It’s an exciting time to do what we do. The next era of how the physical world is financed, insured, designed, built, operated and powered is being written and rewritten every day, as operators and entrepreneurs reimagine how these massive industries work. Last month, NYC Real Estate Week brought together thousands of owners, developers, brokers, investors and tech founders around the ideas and technology shaping that future. More than a decade ago, MetaProp launched the week in partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to make New York the center of real estate innovation. We’ve been fortunate to welcome global real estate leaders like CREtech, SIOR, Commercial Observer and many more to join our efforts and reinforce this mission.

We continue to be inspired by the power and potential of the global real estate and technology industries, and that has never been on stronger display than it was at this year’s NYC Real Estate Week.

Here are some highlights:

CREtech New York

The center of the week, CREtech New York, filled the Javits Center for the Global Real Estate AI Conference, and AI ran through the main stage, the Innovation Stage, the TableTalks roundtables and the Startup Zone. 3,000 people attended the flagship event of the week, including teams from Blackstone, Brookfield, Prologis, Related Companies and Tishman Speyer.

We continue to be energized to work with the CREtech team on this special week and join forces with a team that has been so integral in building the community at the intersection of real estate and tech for so many years.

MetaProp Labs on the Innovation Stage

At the conference, Jeff Schacher, co-founder and Chief AI Officer of MetaProp Labs, sat down with Alexandra Coleman, Chief of Staff at Hudson Valley Property Group, for a packed-room discussion on how real estate firms are becoming AI-powered.

The conversation started from a situation most firms will recognize: people are already using AI on their own, and the hard part is turning that individual experimentation into something the whole firm can build on. Alex walked through how HVPG has approached it. Leadership made clear early that AI mattered to the company’s future and asked the team to figure it out together, and her role has been to turn that support into practice across departments. The two covered how HVPG chose where to focus first, how it brought employees into the process, the governance that lets it move with confidence, and where human judgment stays in the loop. MetaProp Labs helps real estate firms make that change.

MetaProp Annual General Meeting

In the latter half of the week, we brought MetaProp’s global limited partner network, portfolio founders and team together for our Annual General Meeting. The MetaProp team opened with an update on the market, our portfolio and the firm, and shined a spotlight on three breakout portfolio companies: Andrew Borovsky of Split Pay, which lets people split rent and mortgage payments in two; Paul Zeckser of LightTable, which uses AI to catch coordination problems in construction drawings before they become change orders on site; and Nima Wedlake of Grid, which automates utility billing for property owners and managers. MetaProp Labs closed the program with our frontline view of how AI is being implemented in different corners of the real estate industry to achieve bottom-line impact, followed by a look at how we use AI inside MetaProp itself.

Afterward, our team, our portfolio founders and the wider community gathered at Pebble Bar for a happy hour and one more round of conversation.

SIOR Fall 2026 Event

SIOR, the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors, held its Fall Event at the New York Hilton Midtown for all four days of the week and drew more than 1,200 commercial real estate professionals from 21 countries in its 85th anniversary year.

The keynotes came from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, leadership author Caroline Webb and New York commercial real estate broker Bob Knakal. Sessions took on shifting economic conditions, new technology and changing occupier demands, and the theme running through them was the growing value of specialized expertise and trusted relationships.

Commercial Observer Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception

Commercial Observer, our media partner for the week, hosted its Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception at 10 Grand Central. MetaProp co-founder and General Partner Zach Aarons joined the opening panel on tech-enabled dealmaking with Abe Somani of Cadastral and Legora, Nick Durst of the Durst Organization and Joseph Sipala of JLL, moderated by Cher Chang of Literock Capital. Zach talked about how far AI’s accuracy has come and why MetaProp has spent so much time on preconstruction, where AI agents now review the large volumes of documents behind a project. He also expects firms to use different models for different steps of a workflow to keep costs in check. Sipala said AI tools have sharply cut the time JLL spends on portfolio analysis and lease review: “What took a week’s effort now takes a day.”

A second panel, moderated by Don Laughlin of REBNY, brought together Canay Deniz of Ren, Mark Domino of the Durst Organization, Benjamin Levine of Douglaston Companies and Mark Stutzman of Fisher Brothers on the results AI is producing inside real estate firms. Commercial Observer’s full coverage of the evening has more from both panels.

AEC Summit

In Brooklyn, KP Reddy Co. and Zero RFI held the tenth AEC Summit inside the Weylin, the landmark 1875 Williamsburgh Savings Bank. The day was built as curated roundtables for developers, investors, builders, engineers and technologists, groups that, as KP Reddy points out, rarely sit at the same table.

4th Annual Women Leaders in Real Estate & PropTech

Robin Barone of NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate and Miroslav Dimitrov of Growth Protocol hosted their fourth annual gathering of women leaders at Growth Protocol in Midtown, bringing founders and heads of business units together with investors and the people who buy real estate technology.

CRE Unplugged Live

In Tribeca, CRE Unplugged host Ryan Elazari took the podcast live at Fabrik, recording in front of a full room. Jaclyn Pascocello of Fabrik and Gabe Einhorn of Nessoo opened on what actually builds community in a building. A second panel, with Cassidy Hull of Swiftlane and a group of owners and operators, got into what has gotten harder in operations and what they have already automated. We’ll share the episode when it’s out.

A Private Rangers Suite with FTI Consulting

At Madison Square Garden, MetaProp and FTI Consulting hosted a private suite at the Rangers game for senior real estate executives, investors and technology leaders all building the future of the physical world. Thank you to FTI for partnering with us in gathering this room of leaders who are all pioneering new ways of thinking about how the industry works.

Radical Innovation 20th Anniversary Award Ceremony & Dinner

The week closed out at Chelsea Piers, where Radical Innovation, produced by The Hardy Group, celebrated its anniversary with 170 hospitality executives, architects, designers, developers and entrepreneurs. Finalists presented their concepts for the future of hospitality. Congratulations to this year’s winners:

See you in 2027

The energy from this year’s week is still with us. NYC Real Estate Week returns next year, and we cannot wait to see what this community can achieve between now and then. More than ever, this community is empowered to enable a better built world for all, one that is more affordable, sustainable, accessible and resilient for the people who use physical space. We can’t wait to welcome you back to NYC.