AI ROI – November 12, 2026
The challenge of AI adoption has shifted from accessing the technology to integrating it
Even as commercial real estate has grown more comfortable with artificial intelligence, the industry hasn’t quite figured out how to integrate the new technology. Connect CRE has reported on gaps between adoption and full deployment of AI, and JLL has now put the spotlight on another gap: what the firm calls “an AI ROI mismatch.”
JLL’s 2026 Global Real Estate Investor AI Survey finds that 80% of investors report tangible AI benefits, yet 43% struggle to achieve their goals. “As enterprise LLMs have made deployment easier, the challenge for real estate leaders has shifted from accessing AI to integrating it into the business where it can create lasting value,” according to JLL.
This year’s survey demonstrates that the industry has come a long way in a short time when it comes to AI. In 2025, 88% of respondents were only testing or planning AI programs. This year, 83% have pushed beyond test stages in at least one area, while 40% report scaling or embedding AI across all activity areas. The median investor is running seven use cases across five business functions, spanning capital deployment, asset development and property management. That being said, just 15% of investors have built custom agentic workflows across all deployment areas.
Investors need to rethink where they’re deploying AI to maximize returns, according to JLL. Although investment outperformance and capability building in capital deployment remain the industry’s highest priorities (49% each), those areas are producing relatively limited results. In contrast, asset and property management, consistently ranked among the lowest priorities, delivers the strongest measurable outcomes across efficiency (66%), decision quality (57%), capability building (50%) and generated outperformance (46%).
“We are reaching a stage where investors need to revisit their AI strategy area through a value retention lens,” said Alexandra Bryant, Global CEO, Value & Risk Advisory at JLL. “In certain areas where using AI will become table stakes, such as faster underwriting, it is unlikely that will provide lasting value or competitive advantage. However, when considering AI to drive effectiveness, for example in asset management, the same efficiency flows into net operating income and asset value, and the investor retains the value add against past performance.”
The pressure that comes with increased AI adoption is also driving significant organizational change. Currently, 69% of investors report feeling direct pressure from AI’s impact on competition, talent, costs and operational change, 88% have hired dedicated AI talent or an AI lead, and 81% have engaged external advisors to help develop in-house capabilities.
With all these pressures and the initatives taken to address them, outperformance remains an elusive goal. JLL povides insights as to why this is: “First, investment outperformance in capital allocation is harder to achieve by nature: it means beating both competitors and the market, and it takes time to prove. At the same time, most investors apply similar general-purpose tools to the same purchased data and use cases, so their gains tend to be generic and similar.
“Outperformance depends on what an investor can do that others can’t. Differentiation in data and tooling is the key. But outperformance isn’t the right goal everywhere either. In asset and property management, where firms measure against their own past performance, efficiency gains stay with the firm and are a lasting return.”
“Competitive advantage will increasingly depend on how well investors design and own their agentic workflows,” said Emilio Portes, chief product & innovation officer, JLL Capital Markets Services and LaSalle. “Building a custom agentic workflow is not the same as simply using models. It is as much an organizational decision as a technical one. Someone has to own the process, decide how the work should be done, and make sure the agent can reach clean, connected data, responsibly. It’s a new set of capabilities for investors.”