The real estate business is as old as dirt itself. But now, technology is revamping the industry as agents and developers focus not only on dirt but also on digital data. One local example of the emergent property technology industry is Open House Wizard. The Fort Lauderdale-based company sells apps that automate open houses with QR-code convenience and a text registration chatbot as your guide, if needed. Dave Frank, owner of Open House Wizard, says his company helps agents “hold open houses in kind of an effortless way, instead of doing a lot of work. Our app does a lot of that in the background for them,” including open-house visitor registration.

Open House Wizard is a rare local enterprise not part of a vast Fort Lauderdale community of property technology, or “prop tech,” companies. “I don’t know of any companies here in that arena,” Frank says. “They’re all in other places like Boston, New York and places like that.” Frank, who moved to South Florida from the D.C. area in northern Virginia, drew inspiration from his wife’s career when he launched his open-house automation company in 2017. “My wife was a realtor at that time. And it just seemed like the open house process was very clunky,” he says. “My background is in IT, since the early ’80s.”

Tech experts like Frank are modernizing real estate sales one agent at a time. Meanwhile, “smart” buildings that automate maintenance are getting smarter. And the emergence of artificial intelligence through ChatGPT and other AI platforms is rippling through real estate and just about every other industry. As Bianca Ford, the CEO and founder of Property Technology Magazine, said: “Prop tech is now embedded in every phase of the property life cycle—from AI-driven underwriting to IoT [Internet of Things]-enabled building operations.”

For many real estate companies, the bottom line is greater energy and efficiency. “Technological change is having a very large positive impact on our business,” Jeff Burns, CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based residential builder Affiliated Development, says. “Technology has improved the way we market and lease our units. On the development side, we use a prop tech software that streamlines workflows, tracks milestones and dates and manages data. Recently, we have started integrating the use of AI into our company. AI will transform the way real estate development companies function, which will increase efficiency and output while utilizing fewer resources.”

Ken Stiles admitted that he is not a virtuoso when it comes to artificial intelligence. However, he has surrounded himself with talent as the CEO of Stiles, a diversified real estate company based in Fort Lauderdale. The company has built downtown landmarks such as the 110 Tower, formerly known as AutoNation Tower, and The Main Las Olas, an office building in a complex that includes a residential high-rise.

“I’m not real good at AI. But the team and the asset managers use it all the time,” Stiles told an audience as a panelist in a panel discussion at the Urban Land Institute’s Fort Lauderdale Forum conference in September. “We’re seeing it a lot on the development side. But we’re really integrating it now on the construction side,” for tasks such as pre-construction planning and compliance reviews.

AI is also integrated into the company’s property management, featuring a data-driven preventive maintenance program that responds to trouble detectors such as condensers and water sensors. “The insurance companies are starting to look at that,” he noted. Some older employees resist AI’s intrusion into their work lives, Stiles said. “But younger people, younger generations, are really buying into it and pushing it forward.”

One real estate pro pushing it forward is Jaime Sturgis, founder and CEO of Native Realty, a Fort Lauderdale-based real estate agency. “We’re working on a back-of-house tech stack that is proprietary, so I can’t get into all the details,” Sturgis says. With AI, one person is expected to finish this project in six months. He credits the use of AI for shortening a project that once would have involved multiple engineers and could have taken a year or more to complete.

Native Realty tested the limits of artificial intelligence when the agency replaced its human receptionist with an AI-driven chatbot, before switching back. “We had tested a ‘receptionist’ we had built out [of] the AI, the data and all that stuff. And it did not work. People did not like it,” Sturgis says. “I listened to some of the responses, and people were like: ‘Am I talking to a robot?’ So, we rolled that back and went back to a human receptionist.” Eventually, however, Sturgis expects the AI-generated receptionist to become more refined. “I think probably Version 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 with those is probably going to become the mainstream,” he says.

