At the Power Tech & AI Forum hosted by Commercial Observer at Marx Realty in 10 Grand Central in New York, leading industry experts discussed the impact of modern technology on the commercial property sector. Tom Acitelli, deputy editor of Commercial Observer, emphasised in his opening remarks that hardly any technology in recent years had transformed the industry as profoundly as current developments in artificial intelligence.
Abhinav Somani, founder of Cadastral and head of real estate at Legora, offered a far-reaching outlook. He predicted that humanoid robots could become commercially viable as early as next year and leave a lasting mark on the industry. The transition from purely text-based two-dimensional intelligence to three-dimensional vision, speech processing and sensory perception would, in the long term, bring far greater disruption to the property sector than automated legal text drafting.
Efficiency gains in due diligence and preparation
During the panel discussion chaired by Cher Chang, founder of Literock Capital and partner at JLJ Capital, the focus was on tangible accelerations in transactional business. Somani explained that law firms and in-house legal departments are making intensive use of AI-assisted tools to review contracts and audit documentation swiftly. This allows negotiations and due diligence processes to be shortened considerably.
Significant progress is also being made in pre-construction. Zach Aarons, co-founder and general partner at MetaProp, reported on computer vision algorithms that, combined with generative models, cross-reference millions of pages of construction documents and specifications. As an example, he cited portfolio company Handoff, which prepares quantity take-offs for residential construction projects with an accuracy of 97 per cent, compared with 94 per cent for human teams, and at up to fifty times the speed.
JLL is also recording marked productivity gains. Joseph Sipala, Managing Director at JLL, explained that through the integration of tools such as Legora and Claude, portfolio analyses and lease reviews are completed in a quarter of the original time. What used to take a week now takes only a single day. Nick Durst, Principal and Director of Operations at the Durst Organization, added that complete data rooms can now be evaluated within minutes, simplifying the acquisition of development sites.
Shift towards specialised models
For the coming one to two years, industry representatives anticipate a shift away from generic off-the-shelf tools towards bespoke systems. Somani explained that companies will increasingly incorporate their own institutional knowledge to differentiate themselves in the market. Aarons reinforced this trend, predicting that market participants will in future selectively deploy different specialised models for specific workflow stages to reduce costs and maximise cost-effectiveness.
