The commercial real estate industry, long focused on extracting data from documents, is on the verge of a major shift as artificial intelligence advances. Oded Noy, Chief Technology Officer at Crexi, predicts that the next phase of AI development will center on document generation, fundamentally changing real estate workflows.
“If the last five years were about document extraction, the next five years are going to be all about document generation,” Noy stated, outlining his view of the industry’s AI evolution. This shift marks a transition from AI as a data processing tool to AI as a content creation partner.
The impact of this evolution goes beyond document creation. “It’s one thing to say, I can read an offering memorandum. The other one, can I generate [one] automatically? It’s one thing to say, you can read the documents. Another one: Can you do the analysis for me?”
According to Noy, this move toward generative AI could significantly change how commercial real estate professionals spend their time. “AI is going to do some of the grunt work that they don’t want to do, up to 50% of the time is going to be done differently.”
Crexi’s recently launched Vault platform is an early example of this transformation. “This is the tip of the iceberg of what we had brewing,” Noy revealed. “We have more than a half a dozen products that are in alpha right now that are in that kind of vein of activity.”
The company’s strategy is to automate tasks typically assigned to administrative staff or analysts, while keeping the human components of real estate that require personal interaction. “We firmly believe that given what AI can do, which is take tasks that you would otherwise delegate to an admin or to an analyst that will just do that work for you, and the work that you need to do, like interacting with customers, that remains just you.”
By concentrating on workflow automation rather than full replacement, Crexi aims to add value as AI capabilities continue to expand. The company’s existing platform, which handles over $1 trillion in transactions and serves more than 2 million monthly active users, offers a strong data foundation for training advanced generative models.
Noy’s vision is not limited to Crexi’s product development. He advocates for industry-wide collaboration on AI, encouraging the entire commercial real estate sector to work together.
“This is not a one company endeavor. This is an industry,” he emphasized. “How do we as an industry, empower, support, push, prod one another, in order to allow the asset class to become what it can become?”
The broader goal, Noy says, is to make commercial real estate investment more accessible. “A lot of people want to be involved in commercial real estate if they could. And AI plays a role here.”
Achieving this democratization requires addressing two core market challenges: liquidity and speed. “When you do that right, you solve two fundamental things, better liquidity and better speed. Better liquidity because it’s easier to prospect, it’s easier to discover things, it’s easier to evaluate things.”
Noy describes AI development in commercial real estate as a move toward “abundant intelligence,” preferring this term over “artificial” to highlight AI’s role as a genuinely intelligent assistant. “There’s nothing artificial about it. If you interact with it, you recognize it’s just intelligent.”
This perspective guides Crexi’s product priorities, focusing on AI that enhances human expertise rather than replacing it. Document generation and analysis automation are key to this approach, taking on routine tasks while leaving relationship-driven aspects to professionals.
The move from extraction to generation signals not just technological progress, but a maturing of AI applications in commercial real estate, shifting from data processing to comprehensive workflow support. As Noy suggests, companies that adapt to this new era will shape the future of proptech.
For an industry built on specialized knowledge, the potential of generative AI to make information more accessible could change market dynamics. The challenge ahead is whether the industry will collaborate to realize this vision or let competition slow progress toward abundant intelligence.
