CRE Analysts' Jobs Are Changing Because Of AI. Here's What That Means For Hiring

Commercial real estate firms have reached a broad consensus that artificial intelligence could eventually help workers, especially analysts, do their jobs more efficiently. Expectations are higher and job openings are fewer as companies vie to be bigger, faster and stronger through the use of AI.

But angst and anxiety follow about long-term effects to the broader talent pipeline and the early career workers in it. 

“At the C-suite, it’s a concern about losing an edge, or giving an edge to someone else if they don't leverage AI to its full capability,” said Spencer Burton, former president of Stablewood Properties and co-founder and CEO of CRE Agents, an AI program for CRE.

“But what's interesting is you have a similar reaction by the rank and file: ‘I saw this person who is using AI in order to 10x their output. If my peers begin getting this sort of output, now I'm going to get left behind,’” he said.

AI’s impact has already changed hiring patterns and how firms evaluate talent. Firms are starting to think and plan around AI’s impact on the workforce, according to Keller Augusta Senior Managing Director Kaitlin Kincaid.

So far, that hasn’t meant headcount reductions, but talent is being evaluated based on technological savvy across all functions. 

“At an entry-level or a junior analytical role, there's a higher bar on somebody's technical or analytical capabilities,” Kincaid said. “We're giving you these tools to support your role. We're expecting a higher level of output.” 

Many large brokerages have already invested significant time and resources in building out their AI capabilities. JLL launched its own large-language model in 2023, and during a Q4 2024 earnings call, then-CEO Chris Ulbrich noted that the firm had a few dozen AI products ready to roll out.

Competing brokerages, including CBRE, have spent significant money creating internal databases to feed their own proprietary AI systems. CBRE’s Ellis, an AI tool that accesses research insights, helps staff “focus more time on value-add activities, and less time on hunting around for documents,” said James Cooper, Global Head of Analytics Engineering and AI for CBRE Investment Management.

“They're all saying that this is a priority,” Burton said. “I’m sure everyone has a budget for it. Everyone is allocating for AI.”

Roughly 63% of CRE firms expect to add 5% to 25% to the AI investment budget in the next two years, with a quarter of firms expected to add more than 25%, according to Ferguson Partners’ March 2025 AI Pulse survey. Many have been seduced by promises of faster deal flow and increased profits.

For business analysts, that means more investment in tools that help them go beyond harvesting and organizing data and more time to form a unique point of view.

“In terms of the business analyst role, we’re still a long way from fully replacing that role,” Ferguson Partners Managing Director Mike Cordingley said. “But it’s definitely evolving the role. Instead of, ‘Go run this analysis,’ it’s “What are the insights you can gain from it? How can we story tell into something meaningful?’”

Between doing market analysis or putting together deal decks, analysts in CRE today spend a significant amount of time combing through, cleaning up and entering data. Many estimates pin the figure at 40% or more of a typical workday. 

The promise of AI for analysts is freedom from drudgery. Steven Song, CEO and founder of Diald AI, calls it an “evolution, not an extinction” event for the role.

“AI is clearing the noise, allowing analysts to ask better questions, not just answer them faster,” he said.

His tool, which compiles investment memos, is already being used by equity inventors, foreign investors and even retail chains to evaluate deal proposals and potential expansion sites. 

Sammy Greenwall, CEO and co-founder of Henry, an AI tool that creates deal decks, began his CRE career as an analyst for Toll Brothers. His firm’s software, he claims, can create deal decks that encompass underwriting and market analysis in hours instead of days. 

Henry can get you 90% of the way there, Greenwall said. If it creates a finished document in a few hours with perhaps a few errors that need 30 to 45 minutes of correction time due to possible hallucinations or errors, workers still see tremendous value. 

After launching last May, the company already has hundreds of brokers from Marcus & Millichap, CBRE and JLL as subscribers, including enterprise agreements with some of the larger firms.

Greenwell claims that his product helps brokers spend more time on deals, allowing them to take on larger workloads, handling six or seven deals at once instead of two or three. And that, he says, is enabling firms to hire fewer analysts. As talent leaves, existing analysts can pick up the slack. 

“It's not like people are bringing in AI intentionally to fire people,” he said. “But what they are doing is they're bringing in AI so as they grow, they're not going to need to hire at the same scale.” 

One significant ramification of increased AI use, as well as an expectation of better analytical skills and efficiency, is a shift in entry-level hiring. Early reports indicate concern that current entry-level employees may not get the kind of introduction to the industry that previous ones did due to AI. 

The rise of AI is coinciding with brokerages having less of a desire to train new hires, Kincaid said. Part of it comes from the postpandemic inflation in salary that drives employers to want more output for more money. So even at a junior level, they want someone who can jump right in instead of a bright talent that needs training in basic analytics, she said.

That puts additional pressure on colleges to potentially provide the experience, skills and data awareness that entry-level roles used to provide. According to Andy Hunt, a real estate professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, colleagues across the country have been debating the role of AI in the classroom and in the future of CRE.

“There is concern that defaulting to what AI can do without having the more old school perspective of how to critique information will undermine a student’s ability to discern good info or good output from the bad,” said Collete English Dixon, executive director of Roosevelt University’s Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate.