From corporate C-suites to local taprooms, talk of artificial intelligence is everywhere—along with a full spectrum of opinions and predictions. It can make for a confusing cacophony.
Qualia’s 2026 Future of Real Estate Summit cut through the clutter.
Held in late April at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas, FORES26 brought together title & escrow leaders for three days of panels, presentations, keynotes, and collaborative discussions that featured a heavy focus on AI. The conversations delivered a clear view of where AI stands today, where it’s headed, and how title & escrow can respond and prosper. Here are five of the biggest takeaways.
1. ‘The future is now’
During his opening keynote, Qualia CEO Nate Baker made it plain that AI is much more than another notable technological advancement. Rather, it’s a historic transformation of humanity’s collective destiny—a phenomenon so truly revolutionary that it stands to fundamentally change all aspects of daily life, including how the title & escrow industry works.
“I really feel this is a technology on par with fire and language,” Baker told an audience of hundreds. “This is the real deal.”
Crucially, Baker emphasized that AI’s deep-reaching, transformative impacts are already taking shape. This fast-moving evolution will only accelerate. The future is now, Baker said. It’s pivotal that title & escrow firms begin embracing AI—especially AI made specifically for the industry—to remain competitive as the market evolves.
Said Baker: “AI capability is real. It is ramping incredibly fast. And it has profound implications for all of us.”
From every angle at FORES26, it was apparent that AI is redefining the future of title & escrow.
2. Industry-specific AI is already reshaping the real estate business
Perhaps the most consequential component of the ramp-up that Baker refers to is the fact that AI is progressing from reactive task-based tools to proactive systems that can reason, generate, and take action across complex workflows. The capability upswing is starting to change real estate, including title & escrow.
Qualia Clear—a groundbreaking agentic AI system built for title & escrow—provides a leading example. Through keynotes, fireside chats, and hands-on demonstrations, FORES26 attendees experienced how Qualia Clear acts as an AI teammate that can execute work, helping to reduce the time to close a file by 35—50%. While precise results can vary depending on the state of a company’s operations and the extent to which Clear is adopted, the annual time savings value of that for a firm that closes 1,200 transactions per year is $325,000, Qualia research shows.
At FORES26, early adopters of Qualia Clear shared powerful stories about how the agentic system has improved their operations and saved them money. Tiffany Webber, Owner and Managing Attorney at real estate law firm Thomas & Webber, was among those to tell their tale.
In a mainstage discussion that was part of Qualia’s Product Keynote , Webber shared that client communication demands had increased dramatically, elongating working hours and reducing productivity. She was considering hiring a squad of part-timers—estimated annual cost of $117,000—to help alleviate the burden. Instead, she invested in Qualia Clear. The result? Closer file capacity increased 33% and there was no need to add the salary overhead. “It really changed the game for us,” said Webber.
Other real estate industry leaders are making big moves with action-capable AI. Take Compass, the largest residential real estate brokerage in the United States. The executive in charge of Compass’ AI roadmap, Senior Director of Engineering Boris Veltman, spoke with Baker in a fireside chat at FORES26. Talk centered on how Compass is building an AI-powered operating system that will augment and empower its network of 340,000 real estate agents, while greatly elevating the home buying and selling process into a cohesive, seamless experience.
The system is taking life. It includes a focus on voice-activated AI that completes complex workflows based on spoken inputs from agents; predictive intelligence that surfaces client opportunities; infrastructure that reinforces agent ownership and seller choice in how listings are marketed; and automation of back-office functions that reduce administrative burden. Taken together, these capabilities point to a model where AI operates quietly in the background, handling busy work, while real estate agents stay firmly in control of—and more deeply engaged with— the client relationship.
AI is about giving people who are experts superpowers, Baker and Veltman agreed.
Tiffany Webber, Owner and Managing Attorney at Thomas & Webber, discussed how Qualia Clear’s agentic AI capabilities are empowering her team and driving efficiency during a mainstage chat with Matthew Blanchard, Director of Product—Qualia Clear, at FORES26.
3. The time to begin—or advance—AI use is now
When it came to advice on AI adoption, industry leaders sounded similar notes at FORES26. Don’t wait, they said. Get going before it’s too late. The technology is advancing so quickly that to sit on the sidelines now is to fall behind. In time, that can put a business in jeopardy.
“I’m not going to let AI happen to me; I want to be in control of my own future,” said Webber. “If you’re wondering what to do about AI, my advice would be don’t let it happen to you. Step forward and do something.”
Speaking during a mainstage panel, Amy Gregory, President of The Florida Agency Network, said good leadership is essential to driving beneficial AI adoption. Leaders should frame AI as an enhancement of team members’ abilities, not a replacement. They should use AI themselves and model its capabilities, showing staffers how the right AI solutions can reduce friction-filled work and free them to spend more time building client relationships. “Don’t try to do it all, but start somewhere,” Gregory advised.
