Commercial Real Estate Industry Pulse Check
North America | 2026
Foreword
Commercial real estate feels uncertain these days. High costs and stubborn interest rates are increasing business expenses. Declining occupancy and elevated tax rates put more pressure on revenue. Meanwhile, new tools and technology (especially artificial intelligence) are changing the very way we work, no matter the role.
With so much going on, it can be hard to see which challenges will shape our industry the most – and how to meet them. That’s why we asked you.
MRI Software built this survey to surface the voice of commercial real estate: your voice, from company leaders to property managers, accountants, and everyone in between. These real-world insights come from those most affected by today’s changes – and who can best guide teams through them.
You shared signs of frustration as well as optimism. More risk in the marketplace, but more actions to stay ahead of it. Data driving organizations, but not being used to its full value. Growing AI adoption in many roles, but not across all teams. And while organizations are preparing for AI, few people feel trained to use it effectively.
Focusing on issues around data and AI, this report helps you get ahead of potential headaches that can limit your growth.
Carla Hinson
VP, Solution & Innovation, MRI North America
Key findings
Higher tolerances for uncertainty
Eighty-one percent of respondents say their organizations tolerate more uncertainty about the market’s direction than a year ago to varying degrees.
Accounting for higher risks
Firms don’t want unrealistic decision models. Forty-seven percent of respondents have adjusted their forecasting and over 20% built greater tolerances for market risks into strategic plans.
More “wait and see”
Most CRE firms are holding assets for longer in this uncertainty, focusing on operations rather than growth. Thirty-seven percent of respondents put off major decisions, while over 18% have taken no action.
Analytics are improving real estate
Over 70% of respondents say data visualizations have improved multiple business areas. Data interactions ranked highest, including aggregation, standardization, and access to real-time information.
Analysis over decision support
Data analytics power the foundation of decisions more than the decisions themselves. Respondents use analytics for forecasting, financial analysis, and operational analysis more than real-time decisions.
AI focused on individual tasks
While AI advocates focus on boosting organization-wide insights, 55% of respondents plan to use AI for personal performance improvement. Nearly as many are focused on automating administrative tasks.
Preparation for AI is slow
Sixty-two percent of respondents report their companies are preparing for AI, but more effort goes to training and messaging than technical requirements like data aggregation and system integration.
AI training lacks – when it exists
Fifty-four percent of respondents report that their organizations do not offer any AI training at all. What training is available doesn’t focus on things that make AI outputs the most effective for business success.
Respondent profile
By age group
By company size
By portfolio size
By role
About the survey
MRI Software conducted a survey of commercial real estate professionals during January and February 2026. Nearly 600 people across multiple areas of the industry participated in the survey.
Greater tolerance for market uncertainty
Commercial real estate firms have always weathered changes in occupancy and operating costs. Today’s environment is also burdened by wide-ranging uncertainty and volatility. Inflation, mortgage rates, and even what revenue sources will be viable in the future are all weighing on the market.
Eighty-one percent of the survey respondents said their organizations had a greater risk tolerance for uncertainty and volatility than 12 months ago.
Firms have managed elevated risk in varied ways over that time. Some are removing decision-limiting factors that no longer align with reality. Others are simply waiting out the turbulence, holding onto assets longer and focusing on operations instead of portfolio growth.
Aligning decision models to current realities
- 47% are adjusting their forecasting models to account for more risk.
- Over 20% have increased market risk tolerances in their strategic plans.
Updating portfolios to meet market conditions
- Over 27% reported refinancing portfolio assets.
- Almost 18% delayed acquisitions.
- Nearly 17% paused new development.
- Nearly 25% sold assets.
- 11% divested their portfolio.
Many taking a “wait and see” approach
- 37% put off major decisions until conditions improve.
- Over 18% have taken no actions yet.
Still, the market has signs of life. Taken in full, the survey results show that 45% of respondents are doing something to keep their businesses moving forward.
Your voice: What’s shaping commercial real estate today
When asked about their biggest concerns in today’s commercial real estate market, respondents cited everything from broad economic issues to personalized pressures of technology.
- “The economy is slowing leasing down and companies are hesitant to renew/lease new spaces.”
- “Work from home is still very prevalent. We need bodies back in the buildings!”
- “The tariffs and the market uncertainty have been killing us.”
- “Antiquated programs make it hard to fit into the AI conversion story.”
