AI for CRE Course – Learn to Use AI in Real Estate

AI is here. And while the buzz can be overwhelming, don’t mistake noise for irrelevance. In commercial real estate, artificial intelligence is already reshaping how work gets done. Yes, the technology has limits, and yes, it’s often misunderstood. But those who grasp both its shortcomings and its strengths—and learn to strategically apply AI in their day-to-day—will have a serious edge over their competition.

At the same time, the growing reality is that those who fail to adapt to this new era of human-augmented AI and who fail to learn to use AI in CRE to their maximum benefit, will fall behind and eventually lose.

For the past few years, we’ve been building and sharing free AI resources for CRE professionals here at A.CRE. However, we had held off on releasing a definitive “course”—mostly because the tech’s been evolving so fast, we didn’t want to teach something that would be outdated six months later.

But now, with a bit more stability around AI’s role in our industry and with real-world experience using this tech at scale as real estate professionals ourselves, we’re excited to share more details about the comprehensive AI for Commercial Real Estate course we recently launched inside the A.CRE Accelerator.

• How to Enroll: For now, the AI for CRE on-demand course is available to A.CRE Accelerator Advanced Members (become an Accelerator member now). That said, we do plan to offer the course as a standalone product down the road. In the meantime, if you’d like early access—but aren’t looking for the full Accelerator (i.e., you don’t need financial modeling training)—reach out to the A.CRE team. They’ll be happy to walk you through the cost and get you set up.

History of AI for CRE Training at A.CRE

Much like our approach to real estate financial modeling, we started exploring AI in CRE by sharing blog posts and tutorial videos on the front end of A.CRE. The big difference? Generative AI—and its real-world applications in commercial real estate—is a much newer frontier, and it’s evolving fast.

Our first piece of AI content dropped in January 2023: a tutorial on using GPT-3 to build a macro inside an Excel model. Since then, we’ve published 40+ tutorials, articles, and videos on the topic. Still, we were hesitant to package all of that into a formal “course.” The tech was moving too quickly, and we didn’t want to launch something that would be outdated before the dust even settled.

That said, I’ve felt a growing urgency to teach (and use) AI in CRE—creating practical tools to solve real problems for real estate professionals. That urgency has shown up in a few ways: fine-tuning AI models myself, building and regularly updating an extensive database of AI tools relevant to real estate, co-creating a university course on AI in CRE, speaking on the topic at dozens events and on podcasts, and most recently, stepping away from my role as President of Stablewood to build something truly impactful—CRE Agents, a startup focused on helping real estate professionals free up time by putting AI digital coworkers to work.

So, in November of last year, I started creating a case-based curriculum designed to teach CRE professionals both the core building blocks of generative AI and the real-world applications that can give them an edge.

Who the ‘Artificial Intelligence and CRE’ Course is For

When I set out to build this course, I had three types of people in mind:

1. The Real Estate Leader. You’re the one charting the course. At a larger firm, you’re likely in the C-suite or leading innovation. At a smaller shop, you’re probably a partner or decision-maker. Your job is to understand what AI can and can’t do—and then figure out how to bring it into your organization in a way that drives real value. You know this tech is going to reshape the industry, and you want to be out ahead of it.
2. The Real Estate Practitioner. You’re in the trenches. Whether you’re parsing Yardi rent rolls, building BOVs, modeling acquisitions, drafting quarterly reports, or handling investor comms—you know firsthand how much of real estate is repetitive, manual, and time-consuming. You also know that AI has the potential to not just improve your work but improve your life by automating the mundane.
3. The Real Estate Entrepreneur. You’re building something new. Maybe you’re launching a fund, running a development shop, or founding a proptech startup. Whatever it is, you want to understand how AI can power what you’re creating—how to integrate it into your workflows, products, or services to gain an edge and better serve your customers or investors.

A Practical Curriculum and the Case-Based Method

As with our flagship real estate financial modeling Accelerator training program, this learning product is grounded in a case-based method. Meaning, concepts are taught through the lens of a practical case study. I believe firmly in learning by doing – it makes the content more interesting and provides important context that learning through a more traditional/academic way never could.

