Every few months, someone asks me some variation of the same question: will AI replace real estate agents? It is a fair question in 2026. Artificial intelligence tools are improving quickly, and even more, the headlines are relentless. Almost every brokerage in the country is now using AI in some form. But after more than 100 transactions a year across industrial, office, retail, and land in Chicagoland and southern Wisconsin, my answer is clear. AI will replace many of the tasks agents perform. It will not replace the agents who understand that the task was never the job.
Adoption Is No Longer the Question
The industry has already decided on AI, at least to increasingly implement it. According to Delta Media Group’s annual leadership survey, 97% of brokerage leaders now report that their agents use AI, up from 80% in 2024. Eighty-two percent of agents use it to write listing descriptions, and 74% use it to create online content. The share of brokerages not using AI at all fell from roughly 25% in 2024 to under 4% in 2026.
Our team is no exception. We use AI to analyze large data sets, structure research, draft first versions of marketing materials, and handle repetitive back-office work that used to consume hours each week. In some areas, it has reduced the staff time a task requires. That is real, and anyone who claims otherwise is not paying attention.
Yet the clients have not left. In residential real estate, where AI tools and online platforms have been available to consumers for years, 88% of buyers and 91% of sellers still worked with an agent according to the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. The seller figure ties the highest on record. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics still projects modest growth in broker and agent employment through 2035, with roughly 40,000 openings per year.
Widespread adoption of a tool and continued demand for the professional using it are not contradictions. They describe the same shift.
What AI Does Well
AI is extraordinarily good at work that is repetitive, information-heavy, and low in judgment. In commercial real estate, that includes:
- Research and screening. Summarizing ownership records, zoning data, comparable transactions, and market reports in minutes rather than days.
- First drafts. Listing descriptions, offering memorandum outlines, email follow-ups, and market updates.
- Data analysis. Sorting tens of thousands of data points to identify long-held properties, rising vacancy, or likely sellers.
- Scheduling and administration. Tour coordination, document tracking, and CRM hygiene.
If an agent’s value consisted mainly of these tasks, that agent should be concerned. The commodity layer of the business is being automated, and it will not return.
What AI Cannot Do in a Commercial Deal
Commercial real estate is not a search problem. Finding a building has been easy for years. The hard part is everything that happens after the search.
Consider a typical suburban office or industrial lease. The rent is only one variable. The economics depend on free rent, tenant improvement allowances, operating expense structures, renewal options, expansion rights, and how each of those terms interacts over a five or ten year term. We have written about how landlords are weighing rent abatement against tenant improvement dollars, and the right answer varies by building, by tenant, and by the moment in the market. An AI tool can model the options. It cannot sit across the table, read the other side’s priorities, and know which concession the landlord will trade to get a signature this quarter.
The same is true on the sale side. Pricing an asset correctly, identifying which buyers have the capital and the conviction to close, managing a family’s emotions around selling a property held for three generations, and keeping a deal together when an environmental report or a lender surprises everyone: these are matters of judgment, relationships, and accountability. When something goes wrong at the closing table, no one wants to call a chatbot.
There is also local knowledge that never makes it into a database. Which landlord in the Lincolnshire Corporate Center is quietly motivated. Which municipality will work with an industrial user on a variance. Which tenant is about to give back space before it ever hits the market. That information lives in relationships built over years, and it is frequently the difference between a good outcome and an average one. You can see how that plays out across our recent transactions.
AI Agents and Direct Marketplaces
The more serious long-term question is not whether AI assists agents, but whether AI agents begin transacting on their own. On a recent episode of The Real Finds Podcast, branding executive David Kessler of Starfish predicted that AI agents will appear throughout commerce over the next decade, including marketplaces where buildings list space directly. In his view, whether that displaces brokers depends on the value brokers establish for themselves. His expectation was that personalized service will continue to prevail.
I agree, with one qualification. The brokers most exposed are those whose service is already transactional: list the property, forward the inquiries, collect the fee. AI will compress that work and the fees attached to it. The brokers who survive will be the ones who function as advisors, bringing market intelligence, negotiation discipline, and strategic counsel that a marketplace cannot replicate.
How Owners and Occupiers Should Think About It
For property owners and tenants, the practical takeaway is to expect more from your broker, not less. Ask how they use AI and data to improve your outcome. Ask what information they have that you cannot get from a search engine. Ask how they will protect your position in a negotiation. If the answers are vague, the risk of replacement is real for that broker.
The same applies to property management. Technology can track work orders and flag anomalies, but the decisions that drive most of an asset’s value still require experienced people. Owners are also learning that occupancy and building data only matter when someone interprets them well, a point we explored in Is It Time To Go Beyond Badge Swipe Data?
The Bottom Line
So, will AI replace real estate agents? It will replace much of what agents used to spend their time doing, and it will replace agents whose value ended there. It will not replace judgment, local relationships, negotiation, or accountability. For the professionals who embrace the tools while doubling down on those strengths, AI is a significant competitive advantage.
That is how we approach it at Van Vlissingen and Co. Our team combines AI-driven market intelligence with four generations of local relationships to help owners, investors, and occupiers make better decisions. If you are evaluating a sale, a lease, or a repositioning, review current Chicago office market conditions and connect with our brokerage, management, and development team.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.