- The Industrai
- Posts
- Real Estate Hack: Learn How to Connect Claude to Your Favorite Apps
Real Estate Hack: Learn How to Connect Claude to Your Favorite Apps
Connect your new AI Assistant to Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and more to supercharge how you work.
Our Top Tool Right Now: Claude’s MCP Network⚡⚡
*Not even ChatGPT can do this.
If you’ve been following me before I started this newsletter, you’ve seen me talk about Anthropic’s MCP network and how it allows you to connect their Large Language Model Claude to just about anything.
There is so much data in the Real Estate world- rent rolls, T12s, P&Ls, marketing brochures, OMs, loan agreements, and more.
I’ve always found myself (like most) going into Dropbox or GDrive or a company’s intranet to search for information that lives in a file that lives within three sub-folders that are part of a main folder that live within a …
You get what I’m trying to say.
It takes too long to find information and if you don’t think so, you’ve grown too accustomed to wasting time.
We all want our coffee/packages/everything instantly, right?
Well I want the prepayment penalty rate on a mezz loan for property x or what the collection rate for last month was at property y instantly….
And that’s where the MCP network comes in.
The MCP network is really just like a USB-C port that allows Claude to connect to external programs in a standardized and secure way.
I have it connected to my personal tech- Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive + my professional tech- Outlook, Dropbox, and Asana.
As the head of an Asset Management department, I’ve been using Claude more and more to not only pull data from my favorite apps (generative) but also have it do things within those platforms (agentic) like sending emails, booking calls, and more.
Here Are A Few Examples of What Claude Can Do When Connected:
 Claude x Google Calendar Connection | Every day, I ask Claude to book a Zoom or Teams’ meetings by looking at my Google calendar (which has access to my Outlook calendar) and finding 30 or 60-minute windows that work for me. It will then send out email invites to all required + optional parties on my behalf. Hours of my life saved over the course of a month. |
 Claude x Outlook Connection | At around 1pm each day, I’ll ask Claude to find all emails from a principal who notoriously sends 1,000 emails every day (only half-exaggerating) and have it sort by ones where my name is specifically mentioned. It will then create a To Do List for me to follow. No more scrolling through tons of emails to find what needs to get done.
|
It’s been incredible to see how much time I save by not having to toggle between various tech dashboards by having a half-AI Analyst and half-AI assistant.
So How I Do I Set This Up Jon?
I won’t bore you with the deep details so here are the high-level steps:
Step 1: Download the Claude desktop app (this won’t work on your browser or mobile app).
Step 2: Create a Zapier account (we’ll do a deep dive on Zapier in a few weeks) and head over to mcp.zapier.com.
Step 3: Add a new Claude MCP Server in Zapier (there are a few technical details that I won’t get into here).
Step 4: Create the Zapier connection in Claude.
That’s it!
If you get stuck or want help setting this up, send me a message on LinkedIn!
Once you have this set up and start using it reflexively, you’ll be light years ahead of where you are today (and other people not doing this).
All you need to do is just START.
Jonathan
Founder, The IndustrAI