How AI is turning real estate’s biggest inefficiencies into new opportunities

Real estate remains one of the world’s most entrenched industries, where decades-old workflows and manual processes continue to outlast the tech transformation that has reshaped nearly every other sector.

In 2026, however, a new generation of innovators is helping to prove that even this industry, which is valued at nearly $131 trillion according to J.P. Morgan, is ready to join the AI revolution.

Today, a range AI-powered solutions are helping to streamline property valuations, automate the management of large property portfolios, and more as industry decision makers race to adopt the technology.

Globally, proptech has moved into a new phase that goes beyond more basic tech adoption. Simply moving paperwork and listings online still relies on a high volume of manual inputs for property management teams and realtors; however, by embedding AI directly into workflows, a new era of intelligent automation is arising.

AI assistants can not only take care of tasks like publishing an online listing, but also handle complex multistep workflows such as answering a call, booking a site viewing and scheduling in the team calendar in a process that offers end-to-end automation. 

This potential means that AI is expected to automate up to 37% of real estate operations by 2030, creating savings of up to  $34 billion through efficiency gains. 

Agentic AI and intelligent property management platforms, among other solutions, are rapidly becoming industry standards as innovators look to bring AI at scale to the market.

Even more, according to reports GenAI set to add $110–180 billion in value to the real estate industry. Here are ten proptech AI entrepreneurs to watch in 2026, who have already been making waves to-date.

Robert Reffkin, Compass

A clear case study of how AI is impacting real estate can be found with Compass, an enterprise led by Chairman and EO Robert Reffkin that brings intelligent technology to real estate brokerage. 

Compass increasingly leverages AI throughout its brokerage platform, which has enabled everything from intelligent recommendations and marketing automation to predictive pricing insights for agents. 

With the capabilities of Compass, Reffkin is showing how large brokerages can unlock a boost to both productivity and customer engagement by integrating AI at scale without the losing the human touch. The company currently has a market cap of approximately $8.46 billion.

Prior to leading Compass, Reffkin completed a B.A. and M.B.A. from Columbia University and worked at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and as a White House Fellow.  

Nick Romito, VTS

When it comes to commercial real estate, Nick Romito has helped to transform leasing and asset management through data-driven software used by many of the world’s largest landlords, as the co-founder and CEO of VTS. 

His company has built an AI-powered leasing solution that brings intelligence to the landlord’s portfolio. With rental rates growing at a slower pace than previous years, landlord need to manage opportunities across their property portfolio closely.

With VTS, landlords and owners are able to better forecast demand and improve occupancy decisions with significantly greater accuracy.

Adi Tatarko, Houzz

Next, property managers understand that home renovation is a task that comes up frequently, whether it’s updating a premium unit after the end of a tenancy or adding new features and mod-cons to reach a certain target customer. 

As the co-founder and CEO of Houzz, Adi Tatarko is bringing intelligence to the home renovation process. This means that landlords, homeowners and renovation professionals can easily redesign rooms to experiment with different aesthetics, identify products and their suppliers and receive personalized inspiration

Tatarko’s vision demonstrates that AI’s value extends well beyond transactions into the broader homeowner experience.

Brandon Tobman, GetCovered

Brandon Tobman has emerged as one of proptech’s most ambitious AI entrepreneurs by transforming GetCovered from an insurance technology company into a comprehensive AI-powered risk management platform for multifamily housing.

The company has expanded its AI operating layer over the past years. Under his leadership, GetCovered was recently named the best proptech tool for insurance compliance in multifamily by StartupBeat, and also announced its acquisition of Revyse, with his platform now unifying the complete risk and compliance interface for property managers, including renters insurance compliance, vendor management, security deposits, pet compliance, and portfolio-wide risk analysis.

By bringing all of these operational risk and compliance tasks under one roof, Tobman has helped to reduce fragmentation and give multifamily operators peace of mind that all their units remain compliant at all times, something hard to achieve when using disconnected platforms. 

Austin Allison, Pacaso

Another example of how AI is changing the world of property ownership can be found with Pacaso. 

Founded by Austin Allison, Pacaso has a new approach to technology-enabled fractional ownership for luxury second homes. In 2026, the company is seen to be leveraging AI more broadly to match buyers with properties, forecast demand across markets, and personalize ownership recommendations.

Allison consistently challenges conventional thinking around property ownership and brings AI-assisted shared ownership models to the mainstream. 

Jeroen Merchiers, Zazume

The adoption of protech solutions is gaining global momentum. In Europe, Jeroen Merchiers is one of the leading entrepreneurs driving the proptech revolution across the continent. 

Merchiers has developed an AI-powered platform known as Zazume to digitize residential rental management. Zazume’s software is able to automate tenant communications, maintenance workflows, financial operations, and portfolio management for landlords and agencies.

This significantly cuts down on friction, leaving tenants with clear answers and allowing busy agencies to focus on improving the experience. 

Its recent funding reflects growing investor confidence that AI-driven rental management represents one of proptech’s fastest-growing segments.

Bobbi Steward, Revyse

Revyse, which recently joined forces with GetCovered, is led by CEO Bobbi Steward, who has built the company into one of the most innovative AI companies focused on vendor intelligence and compliance for multifamily real estate.

The typical property management company will deal with hundreds of vendors needed to take of maintenance, cleaning, repairs and renovations. It’s the responsibility of the management firm to ensure that vendors have the appropriate licenses and paperwork but the manual nature of the process meant that it was time-consuming and liable to errors. 

Revyse addressed this costly operational challenge with a way to automate compliance checks to ensure vendors adhere to their contractual obligations, insurance requirements, licensing regulations, and procurement policies. With AI, the platform automatically reviews certificates of insurance, interprets contract language, validates vendor credentials, and flags compliance issues before they create operational or legal risk.

Glenn Sanford, eXp World Holdings

Finally, eXp World Holdings is helping to challenge traditional brokerage models through cloud-first operations.

Led by Glenn Sanford, AI is helping automate marketing, client engagement, lead generation, and productivity workflows in eXp’s agent ecosystem. 

Sanford continues to advocate for technology that empowers agents rather than replaces them, which is a philosophy increasingly shared across the broader proptech ecosystem.