Recently, I had the rare opportunity to go behind the scenes at Amazon in San Francisco. It wasn’t just a tour, it was a masterclass in scale, clarity, and customer obsession.
And as someone leading a real estate business in a rapidly evolving market, I walked away with more than just admiration for tech giants. I walked away with a blueprint for where the future is changing, and how we need to adapt.
Here’s what stood out, and how I applied it to real estate.
Working backwards from the customer
At Amazon, every decision starts with one question:
“Who is the customer, and what are their needs?”
It’s not about launching shiny tools or experimenting with AI for the sake of it.
Every initiative is grounded in solving real, human problems and at SCALE.
In real estate, we need to ask the same.
Are we building processes around the vendor, the buyer, the landlord, the tenant or is it just around our internal systems?
Too often, the designs seem to be from the inside out.
Amazon’s way of doing business is a reminder: reverse engineer everything from the client experience, not just the CRM
AI is the engine behind scale and speed
From logistics to personalisation, Amazon weaves AI through every layer of its business.
Real-time pricing, delivery optimisation, and tailored product recommendations, all powered by machine learning. In real estate, this isn’t the future. It’s already happening.
The real estate industry is exploring how AI can streamline content creation, automate prospect nurturing, and deliver hyper-personalised campaigns.
But the real power may lie in embedding AI into the transaction itself, from appraisal to negotiation, settlement to property management.
Generative AI is moving from concept to commercial
2023 was the year of curiosity.
2024 was the year of execution.
2025 is the year of expectation.
Amazon is already reporting 60–90% time savings across onboarding, customer service, document creation, and coding through generative AI.
For us, that’s the cue to stop treating AIi like a side project.
In property management, imagine reducing admin burden by half.
In sales, imagine every listing having tailored pitch content generated in minutes. In legal, automating the first draft of a contract or vendor care letter.
If we’re not embedding AI now, we’ll be on the back foot by the end of the year.
One-way vs two-way doors
Amazon has a mental model for decision-making:
- One-way doors: irreversible decisions – make them carefully.
- Two-way doors: reversible decisions – make them fast.
I found this really thought-provoking as a real estate leader.
Not every new strategy needs months of testing and approvals.
Most of our decisions, new scripts, a social campaign, and database experiments are two-way doors.
Test, learn, and adapt.
The key is structured speed. Amazon’s not chaotic. It’s fast and focused.
Tenets drive clarity and culture
Each Amazon team builds their own principles, but they must be practical, memorable, and long-term.
This resonated deeply. In our business, clarity of purpose often gets lost in the busyness of real estate.
But what if every team from sales to admin to PM defined their own tenets?
Not just values on a wall, but decision-making filters.
That’s how you build consistency without control.
PropTech’s AI arms race is already on
In the US, companies like Zillow, Redfin, and Compass are acquiring AI startups, launching voice assistants, and embedding AI into CRMs and consumer journeys.
Zillow now processes price estimates using live data streams within seconds.
OnTheMarket launched a voice-powered search assistant that lets buyers talk to their app, filtering listings in real time.
Australia isn’t far behind.
CoreLogic, Propps, Ray White, Id4m3 and others are building toward similar capabilities.
The question is are we ready to plug into this ecosystem, or will we wait until it’s too late?
AI is the new SEO
In the 2010s, if you weren’t showing up in Google Search, you were invisible.
In the 2020s, if your brand isn’t showing up in AI-driven platforms, chatbots, recommendations, and voice search, you’ll be forgotten.
It’s called Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). And just like SEO, it will reward the early movers.
“Customers are always wonderfully dissatisfied”
This quote hit me the hardest.
Even when customers say they’re happy, Amazon assumes there’s a better way and builds toward it.
In real estate, we must adopt the same mindset. Happy landlords may still want less friction. Satisfied sellers may still want faster results. Loyal tenants may still want better communication.
Real estate isn’t just about property.
It’s about trust, service, and experience.
And if we lead with that customer obsession, powered by the right tech, the right people, and a culture of speed and clarity, we won’t just keep up with the future.
We’ll shape it.
