Do you worry parts of your job will be replaced by AI?
Just wrapping up the year and realized I’ve now spent about 10 years in CRE, most of it building and maintaining Excel financial models and running analysis.
With AI moving as fast as it is, I honestly think one day it’ll write investment memos and analysis summaries better than I do. At the same time, some small tools (even basic automation / scripts) already save me a ton of time on boring stuff like data entry and formatting.
So I’m curious how others are thinking about this.
- Which part of your job would you love to see automated or replaced by AI?
- Which part of your job do you actually worry could be taken over by AI?
Not trying to hype anything — genuinely interested in how people on deal teams are seeing this play out.
No. I can barely trust LLMs to get memos correct, let alone anything meaningful. The amount of hallucinations and bullshit they produce is comical. I would absolutely not trust important numbers to it.
Maybe "AI" will eventually get there when it comes to Excel and PowerPoint, but LLMs aren't going to take rich old investors to dinner and convince them to give me tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. LLMs aren't going to smooth over issues with the city and neighborhood alliances with a smile. LLMs aren't going to walk a property to ensure it feels right, even if it is built to plan.
I agree that the real estate business is highly people-oriented, and relationships do play a big role. But I think AI has so much more potential than just Excel and PowerPoint. It can help identify the rich people you need to focus on, and even estimate their investment potential, saving you the time of door-knocking or meeting countless people. My friend who works in capital markets at one of the Big Five firms still meets hundreds of people to close deals and is seeking tools to streamline that process. AI could be the solution here.
Btw, have you tried AI boyfriend/girlfriend? I guess they can provide more emotional values to those rich people at some points and get their investments.,,,
...bro, what? No I haven't tried an AI girlfriend (lmao) and "identifying rich people" doesn't save you the time from meeting them. You still have to meet them.
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What platform have you tried for AI partners?
Anyone worried their job will be replaced by AI is not very good at their job.
AI finds patterns and spits out the most logical next iteration in that pattern. That's it. It isn't intelligent in any real sense. It doesn't do anything, and certainly not with any degree of accuracy or ability, that human beings can't do with a fraction of their brain.
The entire AI hype bubble is a fraud being perpetrated by big tech to boost valuations by promising another avenue of massive growth. Unfortunately, the reality is that no one finds AI useful in a meaningful sense. It is a fun toy, but not one users are willing to pay for.
I don’t disagree that AI in its current state hallucinates and is not a direct replacement for people but how can you say no one is willing to pay for it? OpenAI and Anthropic together are collectively at $25bn of ARR in ~3 years.. they are two of the fastest growing companies in human history at scale.
Wait, where did you get that number? Aggregate revenue is not the same as ARR, as I understand it, and in any case that doesn't sound particularly accurate.
Also, the service is being vastly subsidized by the mountains of cash both firms burn. OpenAI alone seems to have lost $21b in the last two years and that doesn't count capex or the kinds of compute deals done "in kind" with Microsoft, as far as I understand it.
Of course they're the fastest growing companies in human history. They're the most unprofitable companies in human history, too. Talking about growth in this context is fucking absurd. Any fucking moron on the street can hit $25bn in sales. I could sell that much in candy bars every year on the NYC subway, if I had an unlimited amount of money to burn. "Hey, buy my Snickers bar for $20 and I'll hand you $200 simultaneously!"
No one, and I mean no one, is paying a full cost for AI or LLMs in particular. Until these services are profitable it's absurd to talk about paying customers. Or to do you one better, until the paying users are willingly paying an unsubsidized rate that exceeds the unit cost to offer the product, anyone talking about "paying customers" is blowing smoke up your ass.
Sorry I don't agree with it either. I have seen AI rapidly changing how people work, from tools like meeting recording to Data Analysis. For example, myself is building a smart AI analysis engine to replace financial modeling on bloody Excel, I can see the potential that one day it can immediately answer your what-if questions instead of lost in models.
"AI is changing how people work! It can record a meeting!" Holy shit?!?! It can record a meeting? Kind of like... a video or audio recording? That's some futuristic shit, man!
Ah, myself is building a smart AI analysis engine! Of course.
Stripping out all the nonsense gobblydegook in here, what is it you're doing? You're building a financial model that incorporates "What If" analysis. I was the world's worst investment banker, but even I was able to build a model that could do that, and that was literally decades ago.
I mean, do you hear yourself? You've got nothing to back up your point except vague platitudes about what AI might do in the future. What is it doing now that is so revolutionary? What does it do today that justifies that hype? All AI boosters ever do is talk about what this shit will accomplish in some nebulous future. OpenAI has been around for a decade, and has seen more money poured into and more favorable press given to it than any human enterprise in the history of mankind, by an order of magnitude.
After all that, it still sucks and can't actually do anything useful at scale!
Why? Why should it scare me? Because it can mimic stock phrases? We reduce simple chit chat to stock words and phrases because it doesn't make sense to engage in deep philosophical musing with a total stranger 1 second after meeting them. We reduce the brainpower and thought needed to get through those meaningless interactions by reducing them to mechanical "if, then" functions.
AI is barely capable of replicating the absolute lowest form of human interaction. That isn't scary. It's depressing. Hundreds of billions, nearing trillions of dollars have been spent so that AI can ask a person about the weather?
If AI can fully emulate hashing things out the neighborhood / City officials we got more things to worry about than AI just replacing our jobs
Technically this can be done already...
No it can not. Stop it.
