Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
The real estate sector is facing a profound inflection point. While technology-driven Gen AI disruption has started to reshape industries like finance, HR, and supply chain, corporate real estate has remained largely on the sidelines — until now. According to Peter Miscovich, Head of Future of Work at JLL, one of the world’s largest real estate investment and advisory firms, the integration of AI in real estate is still in its earliest stages, as he told me in our interview. But the tides are shifting.
A Long Road to a New Dawn
Miscovich brings a perspective few can match, with over 25 years of experience in artificial intelligence, including early work with IBM Watson during the technology’s initial wave of promise. He recalls a time in the early 2010s when excitement around AI in corporate services surged, only to fizzle out as practical applications failed to meet expectations.
Now, with the rise of OpenAI and a new generation of AI capabilities, interest has once again surged. But in corporate real estate? “It’s still rather embryonic,” he says.
Unlike digitally native organizations that are embedding AI into their DNA, real estate has been slower to act.
“We believe corporate real estate will follow other functions — finance, HR, procurement — over the next two to five years,” says Miscovich.
The barriers are structural as well as cultural, organizational, and operational. Still, the momentum is undeniable.
Pilots Paving the Way
The good news is that leading firms are already experimenting. Miscovich describes three primary areas where AI is beginning to transform the real estate function.
First is the employee experience. One client developed an AI-powered dining workflow, predicting demand and customizing food service offerings. It’s a small but telling example of how AI can enhance everyday workplace interactions.
Second is workplace and facilities management. JLL, which has heavily invested in this area, has helped clients save hundreds of thousands of labor hours by deploying Internet of Things (IoT) systems enhanced with computer vision. These tools not only manage energy use more efficiently but also streamline facilities maintenance and occupancy tracking.
The third and perhaps most transformative category is workflow automation and analytics. Miscovich anticipates that within the next five years, 30 to 40% of corporate real estate workflows could be AI-enabled.
This change revolves around augmenting human decision-making, creating “human plus machine” ecosystems that are faster, more accurate, and increasingly predictive.
Resistance Remains
Still, excitement about AI doesn’t guarantee immediate adoption. According to Miscovich, the majority of professionals in corporate real estate are cautiously observing AI, with some employees more enthusiastic and others are actively resistant to the new technology.
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The resistance is understandable. Real estate is a high-stakes, high-complexity domain where human expertise and relationships have traditionally been irreplaceable. There’s a natural skepticism about replacing gut instinct with algorithmic insight.
But as Miscovich notes, once ROI is proven and workflow integrations mature, resistance tends to wane.
Addressing the human side of this will be essential. Upskilling, transparency, and change management will be as critical as the technology itself.
“We’ve seen this adoption curve play out before,” he says. “It’s all about trust and proof of value.”
Redefining Place in a Post-Physical Era
Gen AI also has the potential to upend our understanding of physical space. Traditionally, real estate has been about place — offices, campuses, headquarters. But as Miscovich explains, the next wave of AI could make place increasingly irrelevant or paradoxically even more relevant in the future.
Imagine AI-enabled immersive eyewear that replaces smartphones and allows for seamless, always-on collaboration and engagement. With that level of AI-enabled augmentation, the office could exist wherever the user is.
In this vision, spatial computing, agentic AI, and advanced cloud platforms converge to create work environments unbound by geography.
But paradoxically, this might not mean the end of offices. If immersive tech is place-based (requiring specialized environments to fully leverage its capabilities) real estate could find new value as a hub for high-performance, high-tech collaboration.
Miscovich envisions a dual path forward: both greater mobility and deeper immersion, depending on organizational needs and technological maturity.
The Future Is Augmented, Not Automated
Looking ahead, Miscovich predicts a fundamental reshaping of work.
“It’s not just about making things faster or cheaper,” he emphasizes. “It’s about rethinking what performance looks like, what work feels like.”
AI won’t replace real estate professionals, but will augment and “super-enhance” them. But that augmentation will demand new skills, new interfaces, and a new mindset.
By 2030, we may look back on 2025 as the year real estate finally began its digital transformation in earnest. But for now, AI in this space remains in its infancy — crawling, experimenting, testing boundaries. The future is coming. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.
