Your market update in 5 minutes: how real estate agents can use Claude to find sourced suburb numbers and write the script

I used to dread my market update video.

The video wasn't the hard part. The hard part was everything before it: finding current numbers for each suburb, working out which ones were worth mentioning, and turning a page of figures into something a homeowner would watch for more than five seconds.

Today's job hands that whole front end to Claude. You ask it for the latest public numbers for your suburbs, have it turn them into a short script, and make it show you where every number came from.

That last part matters most, and it's what this post is really about.

Why a market update is a good job to hand over

A market update is one of the most useful things an agent can put out. Homeowners want to know what's happening on their street, and a short, regular update keeps you in front of them between the times they're thinking about selling.

It's also the kind of job that slips. The research is fiddly, the numbers move, and by the time you've pulled it together there's no energy left for the part that counts, which is getting in front of the camera.

Claude is good at the fiddly middle. It can look up published figures, line them up, and draft a script in plain English. What it can't do is make a number true. That's why the prompt is built the way it is.

The rule: no source, no number

When you ask Claude for market figures, there are two ways it can go wrong.

• It can't look anything up. If web search isn't available in your conversation, it's working from what it learned in training. Those figures will be out of date, and it may not say so clearly.
• It fills a gap. Ask for a number it can't find and it may give you something that sounds right rather than telling you it came up empty.

Neither is acceptable in something you're going to say to homeowners under your name. So you don't just ask for numbers. You ask for the source and the date beside every one, and you tell it plainly not to use anything it can't source.

That changes the job. Instead of "give me some figures", it becomes "find published figures and prove it". You get a list you can check, not a list you have to trust.

Different sources, different numbers

One thing worth knowing before you start: different data providers publish different figures for the same suburb. They use different sales, different time periods and different methods, and some report monthly while others report quarterly.

None of that means one is wrong. It means you should know which one you're quoting, and stick with the same source from one update to the next so your numbers compare properly. Asking Claude for the source and date of each figure makes that easy to see.

The Day 12 prompt

Find the latest published median house price, change over 12 months and days on market for [suburb], with the source and date for each. Then write me a 40-second market update script for local homeowners. Don't use any number you can't source.

Here's what each part is doing.

"Find the latest published median house price, change over 12 months and days on market for [suburb]" sets exactly three numbers to look for. Three is enough for a short video and few enough to check. "Published" points it at figures someone has actually released, not its own estimates. Swap in your suburb name.

"with the source and date for each" is the part that makes this safe to use. Every figure comes with where it came from and when, so you can open the source and confirm it yourself.

"Then write me a 40-second market update script for local homeowners" turns the research into something you can record. Forty seconds keeps it short enough for social video. "Local homeowners" tells it who's listening, so it writes for people living in the suburb, not for other agents.

"Don't use any number you can't source" closes the gap. If it can't find a figure, the honest answer is to say so and leave it out. This line gives it permission to do exactly that.

Try it yourself

1. Check Claude can search the web. In the Claude app, web search is usually a setting or tool you can switch on for a conversation. If it's off, Claude can't find current figures, so turn it on before you start.
2. Start a new conversation and paste the prompt. Replace [suburb] with one suburb you work in. Start with one, not your whole patch.
3. Read the numbers before the script. Look at each figure and its source and date. Click through to the source and check the number is really there and says what Claude says it does.
4. Check the dates. "Latest" can mean last month or last quarter depending on the source. If anything looks old, ask Claude to look for a more recent release.
5. Read the script out loud. Time it. If it runs long, ask for a tighter version. If it doesn't sound like you, tell Claude how you'd normally say it and ask for another pass.
6. Ask for an on-screen source line. Something short like the provider name and month, to show in the video or put in the caption. Homeowners trust a number more when they can see where it came from. Check your office's guidelines on how market figures should be quoted, as rules on this vary.
7. Record. You've skipped the part that used to stop you, so this is the bit to put your energy into.

Once one suburb works, run the same prompt for your others. If you want to keep the results, give Claude one folder for your market updates and ask it to save each suburb's figures, sources and script as a file there. Same habit as always: one narrow folder for the job, not your whole computer, and ask it to show you its plan first before it creates or changes any files.

Keep the checking step

It's tempting, once the first few come back clean, to stop clicking through to the sources. Don't.

The point of the source-and-date rule isn't that Claude will always get it wrong. It's that you're the one saying these numbers to people who might list with you. A wrong figure in a market update costs more trust than the video earns. The check takes a minute, and it's the minute that lets you post with confidence.

The same goes for anything that leaves your hands. If you later connect Claude to tools that can post, send or schedule, keep approvals on for anything that sends, spends or deletes. Today's job doesn't need any of that. It finds, drafts and hands back to you. You decide what goes out.

Where to go from here

The market update is a good example of the pattern running through this week. Claude does the slow research and the first draft. You check the facts and bring the voice. It's not about the video making itself. It's about getting from blank page to ready-to-record without the part you used to dread.

Start with one suburb and the Day 12 prompt. Check every number against its source. Then record.

Missed yesterday? Day 11: The Friday vendor update

Every prompt from the series is on my free prompts page, with a new one each day as the episodes go up, ready to copy.