Real Estate Services Stocks Crash In Latest “AI Scare Trade”

FIrst it was SaaS (in particular, and Software in general), then Private Credit, then Insurance Brokers, then it was financials/brokers that were hammered yesterday… and today’s it’s the turn of real estate service stocks to tumble as investors followed the bouncing AI disruption ball and freaked out over the sector’s vulnerability to the newest crop of artificial intelligence applications and tools that can disrupt countless industries.

As the latest daily AI scare – this time focusing on real estate – hit the market, shares of CBRE Group Inc. plunged as much as 15%, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. slid 13% and Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. fell 15%. For all three firms, the moves mark the biggest drop since March 2020 in the midst of the Covid-driven market selloff.   

“We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labor-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption,” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Jade Rahmani writes in a note on Wednesday adding that the selloff is “due to ‘AI Scare Trade’,” the analyst wrote.

Still, the analyst also noted that “while the threat of technology disintermediation is not new to the industry” the current sell-off “may overstate the immediate risk to complex deal-making, even as the long-term AI impact remains a ‘wait-and-see’.” 

According to Goldman trader Christian deGrasse “while rates are up modestly post NFPs, price action in lower rated sensitive sectors (CRE Brokers; Mortgage originators & brokerages) are suggesting a more dramatic shift in positioning here.”

The group is the latest to get caught up in what Rahmani calls the “AI scare trade,” after investors rushed to dump shares of software firms, private credit companies, wealth managers and insurance brokers within the span of just over a week. 

The fears emerged last week after AI startup Anthropic released tools aimed at automating work tasks in areas ranging from legal services to financial research to real estate. At the same time, analysts and investors have warned that some of this steep selling reflects a knee-jerk reaction and the market is wildly overestimating the risk inherent in hallucinating chatbots taking away millions of jobs.