Posted by Justin Roy
Filed in Technology 8 views
Only 21 percent of agents currently use a CRM with AI-powered insights, per the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Technology Survey. That's low enough to be a genuine opportunity for any brokerage or PropTech platform willing to build the capability well, rather than bolt it on as an afterthought.
The gap matters because CRM already drives real business. The same survey places CRM as agents' second-highest lead source at 23 percent, trailing only social media at 39 percent and ahead of the local MLS at 17 percent. A CRM that stores contact records is table stakes now. One that scores leads, tracks MLS status changes in real time, and predicts which contacts are close to transacting turns that data into a real edge.
Off-the-shelf CRMs can approximate AI scoring with third-party add-ons, but those tend to be shallow, treating lead scoring as a plug-in rather than a function tied to the brokerage's actual commission structure and MLS feed. Custom builds can make lead intelligence the product's core instead, weighted to how a given brokerage actually closes deals.
This is also where the build-vs-buy math shifts. A single-office brokerage with a standard workflow may never need this sophistication. A regional PropTech platform serving multiple brokerages, each with different commission rules and MLS integrations, is different — generic add-ons stop scaling, and workarounds get costlier than a purpose-built system. With most agents still working without AI-powered insights, the brokerages that close that gap first set the pace for the rest of the market.
For the full data on AI-powered CRM adoption and where custom lead scoring fits in: Read the full build vs. buy breakdown here.