CRE’s AI adoption story has been told mostly as a story of momentum. Tools are spreading quickly, leaders are signaling urgency, and vendors are promising transformation across property management, operations, underwriting, and asset strategy. But MRI Software’s latest Commercial Real Estate Pulse Check suggests the industry’s bigger problem may not be whether firms are embracing AI. It is whether their employees know what to do with it.

The report found that 82% of surveyed commercial real estate professionals see AI as critical to the industry, yet 54% say their organizations offer no AI training at all. That gap matters because the most valuable AI skills are not simply about access. They are about knowing how to ask better questions, validate outputs, spot unreliable results, and understand where the technology’s limits begin.

For now, much of CRE’s AI use remains focused on individual productivity rather than organization-wide transformation. That may help employees move faster, but without training, governance, and trust, it also leaves a lot of value on the table. The firms that benefit most from AI will not just be the ones that deploy the tools first. They will be the ones that teach their people how to use them well.

82% of surveyed commercial professionals say AI is critical to CRE, yet 54% have reported having no training in this area. MRI Software’s latest report on industry trends dives into this topic and so much more.

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