AI is Coming for the Asset Manager Too

Until very recently, conventional wisdom held that if AI replaced anyone in real estate, it would be junior employees doing rote, repeatable tasks. Think associate PMs running background checks on prospective residents, junior leasing agents talking to top-of-funnel leads, or back-office bookkeepers processing receipts. 

Asset managers, on the other hand, would be safe. Their role is too complex, workflows too diverse, and decision-making too nuanced to ever be replaced by machines.

But the past three months of AI development have shown that view to be categorically false. If anything, the real estate asset manager is more vulnerable to replacement by clankers than the average leasing agent or property manager. In the world of agentic AI, the asset manager’s relatively high salary and white-collar status are liabilities, not protective layers insulating them from tech-driven disruption.

In other words, AI is coming for the asset manager, too. And soon.

Today’s letter will explore how that will happen, starting with how better models and agentic workflows are changing how we think about the role of AI across real estate and why the asset manager role is probably doomed.