SmartVibes

By Jenn Quader, President and CEO

I recently moderated a panel called “The New Development Playbook: Flexibility, Feasibility & Innovation.” The bottom line: higher capital costs, tougher insurance math, and a market favoring mixed-use, adaptive reuse, and technology-driven solutions over ground-up construction have put real pressure on the old development formula. I’ll leave the underwriting to the experts on that panel. But it raised a question: when the fundamentals get this hard, how much of the outcome comes down to how well a firm communicates?

This month we sat down with Lexi Astfalk, who is marking 13 years at The Smart Agency, to talk about what a decade-plus in CRE communications teaches you, and why the agency is investing in AI visibility as a new service for clients.

Q: Why should a CRE owner or fund manager care about AI visibility right now?

Because the audiences you work hardest to reach, the investors you raise capital from, the tenants and residents you lease to, the lenders and brokers who vet you, are already forming their first impression of your firm through AI. This is not a fringe habit. In Forrester’s latest research across 18,000 professionals making business decisions, 94% used AI in their most recent one, and generative AI has now overtaken company websites, industry experts, and direct outreach as the most influential source they consult.