NAR’s 2026 Technology Report Says Agents Use AI. Most Are Barely Using It.

September 30, 2026

The most powerful tool the world has ever seen is sitting on every agent’s phone right now.

And we’re using it to rewrite a few paragraphs.

NAR released its 2026 REALTORS® Technology Report last week, and nearly every headline said the same thing: AI adoption is up. It is. 48% of Realtors now use AI weekly or daily. The share of agents with no plans to use AI at all dropped from 32% to 12% in a single year.

That’s the headline. It isn’t the story.

The story is what we’re doing with it. 75% of agents use AI to write listing descriptions. 56% use it for social media posts. 52% use it for emails and follow-up. Then it falls off a cliff: 30% use it for market summaries, and only 27% use it to review documents.

Read that again. The most common way agents use the greatest thinking tool ever built is to write a paragraph about granite countertops.

Using AI to write a listing description once a month is like calling yourself a race car driver because you sat in the seat and maybe started the engine.

Three Levels, and Most of Us Are Still in the Seat

Level one: sitting in the seat. AI writes things for you. Listing descriptions, captions, emails. It’s useful, and it saves you twenty minutes. Three out of four agents are right here.

Level two: starting the engine. AI does things for you. This is where the industry is racing right now. Inside Real Estate gave Claude and ChatGPT access to BoldTrail BackOffice, and CEO Joe Skousen described it this way: “an agent can open a transaction, prep the paperwork, and get it signed just by asking.” SERHANT. launches an assistant named Dot on October 5 that reads your calendar, email and CRM and tells you what to work on today. That’s real, and something like it is coming to your brokerage.

And here’s where I’ll push back on my own industry a little. Even that is small. Paperwork and to-do lists are an engine running in the garage.

Level three: driving. AI helps you think in ways you never would have on your own. Not just to do your job faster, but to do things you never would have imagined doing at all. To create experiences your clients, your family and your friends will remember for years.

That’s the race. Almost nobody is on the track.

The Real Learning Curve Isn’t the Software

Here’s the stat most coverage skipped. 63% of agents say the learning curve is their biggest barrier to AI, ahead of cost at 59%. And 81% say the number one reason they adopt any technology is to save time.

Put those two together and the problem shows up. We were told AI is a time saver, so we pointed it at the smallest time-saving job we could find and called it a day. Nobody taught us that the real skill isn’t typing prompts. It’s asking bigger questions.

“Most people use AI to get answers. Drivers use it to get better questions.”
JMan Maneiro

Every day I ask myself one question: how can AI change my life, or someone else’s? How can it help me think in ways I never would have on my own, so I can create unforgettable experiences for my clients, my family and my friends? That question will take you further than any prompt template ever will.

Here’s a real one. I was working with a seller who needed a specific number to make their next move possible, and a buyer who loved the house but needed the monthly payment to work. The old playbook says somebody has to lose. Either the seller drops the price or the buyer walks.

I laid the whole situation out for AI and asked it to help me find a way everybody could win. That conversation led me to a seller concession used for an interest rate buydown. The buyer’s monthly payment came down. The seller got the price they needed and walked away with the net proceeds their next move required. The buyer got the home of their dreams. The seller got to make their move. Everybody won.

I wouldn’t have come up with something that creative on my own. The lender still ran the numbers and the clients still made the call, but AI helped me see an option I didn’t know was there.

AI didn’t close that deal. It helped me find the door.

What Driving Actually Looks Like

Let’s make this real.

The family relocating with a nervous kid. Your buyers are moving from out of state, and their nine-year-old is dreading it. A seat-sitter asks AI to write a welcome email. A driver asks, “What would make a nine-year-old excited to move to this town?” Then builds a one-page “Your First Saturday” plan: the park with the best playground, the youth soccer sign-up deadline, the ice cream shop everybody in town argues about. Verify every spot yourself, because AI is a brainstorm partner, not a fact checker. That kid won’t remember the square footage. They’ll remember you.

The closing gift that isn’t a gift card. Over a sixty-day transaction, clients tell you a hundred little things. Take your notes, strip out anything private like finances or account details, and ask AI, “What did this family care about that they never said out loud?” Maybe they mentioned Sunday dinners at Grandma’s three separate times. Now you know the gift, and it isn’t a wine basket.

The listing appointment you rehearse before you walk in. Have AI play the seller’s brother-in-law who “has been in real estate for thirty years” and let him grill you on your commission, your pricing and your marketing plan. Ten minutes of sparring in the car beats an hour of practicing in the mirror.

And it doesn’t stop at work. When I went to the Florida Realtors conference, I brought my oldest son with me, and we had exactly one full day to explore Epic Universe. One day, one brand new theme park, and a hundred ways to waste it standing in lines. So I had AI plan the whole day by the minute: the order of the rides, when to eat, how to make the most of every hour. We didn’t spend the day staring at a map. We spent it together, and we came home with the kind of memories you only get a few chances to make.

I didn’t use AI to plan a day. I used it to protect one.

And it isn’t just the big days. I’ve built custom GPTs for my fitness, my running, my garden and my fantasy football team. The fantasy football one hasn’t won me anything yet. I’ll keep you posted. But every one of them started with the same question: where in my life could a thinking partner make things better?

Look at what’s the same in every example. The AI isn’t doing the human part. It’s stretching what you think is possible, and then you go do a much bigger version of the human part.

Five Ways to Start Driving This Week

1. Flip the direction. Stop saying “write me this.” Start saying “ask me questions, one at a time, until you understand this, then help me build it.” The quality of the output follows the quality of the interview.

2. Ask for what nobody else would do. After any answer, follow up with, “Now give me three ideas nobody in my industry would think of.” The first answer is what everyone gets. The third idea is where you stand out.

3. Make it argue with you. Paste in your plan, your listing presentation or your marketing idea and ask, “What’s weak here, and what am I not seeing?” A thinking partner that only agrees with you isn’t a thinking partner.

4. Give it a person, not a task. “Here’s what I know about this client. What would make this the best experience of their year?” Tasks get you content. People get you referrals.

5. Bring it home once a week. Use it for one thing that has nothing to do with work: a birthday, a date night, a hard conversation with your kid you’ve been putting off. The skills go both ways, and the people at home deserve the best version of you too.

One guardrail: never paste client financials, Social Security numbers or MLS-restricted data into a free AI tool. Driving fast doesn’t mean driving without a seatbelt.

Get Out of the Seat

NAR Deputy Chief Economist Jessica Lautz summed up the report well:

“Real estate agents are making practical choices about technology, and the two payoffs they want most are time and a smoother experience for their clients.”
Jessica Lautz, National Association of REALTORS®

Time and experience. Sitting in the seat gets you a little of the first. Only driving gets you the second.

Your competition down the street is already using AI. That isn’t the edge anymore. The edge is what you use it for.

You don’t need a faster car. You need to get on the track.