It must be difficult for consumers to reconcile what they hear when agents proclaim “I stay in touch” with the reality that, if a “Do Not Contact” registry existed for homeowners, many would sign up without hesitation.
CRMs have undeniably been instrumental in helping real estate agents not only stay in touch, but keep what are too often called “past clients” informed. The challenge comes when consumers—across all industries—realize that they can now retrieve virtually every concealed fact, data point, and piece of market intelligence about real estate in minutes. And unlike what agents send them, this information can be deeply personalized and completely free of prospecting motives.
Real estate is not alone in needing to grapple with this shift, though it is particularly difficult in an industry that has always been more tactical than strategic. One need only look at what happened recently in the stock market. When Anthropic announced advances in its AI platform, the markets rattled—and software and CRM developers like Salesforce, Intuit, and Adobe suffered notable, if momentary, drops in value on news that AI could outperform their existing platforms.
Real estate CRMs are especially vulnerable. And in turn, our most professional and tech-savvy agents—those smart enough to automate ongoing engagement with the clients and households they seek to inform, persuade, and retain over the ten-plus years those clients are typically out of the market—must pay close attention to what comes next.
AI will not replace agents. It will divide them.
Agents who lean predominantly on Generative AI will be most vulnerable. As consumers grow more proficient at performing the same tasks—market analysis, property write-ups, staging ideas, open house strategies, negotiation frameworks—the generative agent’s value proposition erodes quickly.
Agents who leverage Analytic AI, however, will become increasingly valuable. They will bring AI into client consultations and discover that the highest and best use of AI is as a thought partner. The dynamic becomes clear: AI advises. Real estate consultants consult. Clients decide—in collaboration with someone who truly knows them.
This distinction matters because advisors don’t sell and market real estate. Consultants do.
Where does CRM fit when consumers can get the information themselves?
When homeowners can access precise, objective answers to their real estate questions without being tethered to a commissioned salesperson, the question becomes urgent: what role does a CRM play?
Real estate CRMs must evolve beyond simply mirroring the language of the real estate industry. Specifically, they need to begin performing on words like client base rather than database. They need to build content architecture around the idea that real estate agents should stop following decades of coaching advice to “treat your business like a business” and instead start using their CRM to support a professional practice.
Is this a distinction without a difference? Anything but. Businesses have customers. Practices have clients.
This distinction, coupled with software that reflects a higher professional purpose, will lead agents toward more consultative, genuinely relational client experiences—ones that transcend data and information that consumers can now access without them.
Where should AI, CRMs, and real estate consultants converge?
The greatest opportunity for real estate agents to earn more by helping more clients lies in an astonishingly underserved dimension of the profession.
There are three areas of real estate value: Transactional, real estate planning, and home asset management. The first has been nearly perfected. The other two are largely avoided—or outright ignored.
Real estate planning and home asset management represent decisions that require consultation and collaboration, not just information. That information will increasingly come from AI. But the judgment—the deeply personal, context-specific, financially consequential judgment—still requires a human being in the room.
This in-home consultation model will skyrocket brokers’ market share, because that business flows from agents’ spheres of influence. It will exponentially increase agent incomes. And when CRMs become an extension of the personalized real estate planning relationship—one advised by AI, anchored by a trusted consultant, and centered on the client—everyone wins.
Real estate consultants—earn more and matter more.
Homeowners—receive genuine guidance on what is, for most of them, their largest asset.
CRMs—find their true purpose: not as prospecting machines, but as the infrastructure of lasting professional relationships.
AI—becomes the advisor behind the advisor.
And real estate—an industry at risk of being flattened into a commodity—becomes more human than ever.
Dalton is the co-founder of the Certified Real Estate Consultant credential, course and network. Learn more about the certification here.
