AI doesn’t replace the need for hard work. Instead, it requires agents to think more strategically about how they use automation to maximise productivity and free up time for high-value tasks.
Real estate professionals need to stop treating AI as a search engine and start using it as a strategic tool to unlock meaningful productivity gains.
Deloitte Australia’s Centre for the Edge chief edge officer, Pete Williams, said that once agents moved beyond using AI for simple, isolated tasks and incorporated it into their daily workflows, they could reduce administrative work and improve productivity.
Speaking at the REB Innovation Summit 2026, Williams warned that agents would only benefit from AI if they properly understood how it worked, refined their prompts, and integrated it into day-to-day processes.
According to Williams, instead of using online search platforms to generate answers based on simple keywords, agents could now use tools that interpreted data within the right context.
“This is a pretty fundamental change in humanity, our relationship with knowledge and information.”
“Whatever we want, we could work with that information and knowledge, and that’s a pretty profound place to get to.”
However, Williams said there was a risk that AI might not have enough knowledge to generate thorough answers, while “lazy” agents sometimes failed to use it strategically to get the most out of it.
“We are used to using technologies in what we call ‘deterministic’ way – ‘two plus two is always going to equal four’,” he said.
To benefit from AI, Williams advised agents to use reverse prompting, allowing the system to gather the context from the user to provide more informative answers.
He said agents should tell the technology what they wanted to gain from it and ask what the system needed to know to get the most valuable information.
“The best way you get context is to tell us what you’re trying to do and get it to draw it from you. That will take the way you use this stuff to the next level.”
Additionally, Williams said it was essential for agents to prioritise AI to enhance their own experience, in turn bolstering their services for clients.
“If you can use AI to say, ‘where is my pain’, and ‘I’m going to fix that one by one’, my job becomes about sales, relationships, knowledge and having a good time and getting stuff done.”
In addition, Williams advised agents not to tackle new systems alone and to seek support wherever needed to understand and implement the tools most effectively.
“If you’ve got people in your group, people who are into this stuff, find them and work together to make it work.”
To prevent mistakes and meet regulatory standards, Williams said teams should work together to establish guardrails for priority in their AI rollout.
“Let’s make sure that compliance is number one. That we make sure that we actually get our compliance information embedded in everything we do.”
Ultimately, Williams said that by using AI opportunistically and actively incorporating it into their daily processes, agents can unlock their full productivity.
He said professionals can use AI for tasks such as generating better meeting summaries or reviewing a report faster, but they didn’t always see visible results.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s changing the game because really the real wins come when you start to build it into workflows, into the tasks that drain.”
“Purpose-built tools in the workflow get you hours back every week, and you can have autonomous agents that act for you.”
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