Robotics and AI are entering real estate offices.

AI Developers Jump on Commercial Real Estate Bandwagon

After bringing you stories about the injection of AI into nearly every type of business imaginable, Seeflection.com has another profession that perhaps we had not thought would need AI. That would be the business of real estate. And it’s not just AI, but robots are also making the transition into the real estate office complex.

An article from bisnow.com had an astounding headline and following information. Robots Take Over Real Estate, But Not How You Expect: How AI And Automation May Impact CRE

They begin with the introduction of a platform that just raised significant funding and is called Nativ.

Typically, the tedious task of researching and writing a credit memo for a loan can take days. Jeff Saul promises he can do the burdensome task in 10% of the time, cutting more than 50 hours of tedious, manual data entry from someone’s job. Saul himself isn’t a savant; Nativ, a new commercial real estate software platform he co-founded that utilizes artificial intelligence and automation, reportedly can reduce that workload to just a few hours. For Saul, that’s just the beginning. He believes Nativ can cut much more.

“We’ve studied the labor components of junior-to-midlevel CRE professionals, and have concluded that more than 85% of time expenditure is on highly automatable tasks,” he said. “Our goal is the automation of all non-subjective components of this workflow. Eventually we hope to take on the subjective parts as well, although we believe the industry isn’t quite ready for that today.”

PropTech

Nativ is another program commonly called proptech or Property Technology. It keeps track of properties, loans, available opportunities in all areas of real estate. The use of drones is also a large part of that system to photograph properties, roadways, etc. Proptechs are also used in supply chains for warehousing and shipping. It is moving into many of the paperwork operations at some of these enterprises.

The robots aren’t just mastering clerical, low-skilled work. Companies offering “robotic process automation” are moving up the corporate ladder, augmenting and increasingly replacing work done by professionals including doctors and lawyers, according to The New York Times, and a Brooking Institution study from 2018 found that white-collar jobs are the most susceptible to being done by AI.

If working in an office made you feel safe from being replaced by robots, you may still not needed to worry if you work in real estate. Peter Miscovich, a managing director at JLL focused on strategy and innovation, says that AI will impact the industry, but at a much slower pace than insurance or financial services because CRE is still catching up in terms of digitization. But it is “teed up for disruption,” and there will be much more digital talent entering the industry.

“In CRE, there will probably be more digital augmentation, human plus machine, than actual human replacement,” he said.

CEL & Associates CEO Christopher Lee, whose company produces regular industry salary and compensation analysis, told Bisnow that “companies are increasingly shifting a number of their functions to automation, offshoring, AI and independent contractors. Anywhere from 70% to 80% of CEOs in other industries are looking at automation, freelancers or streamlining systems as a basis for fulfilling work requirements.”

read more at bisnow.com