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I took a real Zillow listing and had a cinematic home tour 30 minutes later. I never hired a videographer. I never set foot in the house. I pasted one link into Claude Code and it built the whole thing.
Here is the part that actually pays: local real estate agents are paying $500 or more for a single video like this, and most of them have no idea it can be built from photos they already posted publicly.
I’m Charles J Dove, and I run Charlie Automates. On my YouTube channel @charlieautomates, I break down the systems I actually use, and this post is the full walkthrough of that one. My total cost for the finished video was about $15 in generation credits.
What is AI for real estate agents actually good for right now?
AI for real estate agents is most valuable in listing marketing, specifically video production, because video is the single most expensive and slowest deliverable in a listing workflow. A professional listing video runs $500 to $1,500 and takes days to schedule, shoot, and edit. The same output generated from existing listing photos takes about 30 minutes and costs roughly $15 in credits.
That gap is the entire business opportunity. Not chatbots. Not a description writer. Video, because video is where agents are already spending real money.
The stack you need
Four pieces. Two of them are free to start.
| Tool | Job | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Runs the whole flow from one command | Included with a Claude subscription |
| RE Walkthrough Pro skill | The skill that orchestrates the build | Free |
| Higgsfield MCP | Generates the actual video scenes | $100 for about 3,000 credits |
| Apify MCP | Scrapes the Zillow photos and listing data | $5 free credit on signup |
The Higgsfield Ultimate plan gives you roughly 3,000 credits for $100, which works out to about six to eight finished videos at 50 seconds each. My $110 million test listing consumed 450 credits, so about $15 per video. Apify cost less than one cent for the scrape.
If you are not already running Claude Code in VS Code or a terminal, start with the Claude Code crash course before anything here. The rest of this assumes you have a working setup.
How do you install the RE Walkthrough Pro skill?
Grab the skill from Free Resources, hand the repo link to Claude, and tell it to install globally. That is the whole install.
Then wire up the two MCP servers:
- Higgsfield MCP. Give Claude the install link, hit enter, then run
/mcpand click reauthenticate. It opens a browser so you can log into Higgsfield and confirm the connection. - Apify MCP. Create an Apify account, go to Settings, then API and Integrations, and copy the default API token. Paste it into Claude when it asks.
Type /mcp to confirm both show as connected. Then type /walkthrough. If the command does not appear, ask Claude directly: “Where is the RE Walkthrough Pro skill? I need the command to show up globally.” It will find and fix the path itself.
Picking a listing that will actually produce a good video
Photo count is the constraint that decides whether your video looks good or looks broken. The skill builds each scene from a source photo, so a thin listing produces a thin video.
Here is how I filtered listings in the video:
- 7 photos: rejected. Not enough source material for a clean scene list.
- 18 photos: rejected. The property was mid-construction, which produces ugly scenes.
- 98 photos: selected. A $110 million listing with full interior, exterior, and grounds coverage.
Aim for 25 photos minimum. More photos means the skill has room to choose the strongest shot per room instead of using whatever it has.
You do not need Zillow at all. For an off-market or pocket listing, drop your photos into a local folder and tell Claude to use those instead, along with the address and what you want highlighted. Same result.
Running the flow
Paste the Zillow link into Claude and hit enter. The skill asks you four questions:
- Cinematic or basic. Pick cinematic. It pulls in sibling skills for camera work and real estate specific composition.
- Autocurate or manual scene selection. Autocurate is fine and it is what I used.
- Aspect ratio. 16:9 for YouTube and MLS. 9:16 for Instagram Reels and TikTok.
- Model. Use Seedance 2.0. It is the strongest option for this kind of footage.
If you want specific rooms featured, say so in the chat before it starts. You can paste a specific image and tell it “highlight this one.” That input matters more than any prompt engineering.
From there it runs unattended. It scrapes the listing, creates a project folder named after the address, saves every source image, and writes a property.md file containing the Zillow link, the agent’s contact info, the build choices, and the full shot list. It asks you to approve that shot list before it spends a single credit.
Approve it, and it spawns a background agent to generate the scenes one at a time. On the $110 million listing it produced the exterior front, the entry foyer, the living room, the kitchen, bedrooms, the garage, and the backyard, then stitched everything into a final walkthrough.
What to fix in post
Two things go wrong often enough to plan for.
Generated text artifacts. Sometimes a scene comes back with garbled text baked into the image. I shipped a skill update that strips this, but when it slips through, just tell Claude to redo that specific scene. Naming it is enough: “redo room 7.” One scene regenerated costs a fraction of the full run.
Never ask for text inside the generation. Do not have the model render your name, price, or captions into the video. Video models are unreliable at text, and a bad render means burning credits on a redo. Add every overlay in post. I use Descript. CapCut works the same way.
Everything else is editing you already know how to do. The AI produces the raw footage. You cut it.
The margin, plainly
This is why the numbers matter more than the tech.
| Line item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Higgsfield credits consumed | 450 |
| Credit cost at $100 per 3,000 | about $15 |
| Apify scrape | under $0.01 |
| Your time, start to finish | about 30 minutes |
| Total cost | about $15 |
| What agents pay for the same deliverable | $500+ |
One video covers your entire month of Higgsfield credits with about $485 left over. That is the whole pitch, and you can prove it with a sample before you ask anyone for money.
