This episode of First Draft Live is presented by Agora.

The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence has impacted every industry, including the notoriously tech-adverse commercial real estate world.
Scores of new AI-driven tools have left brokers sweating over their commissions and wondering if they will be replaced by software that can automate underwriting and surface buyers instantly. And shareholders have been ditching their brokerage stock over concerns the entire business model is at risk. Are their fears overblown, or should brokers be preparing themselves for a future where AI could take their jobs?
Both can be true, Kyle Matthews, CEO of Matthews CRE, said on this week’s episode.
“I absolutely think there is an overreaction happening,” Matthews said. “And I think there are 100% vulnerabilities, and the nature and the shape of how these services are performed in the next three, five and 10 years, fundamentally, will change.”

This episode is presented by Agora.
The federal government is poised to enact legislation to make housing development easier.
But federal desire does not always translate to local action — and that is where construction actually happens, said Continental Properties Chairman and CEO James Schloemer, who just concluded a two-year term as chairman of the National Multifamily Housing Council.
“There are a lot of issues at the local level,” he said. “Between NIMBYs, ... issues regarding building codes and being [too] short-staffed to expedite the necessary permitting and inspections, there are a lot of challenges not correlated to things that the federal government influences.”

This episode of First Draft Live is presented by Agora.

Venezuela, Greenland, Canada’s prime minister calling the death of America as global leader. Interest rate watching, Fed independence under question, tariffs.

There’s a lot of noise out there in the macroeconomy that can make it hard for CRE to tune into a good deal.

And yet Abbe Franchot Borok, BGO managing director and head of U.S. debt, said she is optimistic the year ahead will be a good one for property investment.

Sure, it has gotten more complicated and the industry has had to turn to new inputs and data sources. The normal supply vs. demand dynamic is changing as consumer use of commercial real estate has shifted.

And yes, she said, Canadian and European investors are not liking what they are seeing out of the U.S. government.

But the U.S. continues to be the most liquid and active market in the world, and she doesn’t see a sustained lack of investment in the cards. Good deals are out there for those willing to double down on income generation and executing the business plan on the ground. 

2025 was a noisy year.

Policy changes, interest rate adjustments and geopolitical roller coasters kept CRE on their toes.
With financing loosening up and transactions picking up, the groundwork is being laid for a better 2026, but where is a safe investment in a world where fundamentals seem to be shifting?

CBRE Global Client Strategist and Senior Economic Advisor Spencer Levy said he advises his clients to wade through the noise and look at the drivers in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami and the Midwest to really see what’s on the horizon for CRE. 

These include the reshoring of manufacturing and the train from Mexico to Canada, which carries nearly $2T in trade each year.

“You follow that durable demand driver, that infrastructure, despite some of the tariff noise, despite some of the trade noise, despite some of the political changes — that’s the time to find opportunity,” Levy said.

This holiday season is one filled with contradictions for retail real estate. Consumer confidence has plummeted, but their spending is at all-time highs. Leasing is bustling and vacancy is tight, but store closures are outpacing openings.On this episode, Northwood Retail President Ward Kampf joins the show to unpack the uncertainty surrounding the asset class, which has also been deeply impact by tariffs, artificial intelligence and vast changes in behavior between generations.“Young kids today, they eat different and don’t drink as much as we did when we were young,” he said on the show. “They are much healthier than we were. We ate whatever we wanted and drank a lot.”Kampf also discusses what is expected to be a bumpy 2026, predicting even more closures, potential drugstore bankruptcy and backlash to $20 salads and burritos.“The key word going forward, doesn’t matter your political slant, right or left, is affordability,” he said. “People are really conscious of that.”

2025 has not gone according to plan.

Real estate has been bandied about by headwinds of economic, policy and fundamental changes. Interest rate reductions and rising deal flow has the industry feeling better, but stability is a pipe dream these days, especially when federal data is missing and CRE research can conflict.

But forget about the data, economist Peter Linneman said on this week’s show — how is it really going in your apartments or your office building?

He said CRE has gotten hooked on data analysis and has forgotten that what really matters are the fundamentals on the ground.
And while he agrees that uncertainty is the new normal, and that’s trouble for CRE, “people adjust.”

He foresees a meaningful return to transactions in 2026.
“There are people out there with courage, but they don’t have capital. And there are others out there whose short investment horizons have made them understandably and correctly not courageous,” he said.
“But when everybody else starts jumping, it’ll be like the wildebeests crossing the river. They all jump in.”

While the longest government shutdown in U.S. history may be over, the commercial real estate industry will be feeling its impact for some time. From HUD halting originations and approvals to hotel demand drying up and data going away, the pain has been widespread.
And it will continue to impact underwriting and kill deals, especially in the multifamily realm, Origin Investments co-CEO Michael Episcope said.

Roughly 2,000 multifamily starts were delayed as HUD went dark, he said. That doesn’t get resolved immediately and will impact rent growth.

“You have to assume that there’s going to be lower demand as a result of this government shutdown,” Episcope said on this week’s show.

The U.S. office market is molting. 

The industry has spent the last five years shedding its old skin — and underperforming assets — and is attempting to emerge fresh and appealing to workers.

Return-to-office mandates are helping bring workers back to their desks, and vacancy just ticked down for the first time since 2019. But few mandates come with teeth, meaning how many employees actually show up on any given day still comes down to how many want to, CBRE Building Operations and Experience CEO Jamie Hodari, who also co-founded and still runs Industrious, said on this week’s show. 

And while ping pong tables and pizza parties can help bring a space to life, he said he judges the success of the office based on whether people have their heads up talking to each other.

“If people are interacting with each other, if people are learning from each other, I don’t care what the lighting is,” he said. “I don’t care if the windows are 13 feet or 10 feet or whatever, that’s a commute-worthy office.”

After years of cautious experimentation, CRE’s biggest players are finally scaling artificial intelligence.

JLL has been at the forefront of it, launching an in-house AI platform called Falcon that is cutting deal timelines from weeks to hours and automating the drudgery that once bogged down teams. The result is higher revenue per head, higher success rates when pitching and faster closings.

On this week’s show, CEO Christian Ulbrich gave a peek under the hood of how JLL is getting the most out of AI and how he sees it reshaping the industry.

It’s difficult to get an edge from AI, he said. Tools that drive productivity become table stakes within six months. The real differentiation only comes from new-to-market strategy, agentic AI that reinvents parts of CRE deal-making.

Still, the industry must act.

“Don’t wait too long,” he said. “The train has left the station and it is going at Japanese speed levels of train — very very fast.”

Live from the CREtech main stage at New York’s Javits Center on October 21, WeWork CEO John Santora sat down with Bisnow Editor-in-Chief Mark Bonner to unpack one of CRE’s biggest comebacks — from bankruptcy to EBITDA positive, $2.2B in revenue and 550K members, including 47 of the Fortune 100. Occupancy has surged past 90% in Midtown Manhattan and hit 100% in key global markets.

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