This told essay is based on a conversation with Lorraine Schwartz, 70, a retiree who sold her two-bedroom condo in Westminster, Colorado, in October 2025 using Ridley, an AI-powered online platform rather than a traditional agent. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I have been buying and selling real estate.
My first real estate purchase was a co-op in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I sold that and then bought and sold two homes in Westchester, New York. Then we moved to Madison, Wisconsin, renovated and sold that house, moved to Colorado, built a house, and then moved into a condo.
That’s why I hated paying real estate agent fees.
I have experience buying and selling real estate, and I understand how to use comps, so I think I have a pretty good feel for pricing real estate. So, to be honest, I wasn’t intimidated by the process at all.
I have owned a condo in Westminster, Colorado for about 7-8 years.
Schwartz has bought and sold several properties over his lifetime. ridley
I bought it after my divorce, so I had no intention of settling there permanently. We’ve found a completely new development where you can build a home that perfectly accommodates you as you age, as everything is on one level.
An article came out about Ridley, founder Mike Chambers, and his experience in Boulder. Ridley is an AI-powered platform that enables homeowners to sell their homes without paying traditional real estate commissions.
As soon as I read it, I thought, “Oh my god, this is amazing. This is exactly what I’ve been saying all along.” So I became a Ridley fan even before I decided to sell my condo.
When I was selling my condo, I needed a platform that would allow me to list my condo on the MLS, the database that real estate agents use to sell real estate. I knew that if I was on the MLS, I would be listed on platforms like Zillow and Redfin, and I believed that would do the bulk of the work in attracting buyers.
Real estate technology hasn’t caught up yet.
I come from the financial industry, where transaction costs have come down significantly.
It seems like real estate is probably the biggest transaction we still experience in our lives, but technology and competition haven’t brought down fees as much as I would like.
Schwartz believes that real estate transactions have not yet caught up with the technology of the times. ridley
The advent of the internet has changed the way people search for a home. Shopping and house hunting just got a whole lot easier. You don’t need a real estate agent to drive you around all day to see something.
You can look at a million homes online, narrow it down, and say, “Oh, okay, I want to go see this house.”
There are many people like me who have been around and have been through this enough to know that we can handle this.
I didn’t need any special help selling my house, but others may still be able to help
I knew I needed to earn my spot before attracting as much attention as possible. As far as price goes, I was already very happy about the value of my place.
I had the advantage of being president of an HOA and lived in a 64-unit apartment complex. I knew every unit sold and its selling price. Now that I knew what was currently on the market, I knew how to price my condo.
Ridley’s pricing was about right. It was exactly what I expected. At the time, I was already under contract to buy this new house that was under construction. I didn’t want to worry about pricing because I didn’t want to wait 2-3 months for a sale.
I knew how to price my units to attract people. I was completely convinced, and Ridley’s pricing basically confirmed it.
I started listing it on a Wednesday morning, had the first buyer that same day, and that night had an offer of $425,000 at list price.
She was confident in selling her home, but needed a little help getting it looked at. ridley
Ridley walks you through all the questions you need to answer to make your list. Although some of the terminology gets a bit technical, Ridley’s agent was able to answer some of my questions regarding how the real estate industry wants certain things to be verified before joining the MLS. However, for the most part, I did 99% of it myself. I also used ChatGPT to create the list.
If we had run a traditional buyer-seller agent model and paid a 5% commission, our commission cost would have been $21,250.
In Ridley’s case, he paid about $5,000 for the AI-powered service, plus staging, photography, and more. [Editor’s note: Schwarz paid $2,999 for Ridley’s pro plan, which now costs $3,999.]
If you want an agent to hold your hand a little bit, you can pay for their services. I did.
It was nice not having to deal directly with the buyer. My agent acted as an intermediary, and everything went smoothly because someone intervened. But looking back, I could have done without it.
However, that doesn’t mean first-time home buyers don’t want to use a real estate agent. This is because many people are not familiar with the real estate agent process or lack confidence in their ability to use a real estate agent.
My daughter and son-in-law just purchased a home and worked with a real estate agent. They are new to this. They didn’t know what to do, and they certainly weren’t going to ask their mom.
Although Ridley was the right choice for her, she thinks people will still use real estate agents. ridley
There are many different options in the world of investing. In the world of real estate, you haven’t really had a choice until now. Until now, you had to use a real estate agent.
That makes sense given the technology that’s out there. That’s no surprise considering how many people have already bought and sold real estate during their lifetime. It’s like, “I kind of know how to do it.”