Going further than a single walkthrough
The walkthrough skill handles listings that exist and look good today. Three situations it does not cover:
- A property that has not been built. Take architectural schematics and raw land and generate the finished build.
- An empty house. Virtual staging, furnishing a bare room to sell the space.
- A distressed property. Show the restored version, with control over fixer-upper, renovation, exterior refresh, or full gut.
Those live in Listing Cinema, a private Charlie Automates skill I run as /listing-cinema instead of /walkthrough. It is the same architecture with deeper cinematic sibling skills underneath.
Finding the buyers is its own problem. I use a private lead skill that builds a leads folder for whatever target I define, and it is not limited to realtors. Anyone who owns property that needs video qualifies: developers, golf course operators, venue owners, commercial landlords. It also drafts the outbound email or text per prospect. At my agency CC Strategic, this is the same prospecting pattern we run for client acquisition.
None of these skills work well in isolation. They run on top of an agentic OS, a persistent setup that already holds your projects, your clients, and your pricing, so every new skill inherits that context instead of starting from a blank slate. The walkthrough skill knows my target market because the agentic OS underneath it does. I broke down how to build that foundation in the 3-step system to build an agentic OS.
Why this beats prompting a video model directly
You could open a video tool and prompt scenes by hand. Here is what the skill does that you would otherwise do manually every time:
- Scrapes and organizes 98 photos into a labeled room structure
- Reads the listing data and writes a shot list matched to the property’s actual selling points
- Maintains consistent lighting and camera language across every scene
- Gates spend behind an approval step so you see the plan before credits burn
- Stitches the final cut without you touching a timeline
That is the difference between a repeatable service you can sell and a one-off experiment you got lucky on.
Key takeaways
- AI for real estate agents pays best in video, because video is the most expensive line item in a listing workflow.
- One Zillow link is the entire input. The skill handles scraping, scene planning, generation, and stitching.
- Photo count is your quality gate. Under 25 photos, pick a different listing.
- Real cost was 450 credits, about $15. Agents pay $500 or more for the same deliverable.
- Approve the shot list before generating. It is the only step that protects your credit balance.
- Add all text in post-production. Video models render text badly and redos cost credits.
- Off-market works identically. Local folder of photos plus an address, no Zillow needed.
FAQ
How much does it cost to make one AI real estate video?
About $15 per finished video. The $110 million listing in the walkthrough consumed 450 Higgsfield credits, and the Higgsfield Ultimate plan is roughly 3,000 credits for $100. The Apify scrape that pulled the photos cost less than one cent. That works out to six to eight videos per $100 of credits.
Do I need to be a real estate agent to use this?
No. You do not need a license, and you do not need to own the property. You need a public listing link or a folder of photos. Most people running this are selling videos to agents rather than being agents, which is why the lead generation side matters as much as the production side.
How many photos does a listing need for good output?
At least 25. The skill builds each scene from a source image, so photo count directly caps quality. In testing I rejected a 7-photo listing and an 18-photo listing before selecting one with 98 photos. Fewer photos means repeated angles and thin coverage of the property.
Can I use this for properties that are not on Zillow?
Yes. Put your photos in a local folder, point Claude at it, give it the address, and describe what you want highlighted. The Zillow scrape is a convenience for pulling images and listing data automatically, not a requirement.
What do I do when a scene comes out with weird text in it?
Tell Claude to redo that specific scene by number, for example “redo room 7.” Regenerating one scene costs a small fraction of the full run. The skill has since been updated to strip generated text, but it still slips through occasionally.
Which aspect ratio should I choose?
16:9 for YouTube, MLS listings, and agent websites. 9:16 for Instagram Reels and TikTok. If you are selling to an agent, ask which one they need before you generate, because switching after the fact means regenerating every scene.
How long does the whole thing take?
About 30 minutes from pasting the link to having a stitched video, most of which is unattended generation time. Your active involvement is roughly five minutes: pick the listing, answer four questions, approve the shot list. Editing the final cut adds however long your usual post-production takes.
Is Seedance 2.0 better than the other video models for this?
For real estate walkthroughs, yes. It holds spatial consistency and camera motion better across interior scenes, which is exactly what breaks in a home tour when scenes do not match. Other models are competitive for other content types.
Where to go from here
The RE Walkthrough Pro skill is free in Free Resources, along with the Higgsfield and Apify setup links.
If you want the upgraded skills, the outbound scripts, and the private group of people already running this, that is the Claude Estate Hustle, and there is a full training replay at charlieautomates.com.
To go deeper on Claude Code itself, with weekly calls and the full zero-to-dangerous course, join CC Strategic AI on Skool.
Not sure what to fix first?
Most people don’t need another AI tool. They need to know which thing is actually costing them the most.
The AI Bottleneck Finder asks you a handful of questions, then tells you the one constraint capping your revenue right now plus two builds you could ship this week. Five minutes, free, no call required.