Alex Orenstein echoed that sentiment in a separate FORES26 panel. The Title Team Lead at Atlas Orange said to identify “low-hanging fruit”—certain tasks or workflows that AI can already handle well and benefit employees—and introduce those. That can stoke excitement among team members, which helps fuel more consistent and advanced adoption.
Veltman said those just starting with AI should strive to “bulldoze your bottlenecks.” For example, “use AI to eliminate the administrative friction, so your escrow officers actually have the time and energy to reassure the nervous buyer who is about to wire their life savings,” he said.
If a title company is already progressing down the AI path, then now is the time to focus on interoperability with key stakeholders like brokerages and lenders, Veltman said. “You need to be able to catch the baton from the brokerage and the lender without dropping the data,” he said.
AI-themed discussions drew big crowds at FORES26.
4. Data discipline is essential
Speaking of data: AI will be best positioned to transform a title & escrow company for the better if the organization first builds strong, consistent data discipline. That was the primary message industry veterans Alex Brown, Qualia’s Senior Director of Strategic Engagements, and Tyler Lee, Principal of Strategic Engagements at Qualia, delivered during their “Getting Your Business Ready For AI” presentation.
Brown and Lee emphasized that AI can be limited by how well it can “see” and interpret a company’s day-to-day operations through its data. This means every file a team touches is a data asset that has to be captured cleanly and consistently. If a firm’s processes rely on workarounds, missing fields, or inconsistent system usage, then they’re effectively lowering future AI capabilities before they even begin.
For operational leaders, this fact evolves the job to include intentionally managing how work is documented inside the operating system. The companies that win will be those that move from a “file closed, move on” mindset to one where every file is structured so AI can read it, learn from it, and act on it. That means standardizing behaviors, enforcing system usage, and defining a small set of non-negotiables around data capture. “The quality of the data you produce today directly determines whether AI becomes a meaningful advantage—or an underwhelming tool—tomorrow,” said Lee.
The idea that title & escrow is entering an all-new, AI-empowered era was everywhere at FORES26.
5. Qualia is using AI to help ‘100x’ service
When it comes to AI, Qualia is practicing what it preaches. In a mainstage session, Qualians presented demonstrations of how they’re using AI to dramatically improve operations and service across the company.
“We want every person at Qualia to drive 100x more value, to the company and to our customers,” said Adam Baratz, Chief Revenue Officer at Qualia. “What we’ve learned is that the only way we get there is by building AI in a way that is fully embedded into our daily operations. AI needs to be wired into how each function actually runs.”
Grounded in real-time understanding of the business, deep domain knowledge, and the ability to take action, internal AI initiatives at Qualia are quickening and improving everyday workflows, turning them into leverage points for scale.
In onboarding, for instance, a voice agent delivers real-time guided walkthroughs and live Q&A. This enables customers to get the specific help they need, when they need it, whether after hours or the weekends. In Qualia Core, an in-app assistant will soon answer training and support questions in real time. What really sets the support assistant apart is that it’s grounded in the context of each user’s specific order and transaction, meaning it doesn’t give generic answers. Rather, it provides contextualized answers customized to the particular user’s precise need.
Elsewhere, engineering is vastly accelerating the speed and enhancing the strength of quality assurance testing through AI-powered automation. And, product teams are bridging the gap between design and delivery, translating designs directly into production code that is ready for use in the Qualia app. Across each use case, AI removes friction, compresses timelines, and amplifies human capability, turning what once took days or weeks into minutes, and exponentially lifting the bar on what great service actually looks like.
Qualia team members, including Senior Product Manager Caroline Dill, delivered insightful talks about how Qualia is leveraging AI internally to streamline and elevate service.
‘We’re all in’
FORES26 put the pivotal moment that title & escrow and the real estate industry more broadly is at with AI into stark relief. The technology is already beginning to transform work and service. This shift will become faster and more pronounced as AI-powered systems capable of taking action continue their swift advance, quickening turnaround, transforming dissonance to harmony, and elevating the role of the human professional.
Firms keen to prosper now and in the decades to come aren’t waiting for perfect conditions to adopt AI. They’re starting where they can, putting industry-specific AI to work in real environments. They’re treating AI like operational infrastructure, something that needs to be embedded and leveraged throughout processes.
Practical, proactive, grounded in execution, and with people firmly in the loop—FORES26 showed that’s how the title & escrow industry is advancing an AI-enabled future. Qualia’s mission is to ensure that future is a successful one.
“We’re going to keep you on the absolute cutting edge of what AI can do,” Baker said. “We’re all in.”
To learn more about how Qualia is building AI-fueled solutions to empower the title & escrow industry, speak with an expert today.
