The Unexpected Ways AI Is Changing How Commercial Real Estate Organizations Operate

Interacting with AI has become a normal part of professional life in a way that would have seemed remarkable just three years ago. Drafting emails, summarizing documents, answering research questions, generating first drafts, these are tasks that millions of people now hand to ChatGPT or Claude without much thought. Commercial real estate has followed that curve. According to Kolena’s 2026 State of AI in CRE report, 34% of CRE firms are now using a general-purpose AI tool as part of their regular workflow. The number sounds encouraging until you read what sits next to it: 78% of those same firms still process their documents manually. Nearly a third of the market has a general AI subscription and a document workflow that is entirely, stubbornly, manual.

That gap is the defining feature of where commercial real estate’s AI adoption actually stands, and it points to a distinction that the industry is beginning to understand more clearly. Conversational AI and automated AI are different tools built for different purposes, and using one doesn’t put you any closer to the other...