AI anxiety in real estate follows a familiar technology cycle

If you think AI is the first technology accused of making people lazy and hollowing out real skill, spend 10 minutes with the history of the calculator. Or the camera. Or the book. The names change. The complaint doesn’t. People will stop thinking for themselves. Expertise will lose its value. Something essential about the work will disappear. We hear a version of this from agents every week. A tool writes a listing description in eight seconds, or builds a net sheet or answers a buyer’s HOA question before the agent gets to it, and the reaction lands somewhere between “this is cheating” and “this is the end of us.” That reaction has a long track record. Before you trust it, look at the record. Our first response to anything unfamiliar works like an immune system Something new shows up and we scan for what it might damage. That reflex protects us sometimes. It also makes opportunity look like a threat before we understand either one. And it’s personal. You spent years getting good at this. Then someone shows you a tool that does a piece of your job in seconds, and what you hear is a question about your future. A 2016 University College London study found people were more stressed w...