- “Fragmented software vendors make integration of data difficult.”
The top 3 concerns
Three themes emerged most often across the open-ended responses:
The economic big picture (30%)
Respondents feel increasingly affected by interest rates, inflation, recession, political and policy instability, market uncertainty, and falling property values.
Occupancy vs. WFH (18%)
Revenue and growth continue to be pressured by occupancy challenges, driven mainly by hybrid and remote working models as well as repurposed spaces.
Technology adoption and integration (16%)
Along with the expected pro- and anti-AI sentiments, respondents are struggling with fragmented data, outdated software, and proper training.
Commercial real estate professionals’ biggest concerns understandably reflect broad issues beyond their control. However, they do have the power to optimize their technology and position themselves for greater performance once the “wait and see” period of uncertainty is over.
Dashboards and visualizations are improving real estate business
Commercial real estate firms spend a great deal of time making sense of – and acting on – near-endless amounts of portfolio data. All types of vendors offer dashboards and data visualization tools to accelerate that process. But how are people really using them?
Improving data management
Seventy percent reported improvements across multiple areas of their business, mainly in the ways respondents interact with their data:
- Access to real-time data: 17%
- Data standardization: 14%
- Better data aggregation: 12%
Biggest improvement by role
Property managers reported access to real-time data as a bigger improvement than executives or accountants, who valued data aggregation more. This could reflect the role’s greater need to understand (and directly address) conditions on the ground in their portfolios.
- CRE Executives – Better aggregation of data: 15%
- Property Managers – Access to real-time data: 22%
- Property Accountants – Better aggregation of data: 15%
Across all roles, few respondents reported faster decision making (7%) or better outcomes (6%) from using dashboards, despite many software providers focusing on these benefits. This disconnect could be because most respondents are not in high-level decision-making roles – or that their tools can’t deliver what they expected.
More concerning are the respondents who shared comments that dashboards and visualizations aren’t accessible or go unused. Companies that want to get the most value from their technology will need to address internal blockades keeping their teams from realizing the benefits of these tools.
Users today expect real-time data at their fingertips. The days of waiting weeks for someone to build a quarterly report in a disconnected Excel file are over. We’re seeing a massive shift where data is warehoused and the prep is defined by business logic in the semantic layer, not manual macros. This creates a true single source of truth, turning what used to be a ‘spreadsheet landfill’ into something that actually enables better data aggregation.
– Craig Dionne, VP of BI, Cherre
Analytics not focused on real-time decision making
While dashboards and data analytics are improving commercial real estate, the survey results show a gap between what these tools can do and how they’re actually used. For all the marketplace messaging about supporting real-time decisions, our respondents find more value elsewhere.
While 40% of respondents use data analytics for real-time decisions, more use it for financial and operational analysis as well as forecasting. The differences are more apparent looking at the results by role.
Data analytics by role
Users of analytics for real-time decisions tend to be CRE executives:
- CRE executives – 63%
- Property Managers – 49%
- Property Accountants – 23%
Overall, more respondents use analytics to make sense of the present and predict the future:
- CRE Executives: Forecasting – 76%; Financial Analysis – 80%
- Property Managers: Forecasting – 62%; Operational Analysis – 62%
- Property Accountants: Financial Analysis – 66%; Forecasting – 61%
Unlocking the promise of analytics
The results point to analytics being a tool for making the foundation for decisions, not the decisions themselves. This could be a side effect of more respondents working in reporting-driven roles. (One-third of all respondents had financial roles: property accountants, asset managers, CFOs, etc.)
With so many respondents focused on daily operations rather than strategic decisions, the technology may not be living up to its full potential. For example, scenario testing – seeing how different variables affect strategy outcomes – is being used by only 20% of executives, and very little by other groups.
Analytics can do much more than summarize data. CRE organizations that unlock the value of their data will have an advantage in today’s uncertain market.
The gap between executives and property accountants using data for real-time decisions isn’t a data problem – it’s an access problem. AVR Realty cut their monthly reporting cycle from 20 days to 10 by giving their accountants self-service access to live property data directly in Excel. When teams can get to the numbers without waiting on IT or manual exports, decisions stop being reactive and start being proactive.
Your voice: Unfiltered thoughts about AI
Our survey also asked for open-ended responses about what people really think about AI in commercial real estate.
- “We are using AI anywhere that we can find a business case for it.”
