Agentic Ai Will Vastly Improve Real Estate — But Only If A Big Problem Is Fixed

In the world of real estate, there are high hopes for the transformative possibilities of AI. More than half (55%) of realtors are familiar with AI tools, and about half of them (28%) are using it in their businesses, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest Technology Survey.  

Increasingly, the industry is turning to agentic AI, in which AI-powered agents handle certain tasks. This kind of “will go beyond automation, enabling systems to make proactive decisions, optimize workflows, and anticipate challenges,” the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University explains.

A recent study, meanwhile, finds that agentic AI systems “can potentially automate time-consuming tasks such as data gathering from multiple sources, comparable property research across fragmented databases, and preliminary analysis while ensuring that critical professional judgment, final value reconciliation, and legal responsibility remain with licensed appraisers.”

The excitement makes sense. Agentic AI is widely seen as the next step in technological evolution for all sorts of fields. But there’s a crucial caveat: These systems are only as good as the data they rely on. And that’s a big problem for industries that wrestle with data silos.For the real estate sector to tap into all this potential, it must tackle ongoing issues with information sharing.

The power of agentic AI lies in its ability to approximate human thinking, but at a pace and scale unlike anything humans can achieve. For this technology to “make proactive decisions,” “anticipate challenges,” conduct research and analyze figures, it needs access to as much information as possible. 

In all types of real estate — residential, commercial, industrial, and more — these tools need multiple sources of information. They need to know about properties in any given era and nationwide; trends in pricing; factors likely to affect values; market shifts shaping the real estate needs of any customer, and much more.

Currently, real estate is trending in the wrong direction. “Quietly emerging is a future where the country’s largest brokerages withhold a growing percentage of their listing content from broader distribution and consumer access, building what they hope are proprietary ecosystems of exclusive inventory,” Chris Kelly, president and CEO of HomeServices of America, wrote earlier this year. 

Property listings are only part of the problem. To serve customers, AI agents need instant access to information about each customer’s journey. They need to know the customer’s preferences, challenges, pain points, and more. 

Currently, many organizations aren’t compiling all this information into a single record. “Data silos have been plaguing organizations since before the data analytics gold rush,” Information Week noted. “Sadly, data silos remain an issue in many organizations, which calls into question the reliability of AI outputs.” Unified customer experience management (UCXM) is a must.

The good news is that fixing this problem benefits everyone. While changing internal operations to unify records may seem like a challenging task, much of it can be automated. And all parts of the company, both customer-facing and traditionally “back office” functions, work much more smoothly when they operate on the same information, updated in real time for everyone to see.

And while proprietary data about inventories may seem like a short-term formula for success, in the long term they’ll do damage. Sure, this system may mean that a company knows about a specific property. But it also means that the same company’s agentic AI does not know about some other properties. When people find out about those other properties from other sources, they’ll lose faith in the agentic AI.

Customer expectations are higher than ever. They look for personalized service, agents (whether humans or robots) who “know” them, lightning fast responses, and instant resolutions to problems. 

All of this can be accomplished without sacrificing customer privacy or operational secrets. Ending information silos will not only free up AI agents to succeed; it will also help the many professionals who work so hard to run the industry every day. With agentic AI able to handle certain tasks, humans will have more time to handle complex challenges, relationship building, and other more fulfilling work.

The high hopes for agentic AI make sense. The key now is to turn them into fruition. Equipped with all the information they need, these tools will help the industry soar to new heights.

Tomas Gorny is co-founder and CEO of Nextiva.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: zeb@hwmedia.com.