What’s Next (And Do We Need It)? Real Estate AI Specialist Certification

At Deeds.com, we’ve been tracking the impact of artificial intelligence on the real estate industry for quite some time now. The Colibri Real Estate company is the latest to make its mark at this nexus. It’s rolling out a new AI certification for agents — the first of its kind.

Colibri says 75% of the country’s top brokerages already have and use AI. The new certification, Colibri claims, meets a “critical need for structured AI education” for agents. So, what does AI certification give an agent?

What’s the Message to Agents: Work Smarter and Harder?    

“Buyers expect instant responses, slick property presentations, and insights that used to require a crystal ball — or hours of digging through comps.”

That’s Colibri’s take on today’s home buyers: not very patient.

What about its take on agents spending time applying their discernment skills to a particular home and market? The company thinks agents should ditch their spreadsheets, sticky notes, and search engines. With the new “Real Estate AI Specialist (REAIS) Certification” an agent can “work smarter, not harder.”

The certification involves a seven-hour course you can do “in your PJs if you want!” For “$179 — less than your monthly coffee habit,” you can learn to “automate tedious tasks like lead follow-ups, listing descriptions, and marketing, freeing up time for client relationships.”

“Impress clients with timely updates,” says the company. Maybe this’ll be great for major, efficiency-focused companies that routinely leave us in mazes of recorded voices.

Sure, AI tools can find patterns in market data that an agent would never have noticed. On the other hand, anything that’s marketed primarily to increase efficiency will come along with trade-offs. AI is no exception. AI generates material so quickly that, in many instances, it’s all the more difficult to sift the wheat from the chaff.

What Does the Certification Course Promise Learners?

The course is offered online, to be completed at the agent’s own pace. It teaches a set of new talents:

• Working with 25 AI tools immediately, and making artificial intelligence part of everyday work, in compliance with government and industry standards.

• Setting up automatic reminders and responses to clients “while keeping your voice and personality.”

• The ability to convey complex data in an understandable and effective way, and “build lasting trust by balancing innovation with human-centered service delivery.”

• The ability to use data-based marketing and pricing strategies.

• The ability to close real estate deals faster.

• The know-how to generate bulletins, social media content, and marketing materials without having to write them.

• An ability to create a legally compliant real estate listing description in 60 seconds.

(What about leaping tall buildings in a single bound?)

Then the company assures us brokers and agents won’t be replaced by AI; instead, they’ll be skipping the “tedious” work, spending more time connecting with clients, and making more money after “adding a shiny certification to your toolkit.”

The real estate world can expect to see much more of this kind of thing. The global market for artificial intelligence in the real estate world is counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Its annual growth rate reportedly tops 37%.

What Does an AI Certification Offering Tell Us About Real Estate and Education?

The debut of this latest specialty certification is a sign of the times. The real estate world is adopting AI, the sign says. Professionals need to be on the leading edge of innovation.

“We’re seeing agents struggle to keep up with rapid technological changes,” says a Colibri executive, who adds that the new certification “provides the structured learning path they need to stay competitive.”

That concern for keeping up with the Joneses of tech is pervasive where business and education overlap. Check the MIT Center for Real Estate at MIT’s Executive Education website. And here it is, in full bloom:

NEW POPULAR COURSE! Shaping the Future of Real Estate: Human, Digital, and Physical Innovation Strategy

For a tuition charge of $12,500, the MIT course promises to deepen the learner’s knowledge of forces transforming real estate, and encourage leadership through these times. It’s a five-day course (next available time: Sep. 28 through Oct. 3, 2025), offered on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Upon successful completion of the course, the learner receives a certificate from the MIT Sloan School of Management in the Strategy and Innovation Executive Certificate track.

Subject matter includes:

• A look at how artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics apply in the world of real property.

• An international exploration of how experts are forming “strategies for smart, resilient spaces and navigating complex stakeholder relationships.”

The course features faculty from MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Center for Real Estate, and includes field trips. Learners will visit locations including the school’s research sites, to explore the intersection of internet technology, the built environment, and workforce trends. Notably, MIT describes its research labs as places “where the future of real estate is being shaped.”

But many other schools are positioning themselves similarly. For just one more example, see Columbia University, with its course focused on “the intersection of AI and real estate.” It’s eight weeks, Zoom-based, offered by the School of Engineering, open now, and available for $2,000. According to the school, it’s an investment: “The use of AI is growing rapidly and those individuals and firms with knowledge of these tools can develop significant competitive advantages.”

But AI Does Some Good Things, Right?

Machine-learning innovations can process massive amounts of information to find market trends and opportunities. AI can also offer tools that help people visualize a home and how they might style a home to suit themselves. AI can be a building design tool. It can assist in optimizing energy use. It can help people understand the characteristics of real estate in ways that can avert risks, mistakes, and losses.

No doubt about it: AI is changing how properties are marketed, discovered, valued, and maintained — and it has much more potential beyond that.

Yet it cannot substitute for the wisdom of human agents. AI could show the potential of a property given the data it’s digested. But an agent knows what someone on the local council has said about zoning, or has heard that legal action might be brewing against the homeowner’s association. And while AI might generate pricing based on that same data, putting deeds together with people requires human skills.