What will ‘never go away’ as AI spreads through real estate
Agents, don’t fear AI, advises tech expert Matt Britton — the more you use it to tackle busywork, the more time you’ll have for clients.
Key points:
- The real estate industry is lagging when it comes to AI adoption for automated tasks — but change is coming quickly, according to AI expert Matt Britton.
- Agents who can set up their own AI workflows will be able to spend more time developing relationships with clients, he explained during a recent conference.
- As AI handles more day-to-day mundane tasks, creativity will become key to success.
The real estate industry is behind the curve when it comes to embracing automation and ridding agents of time-consuming paperwork. But this delay means that, for the creative real estate professionals who embrace new tech offerings, there are opportunities to separate themselves from the pack.
This is one of the messages that artificial intelligence expert Matt Britton delivered in November at NAR NXT 2025. Due to the fast pace of AI development, many in the industry are at risk of being left behind, the founder and CEO of consumer insights platform Suzy explained.
AI's long-term industry impacts
The debate over private listings and persistently elevated mortgage rates may be grabbing headlines, but it's the back-office tech transformations — like AI's ability to help with social media posts and verify documents for a transaction — that will make a difference for many real estate teams and offices in the year ahead.
"This is moving so fast that the work you're doing in the next 90-120 days will impact the next 10 years of your career," Britton told an audience of more than 2,000 NAR members on Nov. 14.
While this strikes fear in many who are concerned about the possibility of their job disappearing, Britton sees the coming changes as a plus for creative agents who want to cut down on busywork and spend more time with clients.
"That human trust and that human connection when you're making the most important financial decision of your life, in my opinion, is something that will never go away," Britton said, adding that agents aren't currently spending enough time doing the things that make them uniquely human.
How AI can help agents
Britton predicts automation in real estate is occurring more quickly than most might have expected — and the industry's inflection point is now.
In this initial phase of AI adoption, most people are using the new tech as a tool to answer questions. The next step will be automation as agents develop their own large language models to handle workflows — something that is already becoming evident in other industries and forcing significant labor market changes as companies like Amazon announce layoffs.
In real estate, Britton expects the automation phase to feature "AI agents." These tools will have the autonomy to make low-level decisions, such as whether an individual who signs up for a real estate newsletter is someone an agent should meet with.
Changing the work mindset
For some agents, embracing AI will change how they view work. As an example, Britton used AI to create a country music video that showed him singing about the features of a standard home listing. Once the structure was in place, all he had to do was set the parameters for AI.
AI can also help agents figure out what size loan a client can get approval for, and can create personalized emails for home shoppers based on their must-have and nice-to-have lists. What's most exciting about AI: It will be widely accessible to everyone — not just the tech geeks.
"You do not need to be an expert to do something great," Britton said. "You just have to figure out what are the most important problems you want to solve in your life and your career."