I’ve never been to Houston but I wasn’t off the plane a minute before being reminded of an old joke from a friend: “It’s not the heat, it’s the humility.”
Humanity’s lack of spatial awareness, the narrow airport corridors and the fecund air quality combined to make me feel like I was tunneling through a mangrove thicket to find the cabstand. Isn’t this November?
NAR NXT is an annual event in which the industry’s prevailing trade group invites its members to be “part of the process” but still decides on the most important stuff behind closed doors. The press room made jokes about it.
Assuming you could find a meeting to attend — given the galactic scale of the nautically themed George R. Brown Convention Center (a fitting decor choice given that the place can double as an aircraft carrier garage) — the hired door sentries knew exactly who was allowed where and were well-trained in objection handling. I was rejected from two Expo Hall entrances on morning one, only to eventually find a gap in the curtain behind the registration desk.
Trade show attendants are particularly perky on the first day of an event. Keep your distance. Avoid eye contact. There was an Infiniti dealer promoting some new luxury models, a cashmere scarf vendor, yard sign printers, a LEGO station, an active screen printing operation, cowboys on two-story stilts juggling pins and generally all manner and method to extract money from real estate agents on display. I must’ve been asked 10 times if I wanted a branded grocery bag.
Actor Christopher McDonald from Happy Gilmore and The Iron Giant was on hand one day for handshakes and selfies. People who never wear cowboy hats finally had their moment at NXT, and around every corner an agent was recording a Reel. It’s definitely a terrific venue for content. More importantly, I think it gives agents confidence in the sheer breadth of resources available for them to be successful.
Instead of diving right into conversations with new vendors like the AI lead finder Real Intent, woman-founded transaction experience solution Real Time, or Subi, I wanted to step back to listen to agents’ needs and how solution providers responded to them. It didn’t take long for a clear pattern to emerge. Despite Houston being the most multilingual city in the United States, all I heard was the language of AI: RAG servers. Generative. Clones. Agentic.
If you really want to get your money’s worth at a conference, lean heavily into the expo halls and networking events. Everyone has a reason for attending, and those reasons directly reflect the state of the industry.
Outside of Brad Inman interviewing Gary Keller, stories are rarely found on stage. Instead, what I found was a nation of agents grappling with the sudden onset of artificial intelligence.
Embracing cautious optimism
Kelly Ranstad is the owner and managing broker of 150-agent Hybrid Real Estate in Eugene, Oregon. I tracked her down at REACH Demo Day, an opportunity for new members of the program to test their pitch skills. It was a crowded room.
“I’ve been going to REACH events even before they were part of NXT,” she said. “I like to think of myself as a tech connoisseur.”
Kelly Ranstad
Ranstad depends on REACH’s evolving list of technology vendors because the organization is quick to recognize “what’s next.” She centers technology decisions around ease of use for her agents and even developed a proprietary relationship management solution used in conjunction with Lofty. She’s no AI neophyte.
“AI? I love it. We launched a new Lofty website two weeks ago. I asked ChatGPT to optimize it for SEO,” Ranstad said. “Two weeks [in], we’re already top three in organic searches, specifically for our website in our market with our keywords. We’re getting leads from all over the state.”
She also uses AI for blog content and market reports. But for now, she still wants to stay manual when it comes to contract review and transaction compliance.
“I still need that human touch. AI is great for some things, but even with our blogs, we still want it to feel human.”
An hour or so later, I was with friend and industry colleague Britt Chester, Nautilant’s Director of Business Development, at the Expo Hall margarita stand, where the team from MetroList mentioned they were talking about me last night.
Apparently, they’re customers of Lundy, Inc., an AI business solution. It started as a voice transcription service for the visually impaired homebuyer and has since evolved into an internal business automation solution, a quickly emerging use case for AI. Founder Justin Lundy has teamed with LionDesk founder David Anderson. I’ve covered both of them for years.
“We’ve dubbed this year the ‘year for AI’ for MetroList,” Brian Groth said. He’s the director of sales and marketing. “We’ve adopted numerous AI programs; we’ve partnered with Restb.ai to be able to integrate AI image search and listing input. We’ve partnered with Lundy for MetroList Voice, which allows the agents to input a listing entirely by voice.”
Brian Groth
Groth said they’ve been rolling out the changes in person, visiting about 1,000 members so far.
“It’s one of those things that, once agents see it, once it’s in their hands, they realize what a time saver it is.”
Late afternoon would find conference-goers retreating to the patio to catch up on emails or decompress. It was still stupid hot, but at least a few tables had umbrellas. That’s where I found Dallas’ Sermondo Johnson with GenTech Realty. He’s a loan officer, too. The team uses FollowUp Boss as a CRM, but he said he’s here to learn about what’s going on with AI.
“I came to learn about industry advancements, and AI is certainly the hot ticket. I wanted to find out about the latest and greatest, and man, it’s evolving. I just made a clone of myself in a matter of three minutes that can make videos on my behalf,” he said.
“I use AI on a daily basis to come up with content, and I set up job tasks for it to search all the different publications, articles and give me the top five subjects for the North Texas area, and then I’ll post about it.”
Like Ranstad though, Johnson isn’t granting it free rein.
