The commercial real estate industry’s flirtation with AI is evolving fast into full embrace. What once felt experimental is now becoming a working tool for dealmakers, operators, marketers, and analysts alike. As Bisnow recently observed, CRE professionals are already making AI “work for them in real, concrete ways.”
That momentum is the focus of a new whitepaper from LightBox, produced in partnership with CREW Network: AI Traction Across CRE: Insights from LightBox Leaders. Drawing on perspectives from valuation, environmental due diligence, technology, research, and data strategy, the report explores how AI is moving from pilot projects to everyday workflows across the industry.
The report highlights practical use cases already reshaping CRE, including lease and loan document abstraction, appraisal and due diligence summaries, anomaly detection in underwriting, and predictive modeling tied to migration patterns and infrastructure constraints.
For many, the most immediate impact is speed. As Dianne Crocker, research director at LightBox, explains: “The biggest win today is rapid ingestion of long, messy documents that enable the surfacing of accurate insights in seconds instead of hours. That time back is transformative for so many of us across commercial real estate.” Tasks that once consumed hours — from lease abstraction to appraisal summaries — are now being handled in minutes, freeing up time for strategy and client service.
The opportunity extends beyond efficiency. Caroline Stoll, general manager of Data & Analytics, points to predictive modeling as a powerful frontier: “AI is most effective in predictive modeling tied to real signals such as population and migration flows, supply and demand pipelines, permitting activity, and infrastructure constraints like power and fiber. When those datasets are connected, generative models can run scenarios and produce forward-looking indexes and ranges so investors and operators can see where markets are moving and why.”
For Eric Bollens, Chief Technology Officer, the real milestone comes when AI stops being treated as a special project and instead becomes seamless in daily work: “Success with game-changing technologies comes when they move from a standalone strategy to ubiquity, and what excites me is how we’re integrating AI at LightBox into everyday workflows so that it’s seamless, useful, and indispensable.”
The whitepaper also underscores LightBox’s own AI journey, from deploying ChatGPT for everyday productivity to integrating advanced geospatial analytics via UrbanFootprint. These innovations are designed to solve client pain points, delivering trusted, transparent, and scalable insights for CRE professionals.
Ultimately, the message is clear: the firms that thrive in this new era will be those that pair high-quality data and governance with practitioner-led AI adoption. The pace of change may be daunting, but the potential for efficiency gains and new opportunities is immense.
As a proud CREW Network partner, LightBox is excited to share these insights and spark continued conversation around the role of AI in shaping the industry’s future.
And if you’ll be at the CREW Network Convention in Austin, October 8–10, be sure to stop by the LightBox booth. Several of our leaders featured in the whitepaper will be in attendance, and we’d love to continue the conversation with you in person.
LightBox will continue to track AI adoption across CRE from its vantage point as a technology leader and is preparing to launch its first broad-based survey to gather industry data and establish benchmarks.
