New research finds a yawning gap between AI adoption and confidence in commercial real estate, with data quality emerging as the decisive obstacle
Commercial real estate has quietly become a daily AI user. Yet when a deal is actually on the line, the industry largely sets the technology aside and a new industry survey explains why.
New research from First American Data & Analytics and deal workflow platform DealGround surveyed 255 direct CRE professionals across the United States and found that while two-thirds (66%) use AI on a weekly or daily basis, just 5% say they trust it enough to let it influence actual CRE decisions.
The report, titled CRE Industry Pulse Check: What's Reality vs. Hype in AI's Impact on CRE, was fielded between March 31 and April 8, 2026, and offers a detailed sector-specific read on where AI stands and where it falls short.
"AI adoption in CRE is no longer the question — trust is. Professionals are using AI, but only if the outputs are verifiable and the data is reliable. Closing this gap is what will move AI from a productivity tool to a decision-making engine," said Matt Key, vice president of property data at First American Data & Analytics.
The adoption-confidence divide
Among those surveyed, 41.6% use AI daily and another 24.3% use it weekly, making active users a clear majority.
Senior leaders are even more engaged: 75.9% of VP-level and above respondents reported weekly or daily use, suggesting the push is coming from the top, not the periphery.
However, nearly all of that activity is confined to low-stakes, easily verifiable tasks.
The most common primary use cases in the prior 90 days were market research and comparable analysis (20%), lease abstracting and document review (15.3%), and marketing materials and presentations (13.7%).
Underwriting and financial modeling followed at 12.2%, while deal sourcing and property valuation remained marginal applications.
The pattern is consistent: CRE professionals reach for AI where a wrong answer is recoverable. They pull back sharply where it is not.
Among all 255 respondents, 53.3% said they use AI for support only and exclude it from actual decision-making; just 13 people, or 5.1% of the sample, said they trust it enough to let it influence real CRE decisions.
Read more: Mortgages are high stakes. Can AI be trusted to get it right?
Cost isn't the barrier — credibility is
Among the 188 respondents who do not already use AI extensively, the survey probed what was holding them back. The answers were telling.
The leading barrier was tool confusion: 64 respondents, or 34%, said they simply don't know which tools to use.
Output skepticism was a close second, cited by 60 respondents (32%). Data privacy concerns came in third at 17%.
Cost, by contrast, barely registered. Only 10 respondents, or roughly 5%, identified price or unclear return on investment as their main obstacle. The implication is significant for vendors and platform builders: the market is not price-sensitive on AI, it is trust-sensitive.
Professionals appear willing to pay for tools that credibly fit their workflows. What they are not willing to do is stake a deal on outputs they cannot verify.
Read more: The Intelligence Advantage: How AI is reshaping the American mortgage broker
"CRE professionals are not resisting AI — they're pressure-testing it. Brokers will adopt tools that fit how they actually work, but they will not stake a deal on outputs they don't trust. The next phase of AI in CRE will go beyond answering questions to help professionals execute inside real workflows," said Dan Mosher, CEO and co-Founder of DealGround.
Time savings reflect the same dynamic. While 69% of respondents reported saving at least one hour per week from their most-used AI tool, the gains remain modest for most: the single largest group, 28%, reported saving only one to two hours per week.
Just 42% were saving three or more hours, and 31% reported no measurable time savings at all. AI is useful today, the report concludes, but not yet transformative for most CRE teams.
Cotality data shows rising hesitation toward AI in mortgages, with Amy Gromowski highlighting the need for transparency and consumer trust.https://t.co/ljeZXEtabF
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) May 4, 2026
Brokers want better data, not more features
The broker-specific data in the survey's appendix amplifies the broader findings.
Brokers were among the most active AI users in the sample: 47.7% reported daily use, above the overall average.
Their top primary use cases were market research and comparable analysis (24.3%) and marketing and listing copy (23.4%). But their forward-looking priorities revealed exactly where unmet demand sits.
A full 35.5% of brokers named more reliable rent and sale comps in thin or opaque markets as the most valuable future AI capability — the single highest response in their cohort.
Across the full survey, the desire to automate manual transaction and closing steps led all future capability preferences at 33.3%, followed by reliable comps at 24.7%.
For Key, those priorities reflect a structural challenge. "CRE professionals are not asking for more features — they are looking for less friction, more consistency and greater confidence in the underlying data and information," he said.
"The stronger the data foundation, the more useful and trustworthy AI becomes."
The report describes three pillars of data quality that underpin trustworthy AI outputs: comprehensive geographic coverage, standardized and consistent formats, and continuously updated records built for analytics and machine learning.
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