Madrid, 1 September 2026 · By James Levy-Newman, Partner and Managing Director.

While much of the sector is still using artificial intelligence to summarise a contract a little faster, the useful debate lies elsewhere: whether these tools genuinely change how a deal is originated, structured and closed.

At RS Bersy we start from what we are. We are not a platform for large-scale property management. We are a boutique firm, founded in 2002 by Juan Carlos Hidalgo, that structures opportunities, orchestrates capabilities and finances projects in order to execute complex transactions, mostly off-market, with a partner leading each mandate from start to finish. That determines which kind of artificial intelligence is useful to us and which is just noise.

What the report says, and what we will not pretend

A recent McKinsey report estimates that agentic systems could unlock between $430 billion and $550 billion a year in real estate, construction and development. It is not talking about chatbots. It is talking about agents that plan, execute, escalate and learn.

That figure is a map of the industry, not a line in our income statement. What does interest us is the thesis: the value lies not in drafting reports in better prose, but in redesigning the entire workflow of a domain. In our case, that domain is not the maintenance ticket of an office tower. It is that of a family office or a private wealth holder who wants a building in Madrid, a mortgage-backed bridge loan or a discreet divestment, and needs someone on the ground who does not confuse speed with judgement.

Where it fits at RS Bersy

Our website sums it up in three verbs: structure, orchestrate, finance. Agentic artificial intelligence, properly governed, supports all three without replacing the partner who signs.

  • In origination, it helps with the initial screening of assets, comparables and documentation gaps before the first site visit.
  • In structuring, it organises cash-flow scenarios, deal perimeters and the terms of a non-binding offer, so that the discussion with the client is about risk, not about the spreadsheet.
  • In financing, it cross-checks debt history, valuation and timelines, so that the conversation with the lender starts on a cleaner footing.
  • In monitoring, it reduces the time we lose on repetitive reporting and gives it back to negotiation and relationships.

The Spanish market demands it. The 2-to-20-million ticket, the one-off asset, the inheritance, the building to be repositioned and the capital arriving from the United States or Latin America do not fit into a generic tool designed for an institutional portfolio of a thousand units. That is where a boutique with its own architecture and local knowledge—planning, notaries, valuation, off-market—has an edge over the consultancy that rolls out the same product in fifteen countries.

The human factor is not a slogan

McKinsey reminds us that real estate is a relationship business. We agree. An agent can classify, prioritise and draft. It cannot sit down with an owner in Capitán Haya or in Sotogrande, nor decide whether an exclusive mandate is worth taking on, nor sustain the trust of a family office when the summer brings the file to a halt.

We are not replacing talent. We are freeing it from friction, so that Juan Carlos, Javier and the rest of the team can concentrate on what truly moves a deal: the structure, the price, the perimeter and keeping one's word.

What we offer those reading this

If you are an investor, family office or operator with exposure to Spain, the question is not whether you use artificial intelligence. It is whether your partner on the ground uses it to shorten the path to a decision, or to produce more slides.

At RS Bersy the brief remains what it has always been: privileged access to opportunities, local execution and a point of contact who does not change halfway through a mandate. The agentic layer serves that purpose, not the other way round.

If you would like a second opinion on an asset, a mandate or an investment or divestment process, write to us.

Our thanks to Rory Hickman and the McKinsey team for some genuinely useful research. The work of turning it into judgement, in Spain, is ours.