ChatGPT is amazing – but it is barely scratching the surface of what’s truly revolutionizing the commercial real estate industry today.

And trying to figure out which AI companies are making the difference (they are not the ones you think) plus trying to figure out how to use them can be overwhelming.

But I’ve done the work for you.

Over the last few months, I’ve been researching AI companies that are bringing profound, measurable competitive advantages to sponsors who use them, and GowerCrowd is beginning to roll these out to our clients.

If you'd like to learn how we can do this for you too, please reply to this email.

Starting next Wednesday, Feb 4, I am running a series of special ‘Demo Day’ episodes on my podcast/YouTube show where you will be getting detailed on-screen walkthroughs of some of the most powerful tools available in the industry today.

​Watch these demos on YouTube, here.​

I guarantee this will change the way you think about AI in real estate and will give you a significant competitive edge right at the perfect moment i.e. now, when the market is turning.

In Brief:

• Most AI used in CRE today delivers incremental efficiency, not strategic advantage.
• A small group of AI companies is already eliminating real workflow choke points for sponsors.
• These tools compress timelines, reduce pursuit costs, and improve early decision-making.
• The result is institutional-level execution without institutional cost or headcount.
• Using these tools will get you the equivalent of a team of institutional caliber analysts for less than the cost of an overseas VA (virtual assistant).
• Demo Day is a series of episodes showcasing only these best-in-class platforms through short, onscreen demos.
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Here’s what I’ve found

In practice, AI is showing up in CRE in three very different ways.

First: the general AI layer

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini etc.

These tools are broadly useful and increasingly familiar. They improve drafting, synthesis, and thinking. But they are unstructured, generic, and rarely decisive inside a sponsor workflow.
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Second: early-stage CRE tech with AI branding

A growing wave of startups is using AI to address long-standing gaps in the industry. Some look great on the surface and promise a lot. Many are simply too early to matter for serious operators today.
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Third: a much smaller group that actually matters

These companies have identified real choke points in the sponsor workflow and removed them entirely. They have raised considerable early stage financing, often from venture capital companies, and have significant, growing customer bases.

These companies are helping sponsors:

• Find more acquisitions, faster
• Reduce pursuit and diligence costs
• Underwrite more deals with greater precision
• Operate at institutional scale with smaller teams
• Increase rents and retention rates while reducing costs

Each episode in the new series follows an intentionally simple format:

• In the first minute you’ll learn what the platform does
• Then you’ll discover how you benefit
• And then, in an onscreen demo, I’ll show you how easy it is to get immediate results

The first episode goes live next Wednesday, Feb 4^th.

If you want to understand where AI-driven competitive advantage is forming in CRE, this series is for you.

​Subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch these onscreen demos there.​
​
Adam

PS. If you are developing similar AI tools focused on the CRE industry, let me know. I'd love to see what you've got...

This Week's Podcast

Guest: Jeremy Roll, President at Roll Investment Group

The Year Predictability Broke

My guest this week, Jeremy Roll, is a full-time professional passive investor who has spent more than two decades allocating capital across multiple real estate cycles. He consumes macroeconomic data obsessively, tracks capital markets closely, and approaches investing with an explicitly conservative, risk-first mindset.

That combination makes his perspective especially valuable at this point in the cycle, when patience is being tested and easy narratives are failing. Jeremy is not trying to predict the next headline move.

He is focused on understanding where we actually are, what has quietly broken, and why capital remains sidelined despite widespread talk of opportunity. The result is a grounded, unsentimental view of 2025 and what truly matters heading into 2026.

Looking back at 2025, Roll notes that several assumptions that quietly underpinned commercial real estate strategy for years simply failed. The most obvious was the mantra “survive till 25,” built around the expectation that floating-rate bridge loans would be refinanced into a friendlier rate environment.

Interest rates did not fall as many sponsors expected. Not because the Federal Reserve failed to cut short-term rates, but because long-term rates reflected a different reality. Stronger-than-expected economic growth, persistent inflation risk, uncertain demand for long-term Treasuries, and questions around U.S. debt sustainability combined to keep the ten-year elevated.

The result was not a single shock, but a prolonged erosion of predictability. Tariffs, delayed policy deadlines, front-loaded inventories, and shifting inflation expectations made underwriting harder, not easier. For investors like Roll, who prioritize repeatability and downside protection, 2025 reinforced an uncomfortable truth; the environment rewarded patience more than action.