Sturgis and other real estate leaders agree that technological advances have made retrieving all kinds of data easier. Municipal zoning boundaries and rules, for example, were grueling before AI redefined internet searches. “Researching zoning codes—we do that a lot,” Sturgis says. “We’re operating across all these different cities, and you’ve got to find a [code] subsection … Now, with a keystroke, I am able to find the paragraph in a matter of seconds.”

Fort Lauderdale-based real estate attorney Keith Poliakoff agrees that technologically enhanced zoning research is a transformative tool for property owners and developers. “The biggest thing that we’re seeing is the emergence of products that try to create interactive zoning maps for each municipality for developers and buyers to go on, with AI-driven images of what could be built on the property,” says Poliakoff, who runs Government Law Group with his partner Neil Schiller. For example, he explains, “the actual [allowable] tower heights, when you click on them, are block graphs that are AI-driven to show you how tall your project can be.” The lure of that AI-enhanced technology stems from “being able to show a client what a potential design would look like on a piece of property,” Poliakoff says. “They can see what the view would look like from multiple angles, without engaging someone for thousands of dollars to render it.”

While the appeal of such technology in real estate is undeniable, users are advised to verify the results. “It’s a tool, and a very useful tool, but I don’t think anyone can be sure that the information they’re getting back is always 100% accurate,” the real estate attorney says. “Hence, you have to do your due diligence.”

Rapid changes in technology also have made newer commercial structures so sophisticated that buildings constructed near the turn of the century appear dowdy by comparison, says Charlie B. Ladd Jr., president of Fort Lauderdale-based Barron Real Estate, citing the office component of The Main Las Olas mixed-use development. “The reason it’s such a big success is because technology has moved so far that these other buildings are obsolete,” Ladd says. “They used to put in all this hard-wire stuff. Now, it’s all WiFi. People look at these old buildings, and there’s wires every place.”

In the hotel segment of the real estate industry, advances in technology support a frictionless guest experience, says Ladd, who is developing The Whitfield, a luxury boutique hotel and condominium in Fort Lauderdale, with Steve Hudson, CEO of locally based Hudson Capital Group. At many hotels, “you can do everything on your phone,” he says. “You can register, get your key and you can bypass everything and go straight to your room.” But at The Whitfield, guests will get the human front-office presence that a luxury hotel demands. “That will be a concierge,” Ladd says.

For developer Dev Motwani, the emergence of precise digital advertising has made an impact on his real estate business, surpassing other technological advances. “The biggest thing we’ve seen so far is on the marketing side. Digital has added a completely new dimension, because the feedback is so immediate and so targeted. That’s really complementing what we do with our more traditional media,” says Motwani, who serves as co-managing partner of Fort Lauderdale-based Merrimac Ventures together with his brother Nitin Motwani. “I can target CEOs that are in town for a conference that I want to sell condos to. … I also get feedback about who’s looking and where, so I can target digital [advertising] spends at different geographies, if there is a market I wasn’t expecting to resonate with our developments.”

AI and other technological advances in the first quarter of the 21st century have made the real estate business more efficient and effective. But these advances have not replaced the human touch, according to Jimmy Tate, who operates North Miami-based Tate Capital with his brother, Kenny Tate. Their company is working with Miami-based Related Group to redevelop the Bahia Mar property on Fort Lauderdale’s beach as a St. Regis-branded resort and residential enclave.

“You have technologies now where plans are three-dimensional, so you can basically pre-build a building in a computer,” Tate says. This 21st century tool minimizes unforeseen construction delays due to planning errors. “Twenty-five years ago,” he says, “you’d be building and you’d realize, uh-oh, we’ve got a disconnect.” AI-driven technologies also help Tate and his cohorts in managing construction and pricing condos.

“But at the end of the day, real estate and sales are about people,” he says. “To be successful, you need the one-on-one. You need to look someone in the eye, talk to them. Because they’re buying me. They’re not buying a building. They’re buying my reputation, my history. So, technology has its place, but it’s only going to go so far.”