LLMs cannot meet with locals and city officials to gain their trust and approval for a project.
I don’t really think AI will take jobs from people with experience (CRE and Oz made good points on this already) but I think it will reduce the need for admin and junior roles over time.
I’m sure it will be in the same way the type writter or the PC reduced the need for admins. I think AI will kill the section of the economy. I mean - LLMs are going to improve to the point where they’ll make as many mistakes as these employees would but you don’t have to pay an LLM healthcare benefits.
I feel for the young folks today - all of the entry level jobs are disappearing (outsourcing, AI, automation - it would be interesting to research what happened with these advancements). I think there is a good chance youth unemployment rates to skyrocket over the next decade. The question is what impact will this have on the economy - should we be building more 3-bed units to adjust for potential demand of young renters needing to split space with roommates for the 20’s and even early 30’s for young professionals in urban environments who’s careers take longer to launch?
Or maybe this all offsets by boomers retiring in mass (probably won’t happen though, almost every successful person of that vintage I know is planning to work until the grave lol).
Good conversation topic.
Thanks, I really appreciate your insight. I feel the same way. OpenAI has brought in financial experts to help alleviate the heavy manual workload for junior bankers. What's interesting, though, is that when I first started my career in investment banking, I was told that these tasks were crucial for developing a strong understanding of investments and honing my numerical intuition. But if AI can take over these tasks, what’s left for juniors to focus on? Without the need for financial modeling or creating PowerPoint presentations, it seems like the focus will shift more towards soft skills and networking. This could fundamentally reshape what junior roles look like going forward.
Some one still needs to run the AI - probably similar situation to when excel came out.My guess is less seats not no seats.It’s likely it will become a new suite of software, classes wil be taught in at the high school and college level in things like prompting, there could be probability tests that people will run to give confidence (reviewing r-values p-values, deciding on different regressions for different data sets to decide accuracy of output) in whether the conclusion is right. Training AI to handle data for niche industries. There will be skills to become expert in and teach the dinosaurs who came up the ranks working with “old school” tools like excel. Ever hear a boomer talk about working with DAS and the transition to working with windows or other operating systems in the 80s/90s?
AI = assistant. The judgement and decision-making will always rest on a person. If you're a junior, probably time to polish your skills to show your value beyond the routine/administrative tasks.
Yes that's exactly the trend. AI handles the heavy work and human make the decision.
what do you think would be some ways to develop the decision making/judgement skills?
I'd like to see AI negotiate down bullshit change orders with a sub or navigate the hellhole that is getting a CO inspector out to a project in Philadelphia, let alone getting approval.
CRE is an inefficient, highly localized market - I'm not worried about AI completely replacing development work. Only use case I could see would be managing workflows, screening zoning requirements, etc. A tool - not a replacement for people.
I dont think anybody is denying any of those tasks will be replaced by AI at all. The problem with the question "Will AI replace our jobs?" was never going to yield the correct answer. No of course it won't replace all our jobs but put it this way if Im handling 5 projects right now dealing with change orders and supply issues, well im also dealing with other BS task that takes up another 40% of my time. Well now take that away and I can handle 9 projects now as I have more time to allocate for that. Well guess what that means we are more efficient which is awesome but now we need less project managers. Efficiency increases which means we need less labor. Its not AI replacing us, its efficiency thaty requires less of us.
I can't agree more on this. It basically frees up our hands to take over more projects and do better human-interaction and communication.
I've always heard, and as been proven on my career, the more experienced you become, the more value you'll need to add to prove out the higher comp you'll get. AI will help people move away from processing information to managing that information and ultimately managing outcomes based on that information.
No, because I'm a business owner (ignore title). What's it gonna do? Buy my business? Maybe the wagies should be worried though.
Thanks mate. I do think using AI will benefit small shops with more cost efficiency.
ai would reach its ceiling in most of areas if not already reached
I am generally on the side of 'there will not be a real estate jobs apocalypse' due to AI for the 'hands on' operators close to the assets, which are by definition illiquid and unique.
However, with rote tasks (legal contracts, memorandum production, property condition assessments, and eventually underwriting), one person will be able to do the job of 3-4, and the number of corresponding available jobs will contract ~75%.
One day I will trust AI on PSA/lease mark-ups, but I don't see the day I sign an LOI/term sheet from an humanless AI agent or give a humanless AI agent a leasing/sales mandate. Those are too important to try to save money by cutting corners via AI. Also, when there is trust and reputations at stake (and not strictly dollars), folks will be very hesitant to use AI, which means it can't 'learn' or 'prove itself.' It will be redlined / discriminated against because of the reputational risk for the human delegating to it.
Just my two cents. I honestly have no idea and think the vast majority of people don't either. And those who do have insight are 'selling their AI book' 99% of the time.
Thanks for the insight — I totally agree. Tools like Cursor save me a significant amount of time and labor cost, effectively replacing the workload of several staff, though everything still requires manual review. I think it’s similar in real estate: AI can support the process, but final decisions and capital deployment still require human judgment. That said, I can imagine a future where small, agile teams leverage these tools to compete at a scale that once required firms the size of Blackstone.
F*** no
Not in RE, but I can tell you even in AM I do not think you should worry about your job being lost from AI if you have 5+yrs of experience.
It is tough for juniors -- those seats won't all be eliminated, but may shrink and at least probably go sideways
Does no good to be worried about this though, what can you do about it even if it did happen?
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