From agent AI to cybersecurity threats, Inman Connect New York revealed how artificial intelligence is reshaping real estate and why agents must adapt now.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping real estate at a pace that most people can’t ignore, and real estate agents are feeling the pressure to adapt. At Inman Connect New York, we couldn’t miss that urgency. There, AI dominated conversations throughout sessions, panels, and hallway conversations.
In a midweek session, Jeff Lobb, founder of SparkTank Media, pointed to warnings from the tech industry. When smartphones began to redefine mobile communications, BlackBerry resisted change and paid the price.
The message to agents was that AI is not a passing trend. Already, the way we do business is changing, and those who hesitate risk being left behind.
While AI surfaced in many key discussions at the conference, from marketing and search visibility to workflow automation and customer communications, one theme continued to emerge: adaptation is essential for all agents.
Here are three of the biggest AI takeaways from Inman Connect New York.
We’ll hear more about “agent” AI this year
Most real estate agents don’t consider themselves tech geeks, nor do they need a deep understanding of how large-scale language models work to benefit from AI. But there is one new development worth noting. It’s agent AI.
This concept was reiterated at Inman Connect New York and is expected to shape the way real estate professionals work in the coming year. Simply put, agent AI refers to autonomous, goal-driven systems that can perform multi-step tasks with minimal human prompting and adapt to changing conditions to deliver results.
Rather than acting like disposable tools, these AI agents can act like digital teammates, coordinating workflows, managing follow-up, and running routine processes behind the scenes.
The practical implications are important. By offloading time-consuming and repetitive tasks, agent AI can free up agents to focus on relationship-focused work like meeting with customers, negotiating deals, and building trust.
And if conversations at conferences are any indication, industry leaders expect this technology to quickly move from buzzword to everyday workflow over the next year.
New tools, new threats
AI is already delivering significant efficiency gains for real estate agents, and the benefits are likely to grow even further. But alongside the positives comes a new layer of risk that agents cannot ignore.
One concern is data security. Feeding sensitive client information into AI tools, such as email drafts, memo summaries, and workflow automation, creates new danger points. As AI systems become more autonomous and interconnected, the potential impact of mishandling data increases.
The conversation at Inman Connect New York emphasized that this is not just a theory. Emerging AI ecosystems are enabling automated systems to exchange and process information at scale, raising new cybersecurity questions about how data is managed and protected.
Fraud is also a rapidly evolving threat. AI-generated deepfakes (real audio, video, spoofs) can be used to trick customers into transferring funds or revealing personal information. John Berkowitz, president of Lower Real Estate, likened this risk to an AI-powered modern version of classic wire fraud like the Nigerian Prince, but this one is much more convincing.
The key for agents is not to avoid AI, but to approach it with discipline. Carefully vet your technology partners, understand how their platforms process your data, and build validation safeguards into your transaction workflows.
As AI becomes more integrated into daily real estate operations, security awareness will become just as important as efficiency gains.
Proptech vendors race to own AI workflows
Another downstream effect of AI in real estate is the reshaping of the proptech landscape. Many companies are racing to integrate a patchwork of agent tools into an AI-driven “operating system.” This is a migration aimed at centralizing workflows rather than distributing them across disconnected platforms.
AI performs best when it has access to integrated, high-quality data. When client communications, transaction details, and marketing workflows exist within a single environment, AI operates across the process rather than in isolated silos, delivering meaningful efficiency gains.
This change has increased competition among proptech vendors. Enterprises are competing to build the most comprehensive AI-powered ecosystem that promises streamlined agent operations and smarter automation. That push was on full display at Inman Connect New York, where dozens of vendors showcased platforms built on a similar vision: centralized data, unified workflows, and AI layered into everything.
The opportunity and challenge for agents is to cut through the noise and determine which systems are truly delivering on these promises.
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