Breaking News! We are launching a new series on the podcast (and newsletter). Until now we have only interviewed the founders building AI and PropTech tools for the new age of CRE. Now we are flipping the chair around, sitting down with the movers and shakers in our industry to talk about how they're strategically using AI to improve their business.
If you'd like to be part of this series, and think you might be what we'd call a mover and shaker, reach out: [email protected].
First up is David Moghavem of Trion Properties.
Most operators are still asking where to start with AI. David already wired Trion’s CRM, inbox, and meeting notes into one decision engine. We sat him down for episode one. He did not disappoint.
THE CLAUDE FOR CRE MASTERCLASS HAS ARRIVED
Weeks of heads-down work, and it is finally here. The most comprehensive Claude Masterclass for commercial real estate is live. 15 modules that map every Claude capability to real CRE work: underwriting a stack of OMs, building institutional decks in your brand, wiring Claude into Yardi, Gmail, your calendar, and more.
It opens to the public on June 15, 2026 at $997.
Premium Collective Members already have it. It is sitting in your classroom right now. Go watch Module 1.
Standard Collective Members can grab it as a standalone for $249 during the first 7 days, then the price goes up. Upgrade to Premium later and we reimburse the difference, so there is no penalty for jumping in now.
If you get in before it goes live, we have one ask. Go through it, then tell us what lands and what does not. That feedback matters to us.
QUICK SHOUTOUT: GatherGov
GatherGov is an AI intelligence platform that indexes local government meetings across the US and turns them into searchable signal on zoning, permitting, entitlements, and development activity.
It is built for developers, investors, and asset managers who want to see what local government is doing before it makes headlines. What makes it useful is that it cracks open the black box of more than 90,000 local government entities. Search any topic or jurisdiction across meeting records, get AI-extracted insights on entitlement risk and planning board activity, and set SMS alerts by asset type or geography so the right signal reaches you before your competitors are reading about it in the news.
AI for CRE Collective members get 10% off. Discount code located in the AI for CRE Tool Database.
Algoma Podcast drops | Wednesday, June 10 | 12 AM PT | Josef Bromovsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Algoma. We got a live demo: type in any US address and within minutes you get zoning analysis, site capacity, flood zones, noise mapping, lot layouts, photo-realistic renders, and a pro forma, all driven by an AI agent you talk to in plain English. Josef co-founded Algoma out of Harvard Innovation Labs after watching developers burn tens of thousands of dollars just to find out a site won’t pencil. His claim: the entire pre-development process drops from three to four weeks and thousands in fees down to minutes.
Kolena Webinar | Tuesday, June 23 | 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET | Kolena is an AI platform for CRE due diligence and document review, and we are going live with the team. This session follows an acquisition team through the full deal lifecycle, from the moment you source a deal to the day you close. Expect a working walkthrough of how Kolena automates due diligence, lease abstraction, lease audits, contract review, deal underwriting, loan sizing, and mortgage diligence, with live questions throughout. If you run acquisitions or asset management, this is the one to attend. Collective members also get 1 free month of access to the Kolena Platform (details in the AI for CRE Tool Database).
INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK: David Moghavem, Chief Investment Officer, Trion Properties
David Moghavem joined Trion Properties as an entry-level analyst in 2015. The two questions the founders asked him then: how good are your Excel skills, and how hard will you work. As he points out, anyone hiring an analyst today asks a third one now: how good are your AI skills.
Today Trion is a vertically integrated, value-add multifamily owner-operator with 6,000+ units across eight states, and a third-party management arm in Trion Living. The strategy has stayed consistent: garden-style and mid-rise workforce housing in first-ring suburbs, the deals other people overlook. The thing that's changed is how they find and run them.
His read on the market.
David thinks we are in a capital-stack recession unique to CRE, not an operational one. Talk to anyone outside the industry and they ask what recession. Inside it, the 2021 and 2022 bridge loans are four years in, the extend-and-pretend era is starting to turn into actual capitulation, and lenders are suddenly willing to sit across the whole stack, even offering JV equity on their own books to work out their problems.
His bigger frame is a K-shaped economy where the have-nots are simply the firms that can't adapt to AI. Where he sees opportunity: a bifurcated market where box-checking assets get bid to sub-5 caps while solid 80s and 90s product in tier-one markets gets passed over, and the yields expand for whoever is paying attention.
He also flagged the Bay Area as the number one rent-growth story right now, on AI demand plus a chronic supply shortage.
David, thanks for your take on the market. But now the part our readers actually want.
David's AI stack:
They built their own MCP that connects to DealPath, their deal CRM. Years of deal data that used to sit siloed in folders now gets synthesized into investment theses and real bid-ask comps, not just the trades that closed.
Claude is wired into their Outlook inbox and their Granola meeting notes, so the context from emails and calls feeds the same brain.
On operations they run EliseAI, and are centralizing the platform so renewals and tenant notices go out correctly, not just faster.
They are first in line for Yardi Virtuoso's MCP, slated for Q4, to bring AI directly onto their own portfolio data.
The frame under all of it, borrowed from a book he recommended (Beyond the Building): "treat yourself as a tech company whose product happens to be real estate." Decisions run on proprietary, boots-on-the-ground data, not an off-the-shelf CoStar pull anyone else can buy.
David's argument is that AI handles the science of the job, the underwriting and the synthesis, which frees operators to get back to the art: the relationships, the property walks, the read you only get in person.
On a property walk he used to be head-down taking notes. Now the note-taking runs through Claude, so he can go back to watching the manager's face and asking himself whether this person actually knows their building. In his words, AI lets him do more of that, not less.
Our honest take.
David is further along than almost anyone we talk to, and the MCP-on-proprietary-data move is the real unlock. But here's the catch worth naming: it only pays off because Trion logged deals on a CRM for years before AI could read them. If you don't have that history yet, the lesson is the one he closed on. Compounding interest is real, but you have to start now.
BONUS
David said his podcast is what made him Trion's de facto head of AI. Producing it every week forced him to systematize the tools, and that bled into the whole company. His take on why that matters in 2026: when knowledge gets commoditized by AI, the two things left that compound are your brand and your relationships.
Watch the Full Episode Here:
CONNECT WITH DAVID
Podcast: Deal Flow Friday, his weekly multifamily show. New episodes every Friday.
Firm: Trion Properties.
WHO WE ARE
We run the AI for CRE Collective: the place where 740+ CRE professionals learn how to implement AI into their business.
Hundreds of video walkthroughs and live demos for practical use cases.
A community of brokers, operators, developers, investors, and managers who share what’s actually working.
650+ AI tools in the database with exclusive discounts & community benefits.
If you’d like more hands-on-help, we work with several large enterprise and institutional clients helping them learn, utilize, and implement AI into their business.
Every story above got a full breakdown inside the Collective this week. Podcast drops, live demos, the prompt and skill library, the tool database, the workflows members are actually running on live deals. Step inside the room where AI in CRE isn’t a trend piece, it’s the daily practice.