Technology Disruption Is On The Horizon For CRE

Technology has been readily embraced by companies over the past year, and the increase of automation and AI is anticipated to transform the workforce even more after the pandemic has ended.

This is particularly true for the commercial real estate sector. For instance, Jeff Saul, cofounder of real estate software platform Nativ, says he can research and write a credit memo in 10% of the usual multi-day long process.

“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,” said Saul. “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.”

Nativ is one of many new companies within the proptech industry that aims to accommodate the anticipated demand of these tools in the near future.

This new technology doesn’t just have the ability to take over low-skilled, menial tasks. Now, companies providing “robotic process automation” are climbing the corporate ladder and accomplishing work done by well-established professionals, such as lawyers and doctors.

CRE has been infamous for its slow embrace of technology, but the pandemic has accelerated the pace of adoption for the industry.

Even so, a managing director at JLL Peter Miscovich said CRE will still be slower to adopt AI than the insurance and financial industries since it is still catching up, but it is gearing up for disruption.