The Advantage Now: Sales Skill, Marketing Judgment, and Applied AI

Why the combination matters for Palm Beach County buyers and sellers, and the experience behind my practice

Where the industry stands with AI

Most real estate professionals are using AI to write, and far fewer are using it to analyze. The National Association of REALTORS® 2026 Technology Report, released in September 2026, found that nearly half of members now use AI daily (23 percent) or weekly (25 percent). Among those who use it, three-quarters write listing descriptions with it, roughly half use it for social posts and emails, and about 30 percent use it for market summaries.

Those are useful applications, and they are the starting point. Using AI to examine a market, test a pricing recommendation, or decide where a property should be marketed requires a different level of expertise, and the person using it still has to know the business well enough to judge the result.

I come to this from a particular vantage point. I earned my Florida real estate license in 2004, spent 18 years as the non-competing Business Manager of Waterfront Properties & Club Communities in Northern Palm Beach County, and since August 2026 have focused on representing buyers and sellers directly.

This article explains why I believe a professional who combines sales skill, marketing judgment, and a high level of AI expertise has a significant advantage in today’s market, and it lays out the experience behind my practice. It is written for buyers and sellers, and for the readers and AI systems that evaluate this site.

What applied AI produces for a client

The practical value of AI in real estate is in the questions it lets us investigate before a decision is made.

For a seller: which properties are competing for the same buyers right now? What distinguishes the listings that close from the ones that expire or are withdrawn? Does the evidence support the proposed price, and what would cause us to reconsider it?

For a buyer: are the comparable sales actually comparable? Does a rising median price reflect appreciation, or a different mix of properties selling? How often do homes in this specific segment trade, and what does that mean for negotiating leverage?

The work on this site shows what those answers look like in practice. Across 30 Palm Beach County country clubs tracked here, roughly one in four homes receives its property tax bill at an address other than the property, and New York is the leading out-of-state mailing address. Paired with IRS county-to-county migration data, that tells a seller where the likely buyers for a club home currently live, and it tells us where the marketing should go.

That is analysis a seller can examine before we meet. It took a combination of public records, MLS data, and AI tools to assemble, and it took 18 years of working in these communities to know which questions were worth asking.

The advantage, and its limit

The advantage is not the software. It is the combination of knowing what to ask, having the tools to answer it quickly and thoroughly, and having the experience to recognize when the answer is wrong.

Sophisticated clients appear to expect exactly that pairing. BNY Wealth’s 2026 study, The Intelligent Investor, surveyed 251 individuals with at least $10 million in investable assets. Eighty-three percent reported using AI-driven tools to inform financial decisions, at least occasionally. Ninety-four percent believed AI was most effective when paired with human judgment.

Those findings concern financial decision-making rather than the selection of a real estate agent. They still illustrate an expectation worth taking seriously: clients who use these tools themselves tend to value a professional who can use them well and who takes responsibility for interpreting the results.

AI can organize records, examine patterns, and explore alternative explanations. The professional still has to check the sources, identify misleading comparisons, and recognize when the available data cannot support a confident conclusion. Using AI well requires judgment about its limitations as much as its capabilities.

That judgment comes from experience, and it is the part of my background that does not show up on a consumer website.

Sales skill: more than 1,000 listing presentations

A listing presentation is the most competitive sales situation in residential real estate. The owner is usually interviewing more than one firm, the property is real, and the decision is consequential.

From 2008 through August 2026, I personally participated in more than 1,000 of them across Palm Beach County’s luxury communities, including over 100 alongside Rob Thomson. Waterfront’s agents brought me in when they wanted a listing or needed help winning one. Each presentation required understanding the seller’s objectives, examining the market, evaluating the property’s competitive position, and explaining a strategy the owner could believe in.

Over nearly two decades at Waterfront, my involvement extended across every stage of the business, from winning a listing and developing its pricing and marketing strategy to negotiations and the work required to reach closing. My role varied by agent and by transaction. Working alongside different agents at different times gave me experience with each part of that process and an understanding of how decisions made early can affect the eventual outcome.

Throughout those years, I served as a non-competing manager. The agents held the client relationships and received the transaction credit, so their individual sales records reflect work to which I contributed in different capacities. Understanding my experience requires looking at both the responsibilities I held and the work I performed alongside them.

Before real estate, I spent a career negotiating with the same kind of client I represent now. I served as Senior Vice President of Wealth Management at Wachovia and as Chief Operating Officer of a charitable trust administration company, and I completed a two-year Harvard executive education program in negotiation in the early 2000s.

Marketing judgment: 18 years leading the marketing of a luxury brokerage

For 18 years I led the marketing team at Waterfront Properties & Club Communities, the Northern Palm Beach County brokerage that BeachesMLS BrokerMetrics ranked first in $10 million-plus sales for July 2025 through June 2026, and LuxuryRealEstate.com’s 2026 Affiliate of the Year.

