Real CEO Tamir Poleg talks AI’s role in redefining real estate

These efficiencies, Poleg says, are critical for scale, but so is preserving culture.

This conversation excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.

Velt: Some critics argue that real estate is a relationships business and that clients don’t want to interact with AI. What do you say to those detractors?

Poleg: Oh, 100%, this is a relationships business. But at the same time, we have to understand that AI is probably bigger than all of us anticipate. AI will change industries and eliminate a lot of jobs.

He stressed that this isn’t about whether Real chooses to use AI — it’s about the larger threat that the industry faces from outside disruptors. If real estate brokerages don’t adapt, Poleg warned, someone else will.

Poleg: Unless we invest in AI in order to provide the tools for our agents to provide a better service to their clients, somebody else from the outside will be leveraging AI and will end up probably eliminating all of us.

While Poleg agreed that relationships will remain core to the business, he argued that the support structures behind those relationships must evolve. Real conducted an internal audit of the buyer-agent experience and identified hundreds of distinct tasks that agents perform.

Poleg: We came up with a list of 200 or 250 tasks that agents perform for buyers, for example. And we realized that about 90% of them can be automated or replaced by — or enhanced by — AI.

He emphasized that consumers now expect agents to be available around the clock and to deliver quick, data-rich answers. AI, he said, is the only tool that can make that kind of support scalable.

Poleg: An individual can be enhanced using AI in a way that is not scalable just based on the human component. So if anyone is second-guessing what we’re trying to do, we’ll probably let the future decide.