Insights from the 2026 Real Estate Gala, hosted by Don Tepman and Bob Knakal.

Artificial intelligence was the most talked-about topic at this year's Real Estate Gala in New York City, and the conversation has matured considerably from prior years. Industry professionals have moved past debating AI’s place in CRE. 

The questions now are more specific: which tools are delivering measurable results, where human judgment remains irreplaceable and how the industry's most forward-thinking practitioners are integrating AI into their workflows without losing the relationship-driven edge that closes deals.

The Productivity Argument Has Been Won

The most consistent theme across every conversation at the gala was a straightforward one. AI makes skilled brokers significantly more productive, and the gap between those using it and those who are not is already visible in the market. Ken Ashley of Cushman and Wakefield put it plainly. "AI can give you an Ironman super suit," he said. "It can make you two to three times more productive." Simon Enwia, a Chicago-based data center development broker, was equally direct: "If you're not a real estate professional using AI, you're already behind."

The productivity gains brokers described were concrete rather than theoretical. Julia Silva of Lee and Associates described using AI to build a complete client tour itinerary, inputting 10 building addresses alongside pickup time, preferred travel direction, traffic considerations and break intervals, then receiving a fully sequenced agenda in seconds. "That would have taken three days and five people," she said. Faster research, leaner prospecting workflows and more informed client conversations were the outcomes brokers cited most often, and in a market where speed is a competitive advantage, those gains compound quickly.

Brokers Are Using AI to Get Found, Not Just to Find

One of the more revealing insights from the gala was how many professionals are thinking about AI not only as a research tool but as a discovery channel through which clients find them. Mo Regalado of MOVO Media Marketing described a meaningful shift in how brokers need to think about content strategy. "You need to start creating content that actually gets found," she said, pointing to answer engine optimization as the emerging discipline that determines whose name surfaces when a prospective client types a question into Perplexity or another AI-powered search tool.

The most striking illustration came from Bob Knakal of BKREA, whose team has invested heavily in search optimization and content production across every deal category they work. An owner who inherited a Manhattan development site went directly to Perplexity to find qualified representation, with no referral and no prior relationship. Knakal's name dominated the first several pages of results. "He said, I don't need to hear about your background, just send me an agreement," Knakal recalled. Lindsay Latorre of Cushman and Wakefield Pyramid Brokerage observed the same dynamic from the owner side. Property owners are now arriving at listing conversations already self-educated through AI, she said, and they expect their brokers' materials to reflect the same standard. "They expect that when someone asks AI about a listing similar to theirs, ours comes up."

Prospecting and Data Enrichment Are the Highest-Value Use Cases

When brokers described their day-to-day AI usage, prospecting and ownership research surfaced more consistently than any other application. The ability to upload a contact list, validate ownership data and surface current contact information at a scale no human team could match is changing how brokers identify and prioritize leads.

Cory Zelnik of Zelnik and Co. described using AI to conduct broader and more unconventional tenant searches than his team could have managed previously, compressing the time between target identification and the deal phase. Knakal framed it as a funnel management tool, one that takes thousands of potential contacts down to hundreds, then dozens, then a handful of serious prospects. "What's better than AI to make that process streamlined and efficient?" he said.

Crexi's Data Enrich feature is built for exactly this workflow. Brokers upload an address or a list and receive ownership records, transaction history, contact data and loan information drawn from Crexi's proprietary database. Kaylan Knitowski, a retail investment sales broker who received early access, said she had previously relied on competing platforms for this data and found them frustratingly inaccurate. After cross-referencing, Crexi's records proved more reliable in practice. "Nine times out of 10 when I check on Crexi, I get someone on the phone," she said. "Why am I not using all the tools in my tool belt?"

Market Research That Used to Take Days Now Takes Minutes

Several brokers pointed to AI-generated market reports as among the highest-impact workflow changes they have encountered, particularly for professionals who are expected to produce research-ready materials quickly and consistently. Tooba Patoli, a retail leasing and investment sales broker based in Texas, described the change in concrete terms. "Market reports that I usually spend hours on, or have to assign to an intern, are just getting done," she said. Jaidyn Smith of Friedman Real Estate cited the ability to validate data, surface trends and generate accurate research outputs quickly as something that has changed how she prepares for client conversations.

Crexi's Market Analytics tool automates this workflow by drawing from Crexi's own transaction and listing data alongside inputs from CBRE, JLL and more than a dozen additional industry sources. David Auerbach, who covers the REIT sector, described what that capability means at scale. "If you can keep running that on a 24-hour cycle and produce reports on every sector in every city in a single day, that's a powerful tool," he said. "You bring that information into the conversation sooner and you get to shake hands with everything ready to go.

AI Is Changing What Owners Expect From Their Brokers

One of the more consequential dynamics brokers described was the way AI has raised the baseline expectations of property owners. Owners are now conducting their own research before engaging a broker, which means they arrive at early conversations informed, sometimes with incorrect assumptions and nearly always with higher standards for the materials and market expertise they expect to see. Latorre described owners asking directly how their listing team is incorporating AI into the research and marketing process. It is no longer a differentiator to raise the subject, she said. It is becoming a threshold question.

Knitowski, who received early beta access to several upcoming Crexi features, said one in particular has her attention: a tool that produces marketing packages and processes lease abstracts, a meaningful capability for large multi-tenant deals where reading every lease and amendment individually is not realistic. "We sometimes pay an overseas team when we have a 40-plus-unit deal," she said. "You can't read 600 leases." She declined to say more about the specifics while the product is still in testing, but called it one of the most practically useful things she has seen in the pipeline.

The Risks Experienced Brokers Are Avoiding

Not every voice at the gala was uniformly enthusiastic, and several of the more seasoned professionals offered specific cautions that are worth taking seriously. Patoli, who uses Perplexity and Claude in her own practice, described watching deals fall apart because tenants had substituted AI outputs for professional counsel. "Tenants are using AI as their attorney and as their market research," she said. "Five percent is not normal just because ChatGPT tells you it is." Latorre flagged hallucination as a concrete operational risk, noting that certain AI sources will fabricate information confidently and that brokers must verify outputs before presenting them to clients.

Ashley offered the most memorable framing of what is at stake. "Fire on a Saturday evening in a cool setting is wonderful, but it can also burn down your house," he said. His point was not that AI should be avoided but that professionals who lean on it without maintaining their own expertise will eventually be exposed by it. "Don't become lazy," he said. "You still have to do your job."

The Human Element Is Not Going Anywhere

Across every conversation at the gala, the same conclusion surfaced in different forms. AI is most powerful when it eliminates the work that keeps brokers away from clients, not when it attempts to replicate the judgment and relationships that make deals happen. Silva, who uses AI throughout her day and credits it with making her measurably faster and more effective, was direct about where the boundary sits. "AI will never know the market," she said. "It makes me better. It makes me faster. But the broker is not going anywhere." Auerbach made a similar point about the fundamentally relational nature of commercial real estate. "Pressing the flesh, firm handshake, you can't replace that with machine learning," he said. "Our business needs events like this."

The opportunity, as Ashley framed it, is using AI to compress the low-payback work so that more time and energy are available for the high-payback conversations. That framing, more than any specific tool or feature, is what distinguished the brokers at this year's gala who are already seeing results from AI from those who are still trying to figure out where to start.

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