From Tools to Action: How Proptech Is Reshaping the Real Estate Business

Written by:

Chris Caggiano

Date:

21 Apr 2026

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The real estate industry has never been short of technology promises. Over the past decade, a wave of proptech innovation has washed over the industry — new platforms, new tools, new ways to search, market, and close. Much of it delivered incremental improvements. Some of it didn’t deliver at all. But something is shifting now, and the professionals paying closest attention say this moment feels different.

Jerry Larkowski, a broker with ESQ. Realty Group in Little Rock, Arkansas, puts it this way: “People are just now seeing that AI is more than ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini.” Those platforms dominated the early conversation, but users are increasingly turning to specialized tools built for specific jobs. The result, Larkowski says, is a landscape expanding fast. “The list of available AI tools will soon become like a Chinese restaurant menu — scores of options that take a while to read through.”

That proliferation is one of several developments reshaping how real estate professionals work. From AI systems that don’t just assist but act autonomously, to owner-controlled data infrastructure, to performance-based business models that flip the traditional fee structure, the proptech landscape is evolving in ways that go well beyond AI buzz. Not all of it will last. But some of it is already changing the business in ways that are hard to reverse.

From Assistance to Autonomy

For most of its history, real estate technology has been about helping agents do the same things faster. Search more listings, manage more contacts, run more campaigns. The underlying workflow didn’t change much. The agent was still the engine; the technology was just a better set of tools.

That’s starting to change. The emerging category of agentic AI doesn’t just retrieve information or generate suggestions — it executes. Dave Carter, VP of Marketing at Lofty, an AI-powered platform for real estate professionals, sees it as a fundamental restructuring of how agents operate. “These systems don’t just surface information or generate a suggestion,” he says. “They autonomously execute multi-step tasks: nurturing leads, scheduling follow-ups, identifying which clients are most likely to transact, and responding to inquiries in real time.”

The implications are significant for an industry where responsiveness and consistency are often the difference between winning and losing a client. Most agents, Carter notes, know what good follow-through looks like — they just don’t always have the bandwidth to deliver it. Agentic AI, he argues, fills that gap not by replacing the agent but by handling the operational layer so they can focus on what actually requires a human.

Daniel Shidleman, a developer and operator with Bridgemer Ltd., sees the same shift playing out in property management. AI agents, he notes, are already handling tenant interactions and executing follow-up steps autonomously. And they’re doing it around the clock. “These new employees never sleep, never get sick, and never go on vacation,” he says. “Today, AI agents already have their own names, birth dates, email addresses, and telephone numbers.” The technology is advancing faster than most of the industry has registered — and with it, he adds, come real questions about security and privacy that can’t be an afterthought.

The Data Layer

While agentic AI is getting most of the attention, Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, a digital infrastructure and building intelligence platform for commercial real estate, is focusing on a quieter shift that he argues will have equally significant long-term consequences. “The most valuable asset in a building is no longer just the physical space,” he says. “It’s the data generated inside it.”

For years, commercial real estate buildings have been layered with disconnected systems — HVAC, security, access control, tenant experience platforms — each generating data that nobody was connecting or controlling in any unified way. Owners were effectively outsourcing that data to vendors without fully understanding what they were giving up. Douglas argues that’s beginning to change, as a new generation of platforms and architectures is putting data ownership back in the hands of building owners rather than the technology providers serving them.

The practical consequences, he says, are showing up in the numbers. Owners who control their data and digital infrastructure are outperforming on operations, tenant experience, and asset value. Those who don’t are finding that the gap — like the affordability gap in residential markets — only widens over time. “The monetary benefits of data and digital infrastructure are already showing up in net operating income and exit valuations,” Douglas says.

The broader point is one that applies beyond commercial real estate. Across the industry, the professionals and organizations that treat data as a strategic asset rather than a byproduct of doing business are increasingly the ones with the clearest view of their markets, their clients, and their opportunities.

The Proliferating Toolkit

For most real estate professionals, the more immediate challenge isn’t understanding what agentic AI can do in theory — it’s figuring out which tools are worth adopting in practice. The options are multiplying, and evaluating them takes time that most practitioners don’t have.

What tends to separate lasting innovation from noise, observers say, is specificity. Tools that solve a well-defined problem in a measurable way tend to earn their place in a workflow. Those built around broad capability without a clear use case tend not to. Paras Panjwani, Managing Director of Panjwani Projects, offers a useful frame: “The most valuable technology will be the one that reduces risk, not just improves speed.”

Daniel Kaufman, Founder/CEO at DanReDev LLC, who tracks the intersection of real estate and technology through his investment work at Kaufman Ventures, cites speed as a reliable secondary metric. “The tools that compress the time from site identification to feasibility conclusion are genuinely changing how fast disciplined developers can move,” he says. “Businesses that adopt these early will have a real sourcing and speed advantage. The ones that don’t will feel it in their pipeline.”

The broader point is straightforward: technology is reshaping how real estate professionals work, and the pace of that change isn’t slowing. Which tools prove essential and which fall away will depend less on features than on whether they solve real problems for real practitioners.

New Business Models

Beyond the tools themselves, technology is enabling a quieter but equally significant shift: new business models that restructure how transactions get done and who bears the financial risk of doing them.

BuildersUpdate.com’s recently launched “Pay Upon Performance” model is one example. Rather than charging builders upfront marketing fees regardless of results, the platform connects them with a network of licensed real estate agents and collects a flat fee only when a sale closes. Bill Gaul, CEO of BuildersUpdate.com, describes it as a direct response to a market where hesitant buyers and rising costs are making traditional lead generation an increasingly uncertain investment for builders.

On the commercial side, DuckFund is addressing a different friction point — the earnest money deposit required to put a deal under contract. Anna Kogan, CEO and founder of DuckFund, describes the platform as soft deposit financing that allows investors to secure properties while preparing for a full equity raise. It’s a narrow but practical solution to a problem that regularly stalls deals for active investors managing multiple acquisitions at once.

Both models use technology to shift financial risk away from the operator — and in doing so, lower the barrier to participation in a market where capital constraints are increasingly a limiting factor.

What’s Built to Last

Not every proptech innovation that attracts attention will prove durable. The more practical question, as the current wave matures, is which developments are solving problems that are fundamental enough to become permanent fixtures of how real estate gets done.

By that measure, the innovations most likely to last are those that give developers, operators, and agents better information earlier — compressing uncertainty rather than just compressing time. Daniel Kaufman points to AI-driven underwriting and site analysis as the clearest example. Bill Douglas makes a similar argument about data infrastructure, where the gap between owners who control their building data and those who don’t is already showing up in asset valuations.

What ties these observations together is a common thread: the technology with the most staying power isn’t necessarily the most visible or the most talked about. It’s the kind that quietly changes the underlying economics of the business — and that becomes harder to operate without once it’s been adopted.

This article is based on information provided by the expert sources cited above. The views expressed are those of the individual contributors. The mention of any company, product, or service in this article does not represent an endorsement by KeyCrew or its editorial team. This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.