- “It’s extremely beneficial to overall efficiency and production.”
- “It can be very useful, but the sector is very archaic.”
- “Implementation barriers and skill gaps with employees make it difficult to implement successfully.”
- “I feel it is dangerous and can cause dependency on inaccurate information.”
Major themes
Focus on efficiency
Many respondents see immediate value in AI for automating daily tasks and reducing errors so they can focus on high- value work.
Augmentation, not replacement
Most believe AI should support roles, not replace them. They cited the contract details, negotiations, and relationships unique to real estate.
Impacts on team skills
More than job replacement, respondents worry about overreliance on AI outputs and corresponding losses of job skills and competence.
Humans must be in the loop
There are great concerns about data accuracy, security, and unnoticed hallucinations. Respondents want AI to have human review and governance.
Adoption challenges
Multiple people cited outdated tech infrastructure, unproven tools, and limited training getting in the way of valuable AI adoption.
Overall, respondents are cautiously optimistic about AI where they can see real value. However, human checks and balances must be part of making decisions. Respondents also want more training to realize the full value that AI promises.
The real ROI of AI
The market has a lot of talk about the value of artificial intelligence uncovering time savings and process efficiencies across organizations. The same holds true in commercial real estate, where a majority of respondents report AI tools being important for future success.
Personal vs. organizational
That said, today’s gains are happening on a much smaller scale.
Over half of all respondents planned to use AI tools (specifically ChatGPT and CoPilot) for improving personal performance over the next 12 months – significantly more than other activities that could boost efficiencies across multiple roles. Here’s how the results broke down in the main respondent categories:
- CRE Executives: 56%
- Property Managers: 53%
- Property Accountants: 55%
The next-highest ranking was for automating administrative tasks at 45%. Surprisingly, this use was cited by 60% of CRE executives – roles not usually associated with admin activities.
Where AI will make a difference
Respondents also shared the business areas they thought would benefit the most from AI. The results suggest the biggest gains in areas driven by data extraction and analysis, particularly in operations:
Limited use, hidden values
Like analytics, AI tools are enhancing specialized roles and departments rather than delivering broad value. If the benefits are concentrated in a few select areas, it may be hard for companies to prove the real ROI of AI across the organization.
New technology has to be refined over time through usage, testing, and development. I think that currently AI is at a stage where it can do a lot, but still needs a lot of supervision and human intervention. I think it will be like this for a while until it can become more refined, and that there will be a learning period for both users and AI.
– SMB commercial leasing professional
AI preparation is slow – and lacking
AI hype is at an all-time high, but we’re still at the beginning of the story. Respondents reported on how companies are preparing their processes for this technology.
Early-stage readiness
At first glance, the picture appears rosy. Sixty-two percent of respondents report that their companies are preparing for AI tools in some way:
Training? What training?
However, when asked about AI-specific training, an alarming 54% of respondents said their organizations had none available.
Digging into results further shows most training effort focuses on avoiding liability concerning AI outputs:
- Usage guidelines – 25%
- Responsible use – 24%
Interestingly, only 13% of respondents to the Multifamily Real Estate Pulse Check survey reported that no AI training was available.
Awareness vs. effectiveness
Commercial real estate organizations are making a good effort to adopt AI tools. However, the training organizations provide most often doesn’t focus on activities that make AI outputs more effective:
- Source validation – 16%
- Prompting exercises – 14%
Continuing the parallels with data analytics, AI produces little value if it isn’t used well. It’s not enough to simply tell people the tools exist and should be used responsibly. The lack of effective training will restrict the value AI can deliver, especially with market-wide concerns about the privacy, security, and trustworthiness of information going into and being produced by AI.
AI readiness isn’t about training for every possible scenario – analysis paralysis kills momentum. Real value comes from empowered teams executing against a clear strategy built on trustworthy data, the right resources, practical guardrails that protect the company, and a structured roadmap focused on use cases that truly move the needle.
Embracing the new change
The evolution of commercial real estate is nothing new. What is new is the nature of that evolution.
By unlocking the full value of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence – and properly training people how to use them – commercial real estate organizations can do more to build thriving communities and stronger businesses.
Disclaimer
This information has been provided as a discussion mechanism. It is not intended to be used or relied upon for decision making or investment purposes. MRI Software assumes no warranties and takes no responsibility for the accuracy, legality, or reliability of the information.