The Worthy Cause: Empower the Agent, Protect the Consumer
Why We Must Reimagine Real Estate Professional Role in the Age of Agentic AI
There are three kinds of people in the world: People who make things happen, people who watch it happens, and people who wonder what happened
As AI technological tsunami reshapes business processes and job descriptions across our economy we must acknowledge it as #1 trend shaping the future of real estate. This means the opportunities to capitalize upon and the disruptions to check
The obvious opportunities for efficiency are easy to spot by AI consultants and implement by organizations. However, the real heavy lifting must happen through applying our profession’s lobbying muscle to advocate for the new role of real estate licensee in AI-first world. This is part 3 of Real Estate Futures Blueprint intro series:
The Worthy Cause: Empower the Agent, Protect the Consumer 👉 you are here
Let’s break down how to bring our profession into AI-first future
A Disruption Underway: AI Job Displacement
We must start by setting the right priorities for real estate AI policy agenda
While it is tempting to focus on incremental adoption of AI into existing processes and basic oversight of AI use by licensees, we must confront the elephant in the room
The biggest emerging disruption to real estate industry is not listing syndication or shifting commission models. It is autonomous, Agentic AI systems moving to completely replace human professionals with bots. Left unregulated, these black-box algorithms threaten to subvert human oversight and accountability from the real estate transaction, exposing consumers to massive financial risks
The job displacement driven by AI across industries is real and can no longer be ignored. Labor Market Impacts study by Anthropic lays out a concerning picture and warns that automation of human roles out of existence has barely started
We must excise the complacency mindset arising out of our top-down industry culture to confront these challenges head on instead of pretending they don’t exist
A Warning Disregarded: Shooting the Messenger
As I stated in the Part 1 origin story for this publication, this journey started by trying to warn our industry leadership about the coming AI disruption and the need for action. The time has come to publicize the whitepapers I circulated among CAR and NAR top leadership as well as the states’ real estate licensing authorities
This first paper was specifically prepared for CAR senior leadership and further brought to the attention of the top management of California Department of Real Estate, as well as brought up and discussed at 2025 NAR mid-year conference in the forum for real estate licensing commissioners
The second paper was prepared later in 2025 once it became clear the warnings are being ignored, to paint the inaction in more dire terms and illustrate AI’s power in the actual creation of the report. It was presented to the CAR’s AI Working Group, to which I was appointed in 2025 and subsequently removed after the Monterey meeting, and then further circulated to CAR and NAR senior leadership over email
Yet, instead of listening the leadership decided to try and silence me
A Consumer Perspective: Protection & Accountability
The only viable way to secure and re-imagine the future of our profession is to get back to our roots and focus on advocating for the consumers
The media is chock-full of stories of unsupervised AI committing grave mistakes and leading to bad outcomes across the industries. Real estate practice features some of the highest stakes and costs of the potential fumbles with life-altering decisions being made in every real estate transaction. Very rarely do consumers have the knowledge or confidence to evaluate outputs of AI without qualified professional guidance
When corporate tech consultants tell association leadership that AI will take over tasks like pricing a home, they sacrifice the physical, emotional, and fiduciary realities of real estate at the altar of digital efficiency. An algorithm cannot walk through a property, smell a damp basement, or understand the psychology of a neighborhood. Most importantly, an algorithm cannot be held legally or ethically accountable for hallucinating a material fact or leaving equity on the table
Our vision is Empowering the Agent. Protecting the Consumer
A Vision for the Future: Regulated Human-in-the-Loop
This is our immediate battleground. We champion legislating a non-negotiable professional standard: a strict Human-in-the-Loop mandate. We must ensure that autonomous AI is never allowed to encroach on licensed activities without the strict oversight and fiduciary responsibility of human licensees
While Agentic AI holds massive potential for increasing efficiency and velocity of delivering real estate services it must at all time remain under control and oversight of licensed humans, taking full accountability for the client service. Unlicensed entities should be not allowed to subvert and hollow out the activities that require licensing
By leading the charge on a responsible AI policy, we are championing the economic guardrails necessary to secure the future of our profession. The future of real estate won’t be supplanted by algorithms; it will be preserved by the human fiduciaries in service of our clients and accountable for their advice
We need the political will to create and legislate Licensee-in-the-Loop standards
A Demand for Action: Mobilization of Advocacy
Laying out the vision and proposing standards is only the first step. Our industry institutions must place their entire lobbying muscle behind re-imagining real estate practice and licensing for the emerging Agentic AI future
Now is not the time for excuses, governance failures, association politics or displays of complacency, like at the Regulatory Issues Forum at 2026 NAR mid-year conference. The industry’s advocacy infrastructure belongs to all members, and it has to work for the benefit of all. If we have to start with confronting our governance deficiencies to get our internal house in order first, so be it
Our industry leadership must clearly declare Agentic AI regulation a priority to enforce Human-in-the-Loop standard to protect our members and consumers