March 30, 2026, Truckee, CA: I won’t get into spoilers but know this: we’re in for a wild future.

(Click here for context.)

Like Favreau’s mafia satire Made, and Bryan Cox’s Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s adaptation of Manhunter, AI’s impact on the world real estate industry hinges on one word: “Underhyped.”

The panel deliberately avoided overtly tactical advice. This wasn’t about Five Ways To Use AI To Earn Likes or Prompt Engineering for Success. That content can be found in 2024. Or at an Inman conference.

Instead, the goal was to talk about higher level concerns and strategic considerations surrounding AI, e.g., data conditioning, staffing for AI integrations, portal data and innovation, and spanning the moats around legacy proptechs, among other critical inflection points.

Local industry leaders and friends of event organizer Sidekick listened from rows of wonderfully bloated red armchairs with impractically small side tables lit delicately by jazz-club lamps in the kind of screening room where power-drunk producers tell directors they want it cut to 89 minutes and scheme to bully the next Mission Impossible out of Memorial Day weekend. As a total movie nerd, it was awesome. It was only missing a hanging phantom of tabacco smoke.

To close out the afternoon I wanted to know what’s might be overhyped. While two of the panelists indeed had meaningful input a third contribution crept between the others. It was somehow lost in the collective sigh of the event’s pending denouement but it found me like a stage flood. Remember Four Leaf Tayback’s introduction in the Tropic Thunder production meeting scene? Like that.

FADE IN:
A group of real estate professionals are in a plush Hollywood screening room listening to four men in director’s chairs on a low stage. The tiered seating is lit delicately by reading lights while a photographer’s flash electrifies the shadows every few seconds. Everything is thick red and off-stage a stoic bartender oversees a portable bar-cart.

MODERATOR
What’s overhyped about AI?

PANELIST
Nothing is overhyped, if anything it’s underhyped.

MODERATOR
You mean, generally speaking?

PANELIST
(smiling)
Yeah. What it’s capable of, it’s all underhyped.

CUT TO:
The moderator and one of the panelists watching basketball on a phone at the end of a celebratory dinner.

Anyway, if you crave production notes, know that those brokerages actively pursuing ways to integrate AI, wether to close gaps in techstacks or replace legacy workflows are ahead of the game. You’re doing what you should, regardless of your immediate results.

Those still playing with listing descriptions or angry about private listing networks?

Well, let’s just say you can stop organizing the deck chairs.