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Commercial real estate firms have stopped asking whether to adopt AI. “They’re discussing how they’re going to implement AI and when,” said Andrea Curley, senior director at Yardi. She opened an “AI in Action” panel at a recent Yardi Executive Summit, where AI governance in commercial real estate was the common thread. Following are some key takeaways.
Can Claude read Yardi Voyager data as well as write to it?
Not yet. “While people want to consume data through Claude, we’ve taken a position where we’re not allowing you to write information from Claude,” said Brian Sutherland, vice president at Yardi. “And I don’t think our customers as a whole are ready for that either.”
Yardi will add write capabilities in “very careful incremental steps,” he said, rather than opening them up to everything at once, so customers keep the control and governance they need through the platform. For how the connectors work, read our post on Claude connectors for Yardi Virtuoso.
Who took part in the Yardi Virtuoso beta?
Yardi started the beta about six months ago. “100 customers rapidly responded and wanted to be a part of this beta program,” Sutherland said. The beta covered the connectors, and a separate beta covered Smart Lease, Yardi’s AI lease abstraction tool. Karpel and O’Connor both took part.
What does AI governance look like at Hudson Pacific?
Ophir Karpel is financial systems manager at Hudson Pacific. He oversees Yardi integrations, module implementations, security reviews and monthly and quarterly Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) control reviews.
Training came first. “We can’t just throw this at our folks because many of them aren’t even proficient within the AI tools at a baseline within Claude,” Karpel said. The team trained users on Claude itself “before we layered on the Virtuoso tools on top of that.”
Hudson Pacific then started with a small pilot group from a few departments. It collected feedback after one month and again after two.
What did the Hudson Pacific pilot find?
“For the most part, hugely positive feedback,” Karpel said. “Folks were able to complete their analyses in half the time that they would otherwise take to complete those or less.”
The less positive feedback traced back to weak prompts and, for some users, the Haiku model within Claude. The team worked with those users to improve both their prompts and their results.
Requests that once went to Karpel as a query now go to Claude. “I’m no longer having to do things like that,” he said. “Saves me time, saves them time.”
Users can also prove out a one-time analysis and schedule it to repeat, which Karpel said surfaces insights “even when you’re not using the tool.”
How do you bring hesitant users on board without a mandate?
Hudson Pacific hasn’t mandated Claude for everyone, Karpel said, but IT points people to it first. When someone asks for a report, the team says, “Try to pull it from there, and if you can’t, then come to us.”
If a request needs something the connector doesn’t offer yet, Hudson Pacific submits a ticket to Yardi. The number of available tools has grown since the team started, Karpel said.
For users who haven’t touched AI, “it’s all about getting your foot in the door that first time,” he said. He suggests showing them demos and having them ask Claude what the Yardi connection makes available.
Why did JBG Smith wait for its ERP to offer AI lease abstraction?
Stacia O’Connor is senior vice president at JBG Smith, a real estate investment trust based in Washington, D.C., that owns, manages and develops multifamily and commercial office buildings. She oversees centralized business operations across commercial, residential and corporate.
She spent about five years evaluating platforms and kept hitting the same gap. “There was always a question, like where does the data live?” O’Connor said. About three years ago, a consultant gave her advice she defended against internal pushback: “Wait for your ERP. They’re gonna get there.”
JBG Smith joined the Smart Lease beta last year. “What the product was when we started the beta versus what’s rolling out … is phenomenal,” she said, pointing to amendments in particular. At the time of the panel, the release was set for October 22, with JBG Smith planning to go live after the upgrade.
The company was formed through a merger and never re-abstracted its leases. Because the data already lives in the ERP, amendment abstraction in Smart Lease means “I don’t have to reabstract my whole portfolio,” O’Connor said.
How did JBG Smith bring users into AI adoption?
By involving them from the start. “It’s much easier to get adoption when you have the users themselves involved from the beginning,” O’Connor said. Her manager of lease abstraction trained the agent during the beta.
JBG Smith’s IT team built a controlled environment with room to experiment, and employees meet to share how they use the tools. Next, the company plans smaller steering committees in each group to learn how people use existing software before moving them to Smart Lease and Voyager Commercial 8.
What does ICSC’s CEO say about AI adoption?
Tom McGee, CEO of ICSC, a global retail real estate membership organization, said confusion is the main obstacle. “There’s a lot of confusion around AI just in regard to what it is and how to adopt it,” he said.
Commercial real estate is data rich, he said, but “all the systems don’t necessarily talk to each other.” He called Yardi Virtuoso’s integration approach “kind of right on.”
What are Hudson Pacific & JBG Smith watching next?
Hudson Pacific turned on the Deal Manager connector a couple of weeks before the summit. Karpel expects it to let the leasing team ask about pipeline data and active leases together. “I think will be a game changer for our leasing team,” he said.
JBG Smith plans to follow Smart Lease with Deal Manager and Floor Plan Manager.
What does AI governance in commercial real estate require?
Governance came before scale on the panel: Yardi is adding write access to Claude in small steps, Hudson Pacific trained users before it piloted and JBG Smith brought users in from the start. If your team is planning its own rollout, explore how Yardi Virtuoso connects Claude to your Voyager data.
