Real estate AI adoption is outpacing its leadership

By Maria Coelho, Founder, Ruah Consulting

92% of commercial real estate companies worldwide are piloting AI. Only 5% say they’ve actually met their programme goals.

I don’t think that gap has much to do with the technology. In years of working with leaders across this industry, I’ve learned it has almost everything to do with how much harder it is to change the way people decide than to change the systems they decide with.

Nowhere is that truer right now than in India’s real estate and construction sector.

Two years ago, AI barely featured in boardroom conversations. Today, developers, lenders, and PropTech discuss little else. Investors have noticed too. When I talk to them now, the question has shifted – It isn’t only about land banks and project pipelines anymore, it’s about whether the organisation itself is built to operate in a technology-driven environment.

AI already sits inside project monitoring, valuation, land analytics, construction finance, compliance and investment decisions. For many leaders, this wasn’t really a choice. Regulatory expectations, investor scrutiny and competitive pressure made it for them.

So the question worth asking isn’t whether AI belongs in real estate – that’s settled.

The trigger is this: is your leadership capability evolving as fast as your tech stack? In most organisations I meet, it isn’t.

The Technology Was Never the Hard Part. Kodak, Nokia and GE Prove It.

Most organisations can launch a new platform in a few months. Building the judgment to use it well takes considerably longer and that’s the gap where I spend most of my time with leadership teams. As a Master Certified in Global Business Operations ( GBS) this is one of the key focus areas I work on.

History offers a useful reminder here:

1. Kodak invented one of the first digital cameras in 1975. Then shelved the idea to protect the film business that still paid the bills.
2. Nokia had engineers and significant market share. It still couldn’t let go of a hardware mindset long enough to think like a software company.
3. GE invested billions in its digital platform, Predix, aiming to become a digital industrial company, and found out the hard way that most of its own business units simply weren’t ready for what the platform was asking of them.

Three very different companies, from different decades and industries, shared one lesson: the technology usually works. What determines whether it delivers value is whether leadership evolves alongside it.

 Let’s take a contextual scenario.

A project head is reviewing an AI-generated progress report flagging delays on site. It contradicts what the site engineer told him the day before. Who does he trust? The technology? The engineer? Or does he push back on both before deciding?

Or

A Business Development Head who watches an AI platform recommend acquiring a parcel of land based on strong appreciation and clean numbers, while he weighs community sentiment and relationships the data will never capture.

Or

A site manager whose AI system flags unsafe behaviour and recommends halting work, while he’s certain it’s a false positive and that stopping means losing days no project can afford.

None of these are technology problems. They’re judgment problems: reconciling two credible but conflicting sources of judgment, one human and one machine-generated. It may be the defining leadership challenge of the next decade, and very few leadership programmes are built to prepare anyone for it

Infact the push is to adopt AI and no one is even asking the most important question.

Installing AI is the easy part. Leading differently because of it is the real work. Bridges and Kotter warned us decades ago.

I go back often to something William Bridges wrote:

“It isn’t the changes that do you in. It’s the transitions.”

Installing AI is the change. Learning to lead differently because of it is the much-needed transition. And it’s the transition that reshapes how decisions get made, how accountability is shared, and how expertise is valued inside a team.

John Kotter’s research on organisational transformation makes a related point I find myself repeating to clients: large-scale change efforts rarely fail because the technology doesn’t work. They fail because organisations underestimate the behavioural and leadership shift the technology demands of the people using it.

I don’t think AI is any different. Most organisations I’ve encountered are still treating it as an implementation project so the focus is on identification, selection and then a system to roll out, leading to a dashboard to check. In practice, it’s changing how their leaders think, decide, and lead. That’s a much bigger undertaking than a software rollout, and I think most leadership teams haven’t fully reckoned with that yet.

Three questions i’d ask any leader right now

1. When AI challenges your own judgment, do you actually understand why you agree or disagree with it. Or are you defaulting to the habit or playing safe?
2. Have you genuinely changed how you make decisions, or have you just added another dashboard to the same process you’ve always run?
3. If your team starts trusting AI more than they trust you, how do you continue to lead with credibility?

I don’t think these have quick answers. But in my experience, they’re increasingly what separates leaders who thrive through this shift from those who quietly fall behind.

Where my work comes in

Most of the leaders I meet don’t need another session explaining what AI is. What they need is the judgment to make sound decisions in the moments when technology and human experience point in different directions and that’s exactly where I’ve built Ruah Consulting’s work to sit.

Rather than teaching leaders to operate AI tools, I help them build the judgment to lead alongside them. Through industry-specific scenarios, coaching conversations, and practical simulations, leaders work through the decisions they’re already starting to face.

Are you already dealing with conflicting project reports, AI-driven recommendations, shifting team dynamics, and rising expectations from investors and stakeholders?

A great place to begin is an indicative, structured leadership assessment to identify exactly where the capability gaps sit, like the one Ruah Consulting offers. Is it in decision-making, execution, accountability, or communication, so the development work goes where it actually matters, not where it’s easiest to deliver?

Technology can be purchased quickly. Leadership capability can’t.

I’d argue that over the next decade, that capability becomes the single greatest competitive advantage any real estate organisation can build.

Sources: JLL 2025 Global Real Estate Technology Survey (via TechnBrains); GRI Institute research via Business Standard and AI PropTech News; Land2Capital; Zillow Q1 2026 shareholder letter via GeekWire; RealEstateNews.com (T3 Sixty Leadership Summit, April 2026); MarketScale (Xpanner, Ownwell); John Kotter, "Leading Change"; William Bridges, "Transitions" / "Managing Transitions."