RETCON Special Report: Refined Tech Palates

Panelists speaking on the first day of the 2025 Real Estate Technology Conference, hosted in Las Vegas, revealed refined, precise tastes for technology, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence. These discussions occurred at the heels of recent breakthroughs in agentic artificial intelligence and a valuation of the industry at more than $180 billion.

From tenant experience app features to construction design software preferences, panelists from across the industry are well aware of what works and what doesn’t.

Artificial intelligence: CRE’s new cell phone?

At a keynote discussion titled Investing in Innovation: Building Strategy to transform Real Estate, panelists from the office, multifamily and software sectors agreed that the use of artificial intelligence has become more of a necessity for employees looking to maximize productivity than another tool at their disposal.

One area where this is present is lead interception for leasing at office properties; something as simple as a chatbot can respond to inquiries on a perpetual basis, while an agentic model may be capable of autonomously communicating with potential tenants. “It’s a game-changer that we couldn’t do with humans fast enough,” said Andrew Segal, chairman & CEO of Boxer Property.

The humans at Boxer Property probably agree. According to Segal, they went from using some form of AI platform roughly 500 times a month in September of last year to more than 2,000 times in January. Where efficiency is concerned, “when you combine it with offshoring, it’s not an option anymore; it’s like saying you are not going to use a computer,” Segal said.

Yao Morin, JLL’s technology officer, compared the adoption at her firm which has developed a proprietary GPT model to the ubiquity of cell phones. “Nowadays, you can’t go without your phone,” Morin said.

Of course, universally adopting artificial intelligence for nearly every part of a workflow is easier said than done. A key question was how to get decades-long employees to embrace the technologies. Morin prefers a brass-tacks approach, where existing users share the way they use these technologies with the rest of their team.

Others mix carrots and sticks. Konrad Koczwara, ElevateOS’ founder & CEO, prefers the former. “If you have a group of 10 people, you will have a group of three that is going to be curious, and those are the ones you should incentivize and reward to train the rest,” Koczwara told the panel.

Segal, on the other hand, is all in. “You can get in line, or you can use it to write your resume,” he quipped. “It’s not going to replace everyone’s jobs, but it will make them a lot more productive,” Segal said.

Optimized offices

During a discussion about the best ways to keep office buildings active and occupied, slumped occupancy and space activations were viewed not so much as the result of lackluster amenities or programming, but suboptimal adoptions of technology.

A prime example of this is tenant experience apps, often used from filing work orders to reserving conference space. Despite all the programming and amenity spaces that they are capable of showcasing, “they’re not getting the traction of tenants,” said Maja Sofic, first vice president of property management at CIM Group.

Sometimes, this is outside operators’ control; developers making the applications one-stop shops for everything from work orders to lunch reservations can often be counter-intuitive if they include sensitive payment information that some tenants are forbidden from divulging.

“It’s a struggle for people to even download the app, and that is because of the companies they have,” said Todd Januzzi, president of Paramount Group Inc., an office REIT with holdings in New York City and San Francisco. “We have some household name banks, with 4,000 people in a building not downloading the app; law firms won’t (touch) it, and financial services won’t use wallet or payment features” Januzzi added.

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But there are some workarounds. Januzzi’s company thought to make visitor access to amenity spaces exclusive to a tenant experience app. “They sign a waiver saying that they won’t be nefarious, and they’re in,” But without it, you’re not going anywhere,” Januzzi detailed.

Sofic, on the other hand, sees the use of apps that can book spaces at multiple locations as providing employees with a degree of flexibility that will make in-person office work more appealing. “There’s so much traction in that space of jumping on your phone and plugging in; that gives the modern tenant that flexibility,” Sofic said.

Builders tough it out

If there is one industry that is being hampered the most by the current macroeconomic environment, it’s construction; labor shortages and potentially hiked supply costs are putting a thorn in the side of builders looking to go vertical.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and the digital environment, particularly the realms of automation and data analytics, give developers an edge when it comes to making projects faster and more efficient.

AI algorithms can potentially evaluate innumerable iterations of a building design in a matter of seconds, while some large language models can mimic the expertise of retired welding experts. Almost by accident, some of the technologies are uniquely suited to the present moment; “tariffs on or off, if someone said they are going from concrete to steel, with some of the tech you are seeing today, you can make your pivot a lot quicker,” said Thomas Scarangello, managing principal & senior advisor of Thornton Tomasetti.

One consequence that Scarangello has observed is a leveling of the architects’ and construction firms’ playing fields, giving smaller firms a leg up. “Eight years ago, you had to build your own data team and extract data from your systems, but if you look to today, solutions have now come out that do that work for you, and serve you the data in a more clean and transformed matter.”

But it’s still up to the data teams to make the best decisions using them. “Data is the new oil, but it’s more of a crude oil. We need to refine it into something useful,” Scarangello said.

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