“AI will fool you into thinking it’s the most intelligent thing,” he said. “Don’t take it at face value; you need to tell it to double, triple-check itself.”
He acknowledges that the confirmation process is still much faster than creating the content from scratch. It’s worth the time savings and idea generation.
“I’m also an arbitrator, and AAA is using it to help determine settlement recommendations,” he said. “It’s summarizing the evidence package in minutes; it could be 200 pages, and it’s doing it in minutes. It’s kind of mind-blowing.”
He said if you’re not using AI in some form or fashion, you’re already behind.
“It’s not going to regress, that’s for sure.”
Portal wars reach the NXT front
I made my way over to the MoxiWorks booth to see about RISE, its new AI-supported, flagship enterprise product. The company went big with a space cowboy theme centered around a Light Cycle replica from the Tron universe — the most recent installment of which was about a rogue AI — and an actor in cowboy garb sporting aggressive snip-toe boots. No chaps, though.
There were foam rocket tchotchkes and a looping video of a rocket taking off. Fitting for Houston.
The software looks good. Flexible, lightweight. It’s designed to automate much of the user experience, enabling agents to fly through tasks, discover new business from old contacts and help brokers get a better handle on the spilled bag of marbles that often represents operating a real estate company.
The company clearly spent a lot on this show, with a big team on hand and banners in the main corridor. It’s good to see these long-recognized names harness new energy. I bet the company changes its name to better reflect this product despite already paying for a big brand overhaul, not an unusual move for a recently appointed CEO.
A couple of the usual players weren’t on hand, at least in booth form. I didn’t run into Inside Real Estate or Lone Wolf. No Compass either. A few major technology companies couldn’t be missed, however.
Homes.com looked ready for (portal) war: Its “booth” could’ve registered for its own ZIP code. It was a compound. Orange-clad attendants scurried every which way to earn the attention of lanyard-sporting passers-by.
It had designated meeting rooms, faux-garden panels, and on Saturday and Sunday, an enormous monitor aired football games. It’s Texas, after all.
Homes.com booth at NAR NXT 2025; Credit: Craig C. Rowe
Not far away, Zillow occupied a much smaller footprint. They had a coffee station, the de facto expo hall attraction for companies with trade show budgets. I had a double espresso Sunday morning; the only payment required was a badge scan, like I’m a packaged food item at check-out. Now I’m certain to get more Zillow spam.
Realtor.com at NAR NXT 2025, hosting a Chat GPT class. Credit: Craig C. Rowe
The portal leader’s presence was subdued, not flashy. Staff appeared mostly nonplussed with my bright green press badge. I came and went with not a single pitch about becoming a Premier Agent.
Reba McEntire’s image was ever-present at the Realtor.com booth. Her likeness appeared in banners, digital ad boards, hanging promotions and hallway kiosks.
The portal was conducting a ChatGPT prompt class on Sunday morning when I strolled past. Based on the number of cowboy hats I saw, the session appeared popular. The instructor was going on about best practices. “Prompt, modify, post,” she said twice, or something to that effect.
Redfin stayed at home this time around, but I have a request in my inbox to look at its new conversational AI search.
Last call
The conference circuit can be hectic and, often, a great deal of fun. The W+R Studios and Giant Steps Advisors co-founder Greg Roberston once told me, “Never go big on the first night,” advice to which I mostly adhered this time around.
After the booths close down for the day and dinner checks are settled, there’s typically a sponsored networking event somewhere that pretends to be exclusive. They have invites and lists and sometimes wristbands.
The majority of what you hear deep into the third quarter of happy hour a few days into a conference isn’t usable in formal reporting because when real estate conference-goers have access to an open bar, they ask for doubles. In short, some conference receptions aren’t for the faint-of-liver.
These events offer the opportunity for a lot of very smart people to be themselves with the expectation of not being quoted. It’s a responsibility I’ve always taken seriously and, in fact, leverage to get a feel for where the proptech space is headed. Everything is “on background,” to exercise an industry term.
What makes these events so unique is the opportunity created for known business leaders to speak off-script, free from the vernacular of pitch decks and toothless talking points. If we’re lucky — like this time around — the industry’s highest level of leadership will open up about what they think of our coverage and leap at the chance to pitch the next story. “You know what you should write about?” I stood by as Inman’s Taylor Anderson took some friendly fire from a recent subject.
These are the events where you meet fledgling founders who can’t yet afford a floor presence or an agent with a bootstrapped MVP (minimally viable product) they’re cautiously pitching at a high-top in the corner. It’s an open forum for critiques, insight, punditry and platitudes. It’s part sewing circle, part mastermind.
Group sizes ebb and flow as topics exhaust themselves and the last round of free drinks is announced. The crowd thins because of morning meetings, flight changes and the general acknowledgement that anything not talked about this time can likely wait until next time.
I never come away from these evenings without a story idea or the recurring confirmation that the real estate industry has a surplus of great thinkers. When a select hive-mind congeals from an enormous business facility into a cramped, blaring tavern, you realize that despite lawsuits, portal drama or market worries, the industry remains in very secure hands.
Even when those holding it move on.
Until NXT time.
Email Craig Rowe