A monthly community of practice for commercial real estate professionals navigating AI adoption — grounded in real workflows, real concerns, and real results.
AI × CRE is a monthly community of practice for commercial real estate professionals navigating AI adoption. We meet to share what's working, learn from each other's experience, and ask the harder questions about where this technology is taking our industry and our profession.
We are not here to sell tools or declare winners. We're here to build a practitioner-led knowledge base that's specific to CRE.
"Grounded in real workflows, real concerns, and real results — not vendor pitches or hype cycles."
How we started
It started almost by accident. An unplanned meeting grew out of a CREWBiz post for women who wanted to learn — quickly — how to actually use AI in their work. That first conversation took on a life of its own. We came together through CREW Network, the commercial real estate industry's premier organization advancing women through connection to opportunities, information, and each other.
Today we're a small group of women building the plane while flying it: assembling practical resources, prompts, and playbooks for using AI in the commercial real estate market, and sharing what we learn as we go.
Notes, slides, and takeaways from each monthly session. Third Friday of every month · 10–11am EST · Microsoft Teams.
Session 01Mar 19, 2026
Introductions & Landscape
Who's in the room, what we're each wrestling with, and where this is heading.
The kickoff. We mapped who's adopting AI in their CRE workflows, which tools show up most, and what concerns members bring to the table — from data security to client comms to the hype-vs-reality gap.
The conceptual grounding — what these models actually do, and don't.
Karan walked the group through how large language models work, what they're good at, and where the failure modes show up in CRE workflows specifically. Heavy on examples, light on hype.
The AI Advantage in CRE: What Smart Leaders Are Learning
Leadership patterns — who's actually moving, and what they're doing differently.
A look at the firms and individuals quietly building a real edge with AI — what their adoption playbooks look like, where they're focusing first, and the cultural shifts that separate experimentation from operational change.
Stop Copying & Pasting Your Way Through the Day — Here's How to Automate It
Where your time actually goes, and how to get it back with automation + AI.
Kaitlyn Study (South Street & Co.) on cutting the small, repetitive work that eats your day — building a digital assistant before you hire, plus real automation examples you can copy.
You Already Have Copilot: Let's Make It Earn Its Keep
Practical AI for the way CRE actually works.
Ashley Pyle (GadellNet) on getting real hours back from Microsoft 365 Copilot — Basic vs Premium, the "racetrack not race car" mindset, Frame · Focus · Finish in Copilot, and a live lease workflow across Word, Excel, and Teams. Leave-behind: the prompt pack, demo kits, and the AI Opportunity Worksheet.
What would change if you started every day with your priorities organized, your meetings prepared, your follow-ups identified, and your next steps already in motion?
In this engaging one-hour session, you'll learn how to begin building a personalized AI Chief of Staff — using Claude or ChatGPT — to support either your professional responsibilities or your home life. Through a practical demonstration and guided activation, you'll see how a carefully instructed AI assistant can reduce mental load, improve preparation, and help manage the constant flow of work, family, and personal commitments — while keeping privacy, permissions, and human oversight firmly in place.
One clearly defined use case — your own AI Chief of Staff, scoped to real work or home life.
A practical framework for setting roles, boundaries, and permissions.
A downloadable step-by-step guide to keep building your assistant after the session.
A working reference for the AI platforms most likely to show up in CRE workflows — with the questions to ask before you commit. This market moves quickly; verify current terms at vendor sites.
— Before You Commit · Three Questions
01
What's in my input?
If your prompt contains confidential client data, deal terms, financial projections, or personal information — you need enterprise-grade data protection. Consumer-tier tools aren't appropriate for this content.
02
What does my firm allow?
Many firms have IT policies that restrict or prohibit certain tools. Find out before using. If there's no policy, that's a conversation to have with IT — not permission to proceed.
03
What's the task?
Match the tool to the job. Research with citations → Perplexity. Long document analysis → Claude. Excel automation → Copilot. Social content → ChatGPT. Don't default to one tool for everything.
— Platform Reference
ChatGPT
Free · Plus / Team · Enterprise
OpenAI
Best for in CRE
Drafting, research, ideation, summaries. Plus/Team add image generation, web search, custom GPTs, and data analysis.
Watch out for
Free tier trains on your inputs by default — turn off in settings. Team adds privacy controls. Enterprise required for full data isolation.