Agentic AI can act like an unlicensed agent, associations want guardrails - HousingWire

As a software engineer turned real estate broker, I am unapologetically pro-technology. I applaud the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and state associations for their recent efforts to bring accessible, practical AI and agentic AI education to everyday practitioners — helping members use tools like ChatGPT for crafting listing copy or enhancing marketing imagery.

However, beneath these necessary educational initiatives lies a profound policy blind spot. Organized real estate’s leadership has fallen into a pattern of passive followership. Instead of driving the technological policy agenda, leadership is merely “monitoring” tech developments.

We see this play out on the official NAR Artificial Intelligence in Real Estate Portal and in updates like NAR Artificial Intelligence (AI) Update: What Washington Insiders Are Watching, where policy remains trapped in a reactive loop.

Associations chase flashy AI projects and focus on policing their own membership to create a public display of momentum, but underneath the noise lies an absence of long-term vision or strategic public policy. As I detailed in my analysis on how organized real estate struggles to address AI disruption, our industry institutions often abdicate leadership to consultants who drop the ball on protecting consumers and professionals.

The systemic threat: unlicensed agentic bots

We must confront the macro reality: cheap, automated Agentic AI systems are being actively deployed across industries to replace human labor. Real estate is directly in the crosshairs. Tech startups and even open source developers are actively building unmonitored tools designed to bypass licensed professionals entirely — a trend made obvious by projects like SixPercent.ai: AI Agents Handle the Entire Transaction.

As tech optimists, we reject heavy-handed, “doomer” regulations on baseline AI models and software. But fiduciary professions are a non-negotiable exception. Real estate transactions involve life-changing legal contracts, lifelong financial safety, and fiduciary duties that a probability-based model cannot shoulder alone. As the preeminent AI safety thought leader and cognitive scientist, Professor Gary Marcus commented specifically for this article:

“We cannot allow mission-critical industries to outsource consumer protection to generative AI, which simply is not reliable enough. Human-in-the-loop oversight is a legal and ethical necessity.”

Because generative models operate on probabilistic guessing rather than factual certainty, handing complex fiduciary decisions over to an unvetted bot compromises public safety. We must align technological progress with a non-negotiable mandate for licensed oversight, a principle I laid out in The Worthy Cause: Empower the Agent, Protect the Consumer Blueprint.

Outmatched in DC: why our associations are failing to lead

Why are our trade associations silent in the face of this threat? The uncomfortable truth is that the leadership of organized real estate is completely outmatched by the tech lobby. Instead of consulting frontline practitioners with technical expertise, association leadership relies on corporate vendors and tech consultants whose financial incentives directly conflict with the protection of consumers and the survival of human agents.

In both Washington and state capitals, Big Tech interests dominate the regulatory agenda, leaving real estate groups in a defensive, confused stance. Look no further than the official NAR Response to the White House Request for Input on AI Regulatory Reform: instead of demanding statutory boundaries to center the human professionals and stop unlicensed bots, leadership spends political capital on the most basic liability “safe harbors”.

This paralysis mirrors organized real estate’s history of surrendering technological ground — much like when the industry ceded its dominant consumer position on platforms like Realtor.com. While dilution of the professional brand equity by the Internet was significant and transformative, dilution of the cognitive expert work that real estate licensees perform every day by Agentic AI could be catastrophic.

Fearing repeat mistakes, leadership freezes. As I argued in “Leadership Culture: Why Organized Real Estate Struggles to Adapt,” our institutions tend to default to groupthink over decisive action on behalf of those supposedly represented: the consumers and the membership.

Jurisdictional mess: the fallacy of federal preemption

NAR’s current strategy relies heavily on advocating for a uniform federal framework that preempts state-level regulations. A glance at the NAR Issue Summaries: Technologies/Artificial Intelligence policy brief shows a national-only posture that completely ignores the constitutional reality of real estate law.

Real estate licensing, property transactions, contract enforcement and consumer protection are all entirely grounded in state-based powers. They are legislated in state capitals and enforced by state real estate commissioners. Pushing for blanket federal preemption cuts off state regulators at the knees and creates dangerous legal loopholes where unlicensed agentic bots could operate across state borders without any regulatory oversight or enforcement. State real estate commissioners will be left toothless to protect local buyers and sellers.

True consumer protection requires state associations to step up and do the legislative heavy lifting in state capitals, with the blessing, support and resources of NAR. Pushing a federal-only solution is an abdication of responsibility, as I demonstrated in a recent article, laying out what is to be done at the state level

The mandate: enact ‘licensee-in-the-loop’ legislation

It is time for association leadership to stop playing defense with flashy tech demos and return to their core mandate: protecting the public. Our legislative path is unambiguous: trade associations must step up and fight for statutory licensee-in-the-loop legislation.

The Fiduciary Mandate: If an AI system generates a contract, negotiates a term or guides a consumer in a transaction, it must legally require a human licensee to review, approve and sign off, retaining 100% of the professional accountability

The law must explicitly mandate that whenever an autonomous software system or agentic AI bot performs any real estate licensed activity, it must be legally tethered to an active, licensed human practitioner who retains full, non-delegable legal and fiduciary accountability.

State associations must spearhead this charge by advocating for strict statutory penalties, backed by thorough enforcement programs, against unlicensed autonomous platforms before such unaccountable bots become the new normal. NAR has the duty to shape the future of our profession and empower the state leaders with legislative frameworks and support

If the legacy trade groups refuse to lead this legislative fight, the dues-paying members will start asking hard questions. Protecting the consumers from black-box AI requires absolute clarity from the institutions that govern us. To hold our leadership accountable we need to implement open governance.

Dmitriy Kruglyak is a software engineer turned real estate broker. He sells Silicon Valley real estate as Broker/Owner of Scient Realty in San Jose, CA and is the founder of MarketWhiffs, Inc, a social gamification platform for the real estate markets.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

To contact the editor responsible for this piece: [email protected]