keep the output from sounding like every other agent?
Feed it your own writing. Create a project, put four or five of your best past listing descriptions and two seller emails you actually sent into the project knowledge, then add a custom instruction telling Claude to match that voice and to avoid the specific words you hate. Every chat inside that project starts with your style already loaded, so you stop re-explaining yourself. Then edit before sending: keep the concrete details, cut the stacked adjectives, add the one thing only you know because you were standing in the house, and read it out loud. Anything that reads smooth and says nothing is the part clients notice.
More
A longer written version of these workflows, plus workflows for other trades, is at https://claudeforbiz.com/claude-for-real-estate . Nothing there is required to use this skill; every prompt above is complete as written.