“The solutions to real estate challenges will come from AI”

“The real estate sector, one of the slowest to adopt technology, is being pushed into a moment that demands fundamental change, and the solutions to its challenges will come from AI and the large-scale adoption of technology,” said Kamaldeep Manaktala, Group Deputy CEO of Aroundtown SA, at the Mind the Tech Berlin 2025 conference organized by Calcalist and Bank Leumi.

Aroundtown is one of Europe’s largest real estate companies, managing €25 billion in assets. The company owns 60,000 residential units, more than 150 hotels, and approximately 3 million square meters of office space for lease, mainly in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and other major locations across the continent.

“Buildings are the backbone of our cities. They represent 70% of Europe’s fixed capital stock and determine how people work, live, travel, and connect,” Manaktala said. “However, real estate is one of the slowest industries to adopt technology. Now the pressure is increasing due to rising operating costs, energy price volatility, efficiency demands, stronger regulation, growing tenant expectations, and an aging building stock that requires digital upgrades rather than replacement. The only way real estate can address these challenges is through AI, data, and high-impact technology at scale.”

He added: “The world around us is changing. AI models are improving at identifying patterns in exactly the kind of large, messy datasets that real estate generates, from buildings, contracts, and energy consumption. The Internet of Things has turned buildings into living, documented systems rather than static assets, and cloud-based data platforms have made it possible, at least in principle, to centralize and query this information at scale. The bottleneck is no longer what the technology can do, but what real estate companies can implement, and how efficiently they can do it.

“At Aroundtown, innovation and technology are not concepts but operational routines. Our thesis is simple: technology is not a tool; it is an accelerator for efficiency, sustainability, and financial resilience. We are already applying AI-based revenue forecasts to optimize occupancy and pricing, using robots to clean rooms and reduce labor, deploying AI-based preventive maintenance, and implementing energy intelligence platforms that analyze building performance in real time to reduce water use, waste, heating, and energy consumption, among other initiatives.

“At the end of 2024, we launched ATechX, our PropTech accelerator. It has completed its first two cohorts with selected companies specializing in fintech, tenant satisfaction, asset optimization, energy efficiency, carbon reduction, climate tech, deep tech, and materials science. Several of these startups have moved to commercial rollout, and we continue to work with some of them beyond the program.

“Aroundtown is a living lab for innovation. We offer Israeli technology immediate access to the largest commercial footprint in European real estate. If you are an Israeli startup ready to scale, we can take your solution from pilot to 50 or 100+ properties quickly, safely, and with measurable impact.”