New York, Third Floor of the Midtown Hilton: The Inman Events team has been facing Cat-5 headwinds for several years. No amount of editing the cone of doom with a Sharpie is going to change that.
Connect was once the only event of its kind. A tech-forward gathering of forward-thinkers meant to facedown the status-quo. Today it has competition from countless outlets—brokerages, fellow trade publications, creative firms and even its own entity, Blueprint. It seems the company took far too long to recognize this, despite Stevie Wonder recently offering, “Hey, do you guys see all these other real estate conferences popping up?”
Planning for that is the role of leadership, not the hard-charging staff who hustle about positioning signs, troubleshooting registration mishaps, replacing panelists at the last minute, tracking down booth backdrops, stocking the Green Room with Cliff Bars, and acquiescing to the imprudent requests of reality TV agents, vapid influencers, and aloof executives.
Point is, Connect has been trending down. This year, though, New York experienced an uptick. I did find some of the post-event LinkedIn praise to be a hair effusive, and was sad to see that the fashion amalgamation of suit jackets and leather sneakers hasn’t dissipated. The business conference equivalent of cargo shorts.
There were more technology vendors exhibiting and StartUp Alley had a few more kiosks. Last year was populated enough to maybe fill a bus shelter. The last day’s morning was more active than in recent years, too. These are positive signs. I like the event and and being formally a part of it for years was really rewarding, despite this week getting off on to an awkward start.
I found a couple of new technology companies with intriguing premises, a couple with tired models, and of course, some of the usual but proven suspects.
Here’s a summary of proptech companies at 2026 Inman Connect New York.
Agent Image/Access.com
These guys build really nice websites and web marketing technologies. The company has good leadership but I hope they get the branding situation sorted sooner than later. Access.com is their “premier” product and I think(?) they’re looking to entirely shift in that direction. I have no idea and apparently nor do they.
AutoReel
This is an AI marketing solution. It auto-enhances images, creates virtual room fly-throughs and essentially does what its countless competitors do. That said, the team of brothers behind it have backgrounds working for major social media/tech players. Nice guys.
BigVu
This AI video production app creates scripts for you and runs it on a teleprompter while recording. Users edit videos by selecting words within the transcript instead of a timeline-based slider or shot selector. Pretty innovative and precise. They started as a teleprompter app ten years ago.
BrokerBot
The name gives me point-solution chat bot vibes. It’s actually a full-scale brokerage intelligence platform. It learns calendars, task processes, administrative workflows, and functions essentially as a company-wide team of digital assistants.
Contraca
These guys battled on Monday night at Troy’s place and wear too much cologne. Despite the frat guy mystique, I want to see more. It’s a database augmentation solution, able to connect transaction histories, contact activity, email content, and other lead insights to offer the industry a new way to operate. There’s potential here.
Courted
Humblebrag: I called it. Courted got strong early reviews from me when it was only an agent networking app. Sean Soderstrom and his team built the industry’s benchmark for agent recruiting smarts and retention automation.
DeepIDV
This is some pretty advanced stuff with ID verification features on-par with the apps ICE is using to disappear people. Its use cases are likely beyond the needs of most residential outfits. For boutique luxury brokerages who sell homes that come with McLarens and glass elevators, DeepIDV could give sellers peace-of-mind and top producing teams who use it a marketing advantage.
FrontDesk
AI is being deployed here to help answer calls, route leads, make appointments, and handle any array of tasks you’d normally hire a human to complete. So there go a few more jobs.
Ignite Connections
Behind the website’s sales pitches and sophisticated messaging, it’s a lead-gen tool for listing agents. They’re merely doing all the upfront data-driven due diligence. The company founder wrote a book on sales tactics that I’ll never read.
Luxury Presence
One of the industry’s standout providers of AI-enhanced, tech-integrated website solutions. It launched a bunch of agentic tools last summer and most recently released a full-fledged CRM offering, creating an end-to-end marketing ecosystem.
Oppy
Alex Gustafson was head of the market with agentic AI, which he calls “Oppies.” He’s become a mainstay on the conference circuit, quickly demonstrating to anyone who walks by his booth how easy it is to build AI assistants to send emails, make appointments, follow-up with leads, and overall help small brokerages function like larger ones. He’s also a devout vegan and uses an e-bike.*
Optimize5
One of the first companies I’ve seen specialize in AI-based SEO. They populate Google profiles and deploy strategies to ensure all of your testimonials, successful sales, and local presence congeal to power your local identity.
Oun
With a slick play on the word “own,” this company benefitted most from the tech vendor expansion by being granted a presence at the top of the escalator on the expo floor. Oun is a mobile-first transaction coordination system, blending communications, document delivery, appointment setting, and using natural language commands to handle it all.
Palazzo
A spatial commerce product that stages rooms with virtual shopping experiences. Furniture manufacturers can partner with agents and designers to place items. It has a range of account tiers for unique user groups, such as agents, designers, and even a shopping analytics module for retailers. It’ll be a tough sell to real estate, though.
RealGrader
Another long-time entity in the space, RealGrader is digital marketing studio with a focus on social and Google awareness. It leads with InstaCard, a digital business card that links users and promotes network sharing. I helped Co-Founder Alex Montalenti choose what snowboard bindings to buy.
RealAnalytica
I position this company alongside Lofty, BoldTrail and others of that ilk. It’s AI-first and delivers a full breadth of common brokerage needs, like a CRM, company performance metrics, market analytics, seller prediction models, and an AI assistant. I dig its market explorer tool. It offers market status reports for major markets in every state.
RealScout
In case you’re curious, here’s who won the pitch battle on Monday. This is Anthony Joshua vs. Jake Paul. Actually, that’s not fair. The other competitors are much more qualified to compete than Jake Paul. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Flachner has been at it a while. RealScout is a lead aggregator that delivers automated nurture campaigns regardless of lead source. It also spruces up databases and offers an AI search for agents, among other benefits.
RealTeam3
Formerly ShowingTeam, this app helps agents get paid by covering open houses, showings, and handling business-related tasks for other agents. It uses proximity-based networking and in-app communications to find and schedule fill-ins. It’s fine.
Rockhood AI
A brokerage that trained-up an AI on how to advise consumers on buying and selling decisions. It’ll generate CMAs, help reason through critical decisions, and then recommend a ready user to one of their agents. They’ll need to market hard to land leads given the unique nature of the model and value propositions.
RoomSketcher
Kind of what the name says it is—a floor plan creator. You can scan a room with a phone’s on-board LiDAR or if you’re 70, a tablet. The name stems from its ability to create one from scratch using templates and drawing tools. You can generate all kinds of interior property media, too. I don’t know, I guess. This category is basically a bag of M&Ms at this point—different shells, same interior.
Subi
I wonder if they know the company name is also mountain-town shorthand for a Subaru? Nevertheless, I ran into these folks at NAR NXT—excitable bunch. It’s an AI assistant for transaction coordination that uses deal documents as the launchpad for its process automation. It can grab dates, names, and clauses and then build out calendars, tasks, messages, and so forth. Sharp.
The Reel Map
A unique spin on video marketing, this company blends social media video content with location marketing. It use Reels, TikToks, and YouTube as lead-drivers by automatically connecting them to landing pages and interactive maps, which translate well to AI-based search.
I finished up the week down in the East Village dining with some clients I took backpacking a few years ago. We did the Thousand Island Lake loop that leaves from June Lake and links up with the JMT. Anyway, I had three Negronis and a great time. Good to get out of Midtown.
All said, thanks for reading along this week. That’s it from the Luigi Mangione Memorial Hotel and Conference Center.
*Alex Gustafson is not a vegan nor a rider of e