The curriculum and initial six lessons were launched January 2025 with the remaining lessons released periodically throughout 2025. The on-demand course is organized into two modules:

Module I – AI & CRE

This module covers the fundamental concepts around generative AI and relates those fundamental concepts to real estate. It consists of nine lessons, an introduction, and a final quiz.

Each lesson includes a hands-on case study and accompanying task where you do things like test four LLMs to determine which is the right one to use for building an automated workflow or eliminate hallucinations from an annual property management review analysis. At the conclusion of this section, you will know more about artificial intelligence than 95% of people in our industry.

• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence & CRE (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 1: Understanding LLMs: Tokens, Context, and Applications (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 2: Open-Source vs Proprietary AI Models (Release Date: Feb 2025)
• Lesson 3: LLM Hallucinations – What, Why, and How to Minimize (Release Date: Mar 2025)
• Lesson 4: RAG vs Fine-Tuning (Release Date: May 2025)
• Lesson 5: RPA vs AI Agents vs Digital Coworkers (Release Date: Jun 2025)
• Lesson 6: AI Agents for CRE (Release Date: Aug 2025)
• Lesson 7: Humans-in-the-Loop Augmentation (Release Date: Sep 2025)
• Lesson 8: Advanced Prompt Engineering for CRE (Release Date: Oct 2025)
• Lesson 9: Investment Decision-Making in the Age of AI (Release Date: Nov 2025)
• Quiz: Final Quiz (Release Date: Nov 2025)

Module II – Apply AI

This module is even more hands-on, while less structured than the first. I really believe that unless you experiment (i.e. “tinker”) with technology, that you’ll never truly learn it. It is akin to – if you want to understand how a toaster works, take it apart and play with its parts.

Hence, this ‘Apply AI’ section contains a series of practical applications of certain AI tools to certain tasks within real estate. It’s not about a comprehensive list of AI applications, but instead a means to getting the creative juices flowing such that you can come up with your own applications for AI in your day-to-day.

You’ll work through nine practical lessons (plus a bonus one), each centered around applying AI to a specific real estate task. And at the end, you’ll take a short quiz to check your understanding

Note that some of the use cases relate to case studies found in the Core Curriculum, while others are entirely new.

• Lesson 1: Use AI to Read and Extract Data from Files (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 2: Using AI to Perform Sale Comp Analysis (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 3: Using AI to Model Real Estate (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 4: Using LLMs to Assess Tenant Credit Quality (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 5: Use Our Custom GPT to Produce Unlimited Practice Case Studies (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 6: Watch Me Build a Custom GPT in ChatGPT (Release Date: Jan 2025)
• Lesson 7: Create Your Own AI Headshot (Release Date: Apr 2025)
• Lesson 8: How to Fine-Tune an LLM (Release Date: Jul 2025)
• Lesson 9: Build an AI Agentic Workflow (Release Date: Dec 2025)
• Bonus: Create an AI Agent Ghost Writer (Release Date: Apr 2025)

How to Enroll in this AI for CRE On-Demand Course

For now, the AI for CRE on-demand course is available to A.CRE Accelerator Advanced Members (become an Accelerator member now).

That said, we do plan to offer the course as a standalone product down the road. In the meantime, if you’d like early access—but aren’t looking for the full Accelerator (i.e., you don’t need financial modeling training)—reach out to the A.CRE team. They’ll be happy to walk you through the cost and get you set up.

What’s Next – How We Grow AI Learning at A.CRE

This technology is evolving rapidly. To keep pace, this course will be updated regularly, with new lessons and modules added as artificial intelligence advances. As professionals at the intersection of commercial real estate and AI, we believe we’re uniquely positioned to provide the learning needed to help our peers stay ahead.

Over time, we expect this AI for CRE course to evolve into a comprehensive program designed to help professionals thrive in a world where AI enhances daily work and digital coworkers become an integral part of the team.

We invite you to join us early in this journey. Stay ahead of the curve. Here’s to continued success in the decade ahead!