If you’ve been around any technology topics at Inman Connect New York, you’ve probably heard about AI. While that may not be a huge surprise, this year has seen a change in tone and a clear evolution in the industry’s thinking about artificial intelligence.
Across the expo floor and in conversations with proptech founders, one theme stood out. That means 2026 is shaping up to be the year of AI growth. No longer limited to writing property descriptions or sending follow-up emails, AI is being reimagined as a true teammate in real estate workflows.
This next wave will focus on “agent” AI, or autonomous, goal-directed artificial intelligence “agents.” The agent platform can perform multi-step processes, adapt to context, and deliver results with little or no manual direction from the human real estate professionals using it.
“The biggest thing that will happen this year is the transition from traditional AI to AI that is more autonomous and acts more independently,” said Dave Carter, vice president of marketing at Lofty, an AI-powered CRM and lead generation platform. “It can be a real partner for real estate agents, not just a tool that does what it says it will do.”
Carter and his team recently announced what they call the first Agent Operating System (AOS) for real estate. This is a system that actively produces results, not just responds to prompts. “You can tell the AI, ‘I want 10 new listing opportunities this week,’ and the AI will jump into action and figure out how to make those happen,” Carter said. “It’s not just about completing a task; it’s about having a goal.”
What is agent AI and why is it important now?
AI tools like ChatGPT are now common in real estate marketing, but their main limitation is the lack of interactivity. These are still “one-off” tools. Prompt, receive results, repeat.
Agent AI breaks the mold. It performs multi-step tasks, adapts based on environmental feedback, and remembers past interactions.
According to Ruchir Baronia, CEO and founder of Frontdesk, that’s what makes front desks truly intelligent. Mr. Baronia left his high-paying job at Meta last year, moved from California to New York City and began building the front desk.
“With previous software, it was the same every time. With agent AI, it can remember the user, act based on the environment, and act in different ways based on different scenarios,” Baronia told Inman at Connect.
Front Desk AI was one of the first companies to integrate ChatGPT into its phone-based receptionist system, and now powers communications for thousands of agents, builders, and property managers. One of our customers, Samson Properties, generates more than $10 billion in annual revenue with the help of a virtual AI workforce that routes leads, captures inquiries, and even responds at 2 a.m.
“The AI will respond. It will respond to text messages, it will send emails,” Baronia added. “People’s roles will evolve to be more relationship-focused, including closing deals and non-repetitive tasks.”
While the potential of agent AI is clear, many industry participants acknowledge that current AI implementations are still in their infancy. Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of RealAnalytica, points out that most AI integrations in real estate are still “very simple.”
“What we thought about agents was that they could run multi-step flows,” Daoudi explained to Inman. “In addition to sending emails, you can also recreate listing flyers, send follow-up messages, and make recommendations. And you can do it all at once.”
At RealAnalytica, Daoudi’s team is building from the ground up to realize that vision. Their goal is to allow agents to assign complex tasks, such as preparing a listing reservation, with a single instruction, and to allow AI to handle every step of the workflow intelligently and autonomously.
Daoudi also pointed out that while real estate is catching up, other industries such as software engineering have already adopted agent systems where AI completes chains of reasoning and actions with minimal guidance.
Fueling the AI machine
Of course, none of this is possible without the underlying data infrastructure. Mike Bruni, a sales representative at First American Data and Analytics, emphasized that his company’s real estate data is the “bloodline of AI” for the entire industry.
“When you’re doing something agent-like or using machine learning, the power is data,” Bruni says. “We’re giving access to data to the people who build these powerful engines. We’re the oil. Maybe we’re the batteries.”
Bruni believes that land investments in particular are ripe for disruption. “A lot of people are looking to buy land, but they don’t want to travel 100 or 200 miles just to look at a property. They’re comfortable making due diligence decisions online with the data available to them,” he said. AI streamlines these decisions and makes it easier for non-institutional investors to acquire land remotely and with confidence.
But raw data is no longer the only issue. Bruni cited data visualization as a key trend for 2026. “There’s so much information available to consumers now, but they don’t know what to do with it,” he said. “We need to visualize it and express it in a way that’s easy to understand so that the average consumer can become a smart investor. You don’t have to go to real estate law school just to buy real estate.”
After all, the rise of agent AI isn’t just about reducing clicks or writing emails faster. It’s about freeing agents from digital drudgery and allowing them to do what they do best: connect with clients and close deals.
“Agents don’t want to be stuck behind a laptop munching on cereal,” says Lofty’s Carter. “They need to be proactive in meeting customers, building relationships, and selling homes. Our goal is to automate much of the back end so they can spend all their time on the front end.”
Email Nick Pipitone