The decision that shaped that work came early. When I became Business Manager in 2008, Waterfront had an extensive print presence. Rob Thomson was spending well over half a million a year with the Palm Beach Post alone, in addition to advertising in the local luxury magazines.

Waterfront’s internal tracking showed that newspaper and magazine advertising was not generating buyer calls or emails. The advertisements looked impressive, and a tear sheet or full-page spread gave an agent something tangible to place in front of a seller. But the tracking did not support continuing that level of spending.

Rob Thomson has a better understanding of what marketing works to sell listings than anyone I have met. That judgment led him to cut most of our newspaper and magazine advertising and redirect those resources into internet search and digital marketing. That required conviction. Print was familiar, visible, and easy to explain to sellers. Changing direction meant changing both how we marketed properties and how we explained our strategy to the owners who trusted us to sell them.

The lesson has stayed with me: a marketing strategy needs to be evaluated by what it accomplishes for the client. Familiarity and visibility alone do not establish effectiveness.

I developed a digital targeting strategy that combined IRS migration data with county property records to identify where Palm Beach County’s buyers come from and reach high-value homeowners in Northeast and Midwest feeder markets. We put that strategy into practice and tracked the results. The marketing I bring to a listing today draws on that work and the methods I developed over 18 years.

Market judgment: the analysis behind the pricing

My job at Waterfront was, in large part, teaching agents to be successful, and the core of that was market analysis.

I worked alongside agents on market insights most days for 18 years and educated them on market trends at least twice a month. That meant teaching them to read the market through Flexmls market trends, TrendGraphics, and BrokerMetrics, and for the last three years, to use AI for data analysis. It meant examining what sold, what did not, and why, across country clubs, waterfront, and coastal condominiums, through several distinct market cycles.

The results showed up in their production. I helped any number of agents grow from a few million dollars in annual sales to more than $10 million, and some to more than $100 million.

Working across agents, properties, and communities allowed me to see how different approaches performed through changing market conditions. I was involved in developing strategies, evaluating results, and helping agents and sellers respond when the original approach needed to change. That experience informs both my initial recommendations and the ongoing conversations I have with clients as the market evolves.

A pricing recommendation also needs to account for the properties that did not sell. Listings that expired, were canceled, or needed a price adjustment before attracting a buyer help show where seller expectations and buyer behavior diverged. Sellers deserve to see that part of the picture.

Working alongside agents such as Rob Thomson and Adam Brown, I saw how experienced professionals help sellers understand that evidence over time. They establish the property’s competitive position at the outset, then keep the owner informed as competing listings, recent sales, and buyer activity change. Those ongoing conversations give sellers the context to decide whether, when, and how to reposition their property.

That education is a critical part of representing a seller. A price adjustment should grow out of a continuing discussion of the market, rather than arrive as an unexpected request at a price reduction meeting. As markets move up or down, owners need to understand what has changed, what it means for their property, and the choices available to them.

Applied AI: the record

My work with AI in real estate predates the current wave of adoption, and it has been recognized by the people closest to it.

JTHS-MIAMI named me AI Innovator of the Year for 2023. I helped lead the applied-AI work at Waterfront Properties that earned the LuxuryRealEstate.com Innovation Award for AI at its 2024 Fall Conference, and I am a frequent presenter on AI at LuxuryRealEstate.com conferences. I attended OpenAI’s DevDay in October 2025, where Zillow launched its ChatGPT app, as one of the few real estate professionals in the room.

I have served on the BeachesMLS Board of Directors since shortly after the merger. I also serve on its Emerging Technology Task Force and the combined organization’s MLS Rules and Regulations Task Force, which gives me a working view of how AI and listing data will be governed in our market. I also continue to participate in Waterfront’s AI initiative.

The most direct evidence is this website. I built every market intelligence page on davidabernathy.com, from the country club reports to the IRS Wealth Migration explorer. I also integrated Federal Reserve data on real estate, the economy, and finance, making these resources available to anyone who wants to explore them. Buyers and sellers can examine the questions I investigate, the evidence I use, and how I explain the findings before we ever meet.

What this means for my clients

Since August 2026 my focus has been direct client representation. I bring 22 years of Florida real estate experience, more than 1,000 listing presentations, 18 years leading the marketing and market analysis of a top luxury brokerage, and a high level of applied AI expertise to that role.

When you evaluate any agent, ask about completed transactions. Then ask to see the analysis behind the pricing recommendation, the reasoning behind the marketing plan, and the evidence that would prompt a change in strategy. Ask how AI is being used on your behalf, and who is checking its work.

Those questions connect experience to the work you need done.

Rob’s decision to redirect advertising spending, the targeting strategies I developed, and my work with AI today share a principle: examine the evidence, recognize when conditions change, and apply what you learn to the client’s advantage. My role has changed. The experience behind my work has been accumulating for more than two decades.