Buyer Advisory

Using AI to Buy a Home: What Bergen County Buyers Need to Know

By Scott Selleck, The Selleck Group at KW City Views Realty, Fort Lee. Published September 19, 2026.

Buyers are bringing AI into the transaction, and that is fine. About 45 percent of prospective buyers now use an AI tool during their search, up from 37 percent a year earlier, and ChatGPT is the one most of them reach for. The problem is not the tool. The problem is what happens when a nervous buyer types a worry into the prompt before they type the facts.

Here is what I would do differently, and why.

Does AI really agree with whatever you already think?

Often enough that researchers gave it a name. The behavior is called sycophancy, and it means the model favors agreeing with you over giving you an honest, evidence-based answer.

Anthropic tested five leading AI assistants and found they preferentially produced responses that matched a user's stated views rather than accurate ones. The cause sits inside the training itself: when an answer agrees with someone, people rate it higher, so the models learn to agree. The researchers found that both human raters and the systems trained on those ratings preferred a convincingly written wrong answer over a correct one.

OpenAI published its own account after an update made ChatGPT noticeably more flattering. The company said it had focused too much on short-term feedback, acknowledged the behavior could cause real harm, and rolled the update back.

These are documented failure modes. They are not proof that every AI answer behaves this way, and I am not telling you to stop using the tool. I am telling you that an answer agreeing with a worry you already had is not independent confirmation of that worry, even though it feels like one.

Are deals actually falling apart because of AI?

Nobody has proven that, and you should be skeptical of anyone who says otherwise. There is no survey, no MLS field, and no published dataset that attributes a canceled contract to AI advice. Articles claiming AI is killing deals are, so far, running on anecdote.

What is documented is the overlap, and the overlap is worth your attention. Cancellations are at a multi-year high. Inspection and repair disputes are the number one reason deals fail, ahead of financing problems. And buyers are now routinely feeding inspection findings into a tool that research shows tends to agree with them. Put those three facts next to each other and you can see the risk without anyone exaggerating it.

How often do deals fall through around here?

Less than half as often as the national average, which is the part most coverage leaves out.

Redfin put the national cancellation rate at 14 percent in July 2026, the highest in nearly three years. Atlanta ran at 19.8 percent, Houston at 19.6, Las Vegas at 18.6. The metros covering our corner of New Jersey and New York ran between roughly 8 and 11 percent, and Nassau County was the lowest in the country at 3.5 percent.

So if you are buying in Fort Lee or Tenafly and you have been reading national headlines about collapsing deals, take a breath. Our market is steadier than the story. That is not an argument for complacency. It is context, and context is exactly what an AI answer is missing when it responds to your question about a crawl space.

If you are still deciding whether this is your year at all, I worked through that math separately in buying now versus waiting for rates to drop. And if you want to see what is actually on the market while you think it over, start with current Bergen and Hudson County listings rather than asking a chatbot what is available.

How should you actually use AI while buying a home?

Use it to generate questions, not conclusions. Five habits do most of the work, and they fit alongside the rest of my home purchasing strategy work rather than replacing any of it.

1. Give it the facts before you give it the feeling

Paste the inspection language, the price history, or the listing detail first. Then ask your question. A prompt that opens with "I am worried this house has a serious foundation problem" has already told the model what answer you want.

2. Ask it to separate what is known from what is guessed

3. Ask what needs a professional, and what specifically to ask them

An AI cannot inspect a roof. It can tell you which three questions to put to the inspector, and that is genuinely useful. Bring those questions to the person qualified to answer them, then bring the answers back.

4. Check one AI against another

Ask the same question, with the same documents, in two separate conversations. Then show each one the other's answer and ask where they disagree and why. Agreement between two models does not make either one right, but disagreement tells you exactly where to dig.

5. Ask it to audit its own answer

None of this makes AI a substitute for the people on your transaction. It makes AI a better first pass, which is what the tool is good at.

What should agents be doing about this?

Having the conversation early, before the doubt shows up. I raise it at the consultation, not the day the inspection report lands, because by then a manageable finding has already hardened into a decision.

The version I use is short. I ask permission first, because advice somebody asked for lands differently than advice delivered at them. I ask whether they have already used AI on another house and what it helped with. Then I ask the question that does the real work: what would you want to double-check before using that answer to make a decision about this home? The buyer supplies the caution themselves, so there is nothing for anyone to argue about.

The last step is an agreement. If an AI answer ever makes something in the inspection look like a deal breaker, bring it to me before you decide, and we will get the right expert to establish the facts first. Then you decide. It may support moving forward, renegotiating, or walking away, and walking away is a legitimate outcome when the facts support it.

Never argue with the AI. Ask to see the prompt and the response, and look together at what context was missing. An agent who tells a buyer their tool is wrong has just lost the conversation.

For what it is worth, I publish how I use AI in my own practice, because a buyer is entitled to ask the same questions of me that I am asking them to ask of ChatGPT.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it a bad idea to use ChatGPT while buying a home?

No. It is a useful tool for organizing information, explaining unfamiliar terms, and building a list of questions for your inspector, lender, or agent. The risk comes from using it to reach a conclusion rather than to prepare one. Give it the documents before you give it your worry, and treat the output as a starting point.

What is AI sycophancy?

Sycophancy is when an AI system favors agreeing with the person asking over giving an honest, evidence-based answer. Anthropic documented the behavior across five leading AI assistants and traced it to the way the models are trained. OpenAI publicly rolled back a ChatGPT update in 2025 for the same problem.

Can AI tell me if a home inspection finding is serious?

It can explain what a term means and what questions to ask. It cannot assess severity, because it has not seen the property and does not have the inspector's observations beyond what you typed. Ask the inspector to clarify the finding, bring in the appropriate specialist where one is needed, and get the repair scope and cost before deciding what it means for your purchase.

Can AI tell me whether a house is priced correctly?

Not reliably. It usually does not have access to current local sold data, and where it produces a number anyway it may be working from generalizations rather than comparable sales. Ask it which comparable sales it used and how those homes differ in condition, location, and features. If it cannot name them, the number is not evidence. The same caution applies to payment math, which I covered in my NJ buyer mortgage rate strategy piece.

How many home purchase contracts actually fall through?

About 14 percent nationally in July 2026, according to Redfin, which was the highest rate in nearly three years. The metros covering Bergen and Hudson Counties ran materially lower over the same period, in the range of 8 to 11 percent.

Scott Selleck is a REALTOR and SRES with The Selleck Group at KW City Views Realty in Fort Lee, serving Bergen and Hudson Counties. Licensed since 1993. Over 500 transactions closed. NJ Real Estate Broker / Sales Associate License #9236275. Equal Housing Opportunity. Keller Williams City Views Realty. Each office is independently owned and operated.

This article is general information about using AI tools during a home purchase. It is not legal, tax, or engineering advice, and it is not a property-specific recommendation. Market figures carry the source and month stated beside them and change over time.

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