Property data business Search Acumen, outlines its prediction for 2025 – AI to take on more significant strategic role and disrupt traditional business models.

Adoption of AI in real estate will tip over from tactical usage to a strategic priority in 2025, it forecasts.

Confidence in its accuracy and improvements in the development of user-friendly, integrated platforms will push progress. 

This will naturally boost interest in suppliers as legal and professional services companies drive administrative efficiencies to win business as market outlook improves.

As confidence grows throughout the sector, we will see AI strategically integrated throughout business operations, rather than being deployed in isolated use cases. We will also see AI trusted to deliver a broader range of more complicated tasks in administration, branching into more complex analytics.

The result of this will be the first landmark changes to traditional business models, notably in the evolution of skills and capabilities, and in pricing models utilised by real estate advisory businesses.

With regards to AI’s impact on real estate sector skills, Andrew Lloyd – managing director at Search Acumen – comments:

“We have seen AI utilised throughout the commercial real estate industry over recent years to tackle a huge range of pain points. In 2025 we’ll ride a confidence wave that will empower business leaders to take a more strategic approach to integrating AI into all operations. 

“This more comprehensive roll out of AI will for the first time start to challenge industry fundamentals that have existed in some case for centuries.

“A big focus will be on how we re-focus our understanding of what the core real estate industry skillset looks like for the next hundred years. Next year will be the start of a major skills re-alignment away from administration towards analysis, with many support function and junior roles re-imagined. 

“These will focus around a broader skillset incorporating prompt engineering, technological tool proficiency and analytic skills, rather than administrative speed, diligence and efficiency. Far from a dystopian vision for the future, this is largely being driven from the bottom-up, with a new generation of real estate professionals that see AI as a way to improve the experience of working in modern real estate.”

With regard to fee structures in the supplier market Lloyd comments:”As investors and developers remain incredibly cost cautious, technology is vital for commercial real estate advisors. 

“However, while that offers an opportunity for progressive businesses to capture more market share, advisors are going to have to engage next year with the fundamental question around how you price-in AI efficiency and pass that cost-efficiency on to clients without reducing margin. 

“This is going to be a huge question for the professional and legal services market segment over the coming years. I expect to see a focus on pricing innovation in the supplier market next year, initially at the margins as companies A/B test new models for service delivery, but breaking into a more significant industry conversation over time.”