George Mantor George Mantor

"Technology can process data and find facts and do what it's supposed to do most of the time. Call me old-school, but I keep 3 by 5 index cards, just in case," George Mantor, real estate expert and broker, tells GlobeSt.com. The real estate industry has been slow to adopt new technologies, and in many cases, industry veterans don't see new technologies as a necessity. Not only so veterans like Mantor believe technology won't replace brokerage, they actually see it as potentially detrimental to the relationships that drive deals.

"The money behind the technology makes assumptions based on view of the life of a real estate transaction. The envision an army of buyers in a sea of houses and have focused on how to position themselves to tap off some of those revenues," says Mantor. "This may be where technology has failed the real estate industry by intending to replace the practitioner, rather than support her in the building of meaningful relationships. Ironically, the information relied upon by all of the technology is supplied by the practitioners themselves, entered into the system for no compensation and is then utilized by third parties to attract leads which they then sell back to the inputters of the data."

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.

Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.