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Why Rates Stayed Higher Than Expected

Roll is clear-eyed about the interest-rate narrative. While the Fed controls short-term rates, long-term yields respond to growth expectations, inflation risk, and perceived sovereign risk. In his words, “lower demand for treasuries… combined with the potential for higher inflation for longer… would also imply higher interest rates.”

This matters for commercial real estate because long-term rates anchor valuations. Even modest shifts in the ten-year Treasury can overwhelm incremental NOI growth. The hoped-for rescue via falling rates never arrived, and with it went the idea that time alone would heal marginal deals.
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The Liquidity That Isn’t Moving

One of the more puzzling features of the current market is the widely cited “capital on the sidelines.” If liquidity is abundant, why is transaction volume still muted? The answer isn't far away: The risk reward doesn’t make sense.

Prices have not adjusted enough to restore positive leverage. Spreads remain tight relative to risk. In that environment, sitting in cash is not indecision, it’s discipline. This is a critical distinction for investors. Liquidity exists, but it is conditional and requires either lower prices or meaningfully better leverage. Until one of those arrives, patience dominates.

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The Slow Mechanics of Price Discovery

Unlike the Global Financial Crisis, today’s reset has not been forced by regulation. Banks have not been required to mark assets to market. Instead, extensions, modifications, and incremental concessions have delayed recognition of losses.Roll describes it as a drawn-out process rather than denial.

“The extensions are just coming to a head. It’s just been too long.” Bid-ask spreads remain wide, but they are narrowing as maturities accumulate and lenders become less willing to defer decisions.

Historically, even in multifamily, stabilization took years after the last cycle began. Roll places the current moment closer to late 2009 or 2010 than to 2011. The turn is visible, but incomplete.

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Where Distress Actually Creates Opportunity

Roll sees 2026 as a year when inventory finally increases. More lender-driven sales. More forced price discovery. Higher transaction volume. For buyers with the right risk tolerance, that is constructive.He is careful to distinguish between strategies. Heavy value-add investors are already active and should be deepening relationships now. Those opportunities are “once in a cycle.”

Miss them, and they will not return soon. Value investors, by contrast, face a different risk. Being too early. Real estate adjusts slowly, but catching a falling knife is still possible. Roll emphasizes caution over speed. “I’m actually worried about being too early than too late.”

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The Real Lesson of Floating-Rate Debt

When asked what investors learned from 2025, Roll rejects the simplistic conclusion that floating-rate debt itself was the problem. The deeper issue was cycle timing.

The most dangerous moment for heavy value-add strategies is late in an economic cycle, when runway is limited and assumptions must be perfect. Yet those are precisely the moments when such deals proliferate, because they are the only way to model headline IRRs. As Roll explains, “The safest time to do a heavy value deal is at the beginning of a cycle.”

Late-cycle execution risk is asymmetric as small disruptions become fatal.
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Sponsors, Incentives, and Discipline
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​One of the more uncomfortable truths Roll acknowledges is sponsor behavior under pressure. Some operators pursued deals to generate fees, not because the deals were compelling. Others succumbed to FOMO, mistaking activity for prudence.

By contrast, the sponsors who did nothing for several years often emerge stronger. Selling near the top, sitting on cash, and reentering only when pricing resets is emotionally difficult but strategically sound.Roll’s own filter is unapologetic. “The more deals someone did in 2021 or 2022, the less likely it is I’ll ever invest with them.”

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How Roll Approaches Opportunity Today

As a full-time passive investor, Roll spends his time networking, sourcing, and studying data. Finding deals, not analyzing them, is the hardest part because many opportunities never reach public solicitation.In vetting sponsors today, he focuses less on track records in benign markets and more on what sponsors have been through recently.
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Past distress can permanently raise a sponsor’s cost of capital, affecting future returns for investors.For new investors, his advice is foundational. First, understand the economic and real estate cycles. Second, focus on one asset class before diversifying. Familiarity compounds.

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A Market Defined by Patience
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​Roll’s outlook for 2026 is neither euphoric nor pessimistic. It is conditional. Opportunity is forming, but unevenly. Capital will move when pricing and leverage realign. Until then, discipline remains the differentiator.

The investors who succeed will not be the loudest or the most active. They will be the ones who waited, watched, and acted only when the numbers justified it.

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If you would like to contribute to this conversation, I have published some abbreviated commentary on LinkedIn.

​Access that post on LinkedIn here.​

​And click here to listen to or watch the episode.​
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