We know that AI is sweeping through the business world at an incredible speed, and real estate isn’t immune. It’s easy to consider AI being used for building management platforms and plans, creating personalised investment strategies and pulling data of potential prospects. But these are just the basics – AI has the potential to give us more data and predictive power than ever before. 

Robo-Property Manager

Commercial real estate agents are often known for working late, but no one can be available 24/7. Utilising AI to streamline operations means that there is the chance to identify patterns, and save money. AI-powered building management platforms will have the ability to take data from sensors and smart devices, identify patterns and anomalies and flag these before they turn into costly issues. 

Cutting Administration Time 

One of the biggest areas in which AI can help commercial real estate agents is in day-to-day administration. Admin is a massive time sucker for any business, and with agencies required to undertake marketing, generate reports, and handle direct communications all while generating new leads – it’s easy for more time to get spent on those first three things, while generating new income-producing leads often gets pushed down the list. 

AI Algorithms 

Data is a big part of real estate, and AI has made and will continue to make it easier to identify undervalued properties and predict market trends. New technologies will allow us to have access to historical transactions, demographics and economic indicators quickly and easily, allowing us to pinpoint those under-the-radar properties with a growth potential. This data gives investors and real estate agents (particularly buyers agents) a significant edge in a competitive market. 

Matching Tenants with the Perfect Property 

When it comes to finding tenants for your commercial investment property, it isn’t often as straightforward as it may seem. Many businesses have a lot of requirements they need to meet to ensure the property will allow them to carry out their day-to-day work efficiently. AI-powered real estate platforms are increasing in their ability to match tenants with ideal spaces based on their needs, budgets and preferences. 

Because these AI systems can analyse user behaviour and records, they can recommend the perfect office, retail or industrial space, saving time and effort. This can help landlords and commercial property managers fill their properties quickly. 

Automated Marketing 

There has been an increase in the number of real estate agencies and investors utilising AI to create targeted social media ads, writing listing copy, social media posts and blog articles, which takes much of that time-consuming work away from humans. Some platforms allow an agent to upload an Offering Memorandum with the software automatically generating detailed marketing copy quickly. This frees up the time in creating the copy and while these tools do still need some human oversight to ensure accuracy, they are certainly beneficial when you have numerous time-consuming tasks. 

Demand for Data Centres 

While AI is changing the way we work in commercial real estate, it is also changing what businesses are looking for when buying, investing and renting commercial property. Data centres or spaces to build a data centre are becoming more popular, while on the flip side, the increasing use of AI could see a decrease in jobs, leading to a decrease in commercial office space. However, what we also could see happen is that AI assists in increasing the productivity of the workforce, therefore increasing economic growth, which in turn increases demand for space. 

PropTech Leading the Way 

It’s fair to say that the real estate industry has begun to embrace AI technologies. In 2022 in the US, there was a record investment of $4 billion USD poured into AI-powered PropTech. With over 500 companies across the globe providing AI-powered services to real estate, these solutions can cover investment management, design, construction, building and facility operations and portfolio management. 

According to JLL, the main current uses for AI in commercial real estate include: 

  • Document sorting and data standardisation for portfolio data analytics and benchmarking
  • IoT data mining for automated facility management
  • Price modelling and prediction for investment management
  • Satellite image processing for asset valuation and risk management
  • Reality capture for construction site monitoring
  • Scheduling for construction and capital projects
  • Recommendation and matchmaking for leasing and investment transactions

Commercial real estate agencies are well-positioned to see significant changes and benefits from the use of AI, but it is important to keep on top of how this technology can assist your business. Those that don’t adapt, or are slow to adapt, risk falling behind their competitors. 

Elite Agent covered how ChatGPT can help agencies back in February 2023, and for those agents yet to get started with AI, there are certainly some good ways to use it. 

One of our favourite ways to use AI is to brainstorm ideas for blog content and eDMs, as well as catchy subject titles for emails and listings, but we do know other agencies are using AI for handling initial communications with leads through the use of automatically generated emails, and we’ve had a few colleagues start to use AI to manage and optimise their time by connecting systems like ChatGPT to their calendar. 

Like any new technology, we don’t expect AI to take over the full backend role of a real estate agent, but there are certainly some great ways that it can free up time, and allow us to get back to doing what we do best – selling and leasing property.