Artificial intelligence is reshaping real estate at a pace few can ignore, and agents are feeling the pressure to adapt. That urgency was impossible to miss at Inman Connect New York, where AI dominated conversations across sessions, panels and hallway conversations.
During a mid-week session, Jeff Lobb, founder of SparkTank Media, pointed to a cautionary tale from the tech world. When smartphones began redefining mobile communication, BlackBerry resisted change and paid the price.
The message to agents was that AI isn’t a passing trend. It’s already transforming how business gets done, and those who hesitate risk being left behind.
With AI surfacing in so many major discussions at the conference — from marketing and search visibility to workflow automation and client communication — one theme kept emerging: adaptation is vital for every agent.
Here are three of the biggest AI takeaways from Inman Connect New York:
You’ll be hearing more about ‘agentic’ AI this year
Most real estate agents don’t consider themselves tech nerds, and they don’t need a deep understanding of how large language models work to benefit from AI. But there’s one emerging development they should have on their radar: agentic AI.
The concept came up repeatedly at Inman Connect New York and is expected to shape how real estate professionals work in the coming year. Simply put, agentic AI refers to autonomous, goal-driven systems that can carry out multi-step tasks, adapt to changing context and deliver results with minimal human prompting.
Instead of acting like single-use tools, these AI agents function more like digital teammates, capable of coordinating workflows, managing follow-ups and executing routine processes behind the scenes.
The practical implication is significant. By offloading repetitive, time-consuming tasks, agentic AI could give agents more room to focus on relationship-driven work — meeting clients, negotiating deals and building trust.
And if conference conversations are any indication, industry leaders expect this technology to move quickly from buzzword to everyday workflow in the year ahead.
New tools, new threats
AI is already delivering meaningful efficiency gains for real estate agents, and those advantages are likely to grow. But alongside the upside comes a new layer of risk that agents can’t afford to ignore.
One concern is data security. Feeding sensitive client information into AI tools — whether for drafting emails, summarizing notes or automating workflows — introduces new exposure points. As AI systems become more autonomous and interconnected, the potential consequences of mishandled data increase.
The conversation at Inman Connect New York underscored that this isn’t theoretical. Emerging AI ecosystems are enabling automated systems to exchange and process information at scale, raising new cybersecurity questions about how that data is governed and protected.
Fraud is another fast-evolving threat. AI-generated deepfakes — realistic voice, video or identity impersonations — could be used to trick clients into wiring funds or revealing personal information. John Berkowitz, President of Real Estate at Lower, likened the risk to a modern, AI-powered version of classic wire-fraud scams like the Nigerian prince, only far more convincing.
The takeaway for agents isn’t to avoid AI, but to approach it with discipline. Vet technology partners carefully, understand how platforms handle data and build verification safeguards into transaction workflows.
As AI becomes more embedded in everyday real estate operations, security awareness will be just as important as efficiency gains.
Proptech vendors will compete to own the AI workflow
Another downstream effect of AI in real estate is a reshuffling of the proptech landscape. Many companies are racing to consolidate the patchwork of agent tools into AI-driven “operating systems” — a shift aimed at centralizing workflows rather than scattering them across disconnected platforms.
AI performs best when it has access to unified, high-quality data. When client communications, transaction details and marketing workflows live in a single environment, AI can operate across the entire process rather than in isolated silos, unlocking meaningful efficiency gains.
This shift is intensifying competition among proptech vendors. Companies are vying to build the most comprehensive AI-powered ecosystems, promising agents streamlined operations and smarter automation. That push was on full display at Inman Connect New York, where numerous vendors showcased platforms built around a similar vision: centralized data, integrated workflows and AI layered across everything.
For agents, the opportunity — and challenge — is cutting through the noise to determine which systems truly deliver on those promises.
