You're not a tool buyer anymore

Tech is rewriting commercial real estate exponentially. Most coverage is news - who raised what, who bought what. This newsletter covers physics. Structural forces. Patterns before they’re obvious. Atoms and bits. Subscribe for updates →

the physics

I know an appraiser with over 20 years of experience. Works on multi-billion dollar projects on a regular basis. Serious professional, serious track record.

And yet, the core of his work was always the same: pulling data from different sources, downloading market reports, copy-pasting through PDFs and spreadsheets to finally assemble everything into one solid valuation deck. Active when manually aggregating data. Reactive when waiting for documents from other departments and partners.

We talked a few times over the past year. The first conversation was about AI writing decks. The second about extracting data from market reports. The most recent one? He showed me his ready-to-use system that orchestrates everything - from downloading reports through data extraction to writing a preliminary deck for further review. F**king mindblowing.

Where his corp failed because of its size and inertia, one person changed his performance by 10x. Probably, opening new opportunities for the entire company, or at least himself.

I always knew the world belonged to the active ones - the givers, not the takers. But something fundamental just shifted. For the first time in history, tool creation is as accessible as tool buying. You don’t need a dev team, a budget approval process, or six months of vendor evaluation. You need running shoes.

My general thought here is uncomfortable: takers will not survive. And by “long run” in current circumstances, I mean the next 3-5 years at most.

The companies waiting for someone to deliver the perfect solution? By the time it ships, it’s already outdated.

the signal

The difference between legacy teams and trailblazers like the appraiser isn’t experience or resources. It’s mindset.

I still see real estate companies trying to preserve the “real estate is a safe bay” paradigm. Buy enterprise software, wait for implementation, complain about integration issues, compete on relationships and market information asymmetry. The dream island where things move slowly and predictably.

That island doesn’t exist anymore. Literally.

Teams, along with their leadership, must admit the past is gone. The future is a completely different beast. Blockbuster was dying over long years, but that’s not how it works anymore. The shift will come fast, in months. How do you know the right mindset is there? You put running shoes on and start running at full fkn speed.

We’re all hustlers again, because the world is at the edge of change.

I’m deeply in tech, and barely ever have its possibilities made me truly excited. But this is huge. I know how I was working a year ago, and it’s a completely different work environment now. I’m excited and afraid when thinking about the next 12 months. But the only thing I know is that I must not stop running.

the translation

Stop thinking someone will build you tools to win more deals, analyze faster, work more effectively. When they deliver, the tool will be outdated. Instead, start thinking of yourself as a startup founder - start building, and never stop.

For CRE executives: your competitive advantage isn’t buying the best software stack. It’s creating a culture where your people become tool creators. The appraiser who 10x’d his performance didn’t ask permission - he just built. Your question isn’t “which vendor should we evaluate?” It’s “are we hiring people who know how to build, and are we getting out of their way?”

For proptech founders: your customers aren’t just buyers anymore. They’re builders. The ones who survive will be the ones who build faster than you can ship. Your job isn’t to sell them finished solutions - it’s to give them building blocks they can assemble themselves. Sell infrastructure, not applications.

As I told my own team: AI will cut 50% of the work - the boring 50%. Copy-paste, manual reports, searching for data. What remains is the work that actually matters.

final thought

The real question isn’t whether to accelerate. It’s whether you’ll lead the acceleration or become part of what gets accelerated past.

Blockbuster died over years. Your timeline is months.