AI, Valuations, and What the New RICS Standards Actually Mean for the Industry
By Daniel Norman, Co-founder & CEO of Aprao
Last week I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with Nick Barnett, Senior Specialist in the Valuation and Investment Advisory team at RICS. The session drew a genuinely engaged audience (including one participant joining all the way from St. Lucia), which tells you something about the appetite for this conversation right now.
We covered a lot of ground: the new RICS AI professional standards, the relaunched Tech Partner Programme, the pressures currently facing valuers, and what the future of the profession might actually look like. I wanted to write up the key takeaways properly, because there's too much noise in this space and not enough clear thinking.
The New RICS AI Standards: What They Say and Why They Matter
Nick kicked off by walking us through RICS's newly published professional standards on the responsible use of artificial intelligence. These are now live on the RICS website and they matter for one reason above all others: they use the word must.
That's not a small distinction. RICS guidance typically uses "should"; these standards use "must." That makes them mandatory requirements, not recommendations. If you're a RICS member using AI tools in your professional work, you are now operating within a compliance framework, not just a set of best practices.
The core theme running through the standards is transparency. Valuers are now required to be explicit in their terms of engagement about whether AI is being used and to what extent. This isn't about discouraging adoption. Quite the opposite. RICS recognises that technology is already reshaping how the profession works. The standards exist to ensure that adoption happens responsibly, within the existing regulatory framework of the Red Book.
On that note, the Red Book itself is due its next major update in 2028, and Nick was clear that AI and automated valuation models (AVMs) are expected to be a primary theme. Separately, Nigel Sers is developing a forthcoming practice guidance paper specifically on AI and real estate valuation. Worth watching for.
There's also a consultation on AI in valuation coming out shortly, and RICS is actively seeking input from members and market participants. I'd encourage anyone with a view to engage with it.
The RICS Tech Partner Programme: From Open Door to Rigorous Vetting
One of the more practical announcements we covered was the relaunch of the RICS Tech Partner Programme. The old version was essentially open to anyone who registered, which meant the RICS badge didn't tell you much about the quality or relevance of the tool behind it.
The new model is fundamentally different. There's now a rigorous auditing and vetting process. The goal is to genuinely signpost RICS members toward technology solutions that are legitimate, high quality, and aligned with professional standards, not just anything that paid to be listed.
I think this is exactly the right move. The proliferation of PropTech tools over the last few years has left many practitioners confused about what to trust. A properly credentialled partner programme gives the profession a reliable filter. Aprao is going through this process, and I'm glad RICS has raised the bar.
The Real Pressures Facing Valuers Right Now
Before we got too abstract about the future, Nick and I wanted to ground the conversation in what's actually happening day-to-day. Because the pressure on valuers right now is intense.
The demands are pulling in two directions at once: faster turnaround times, higher volume, but in a market where complexity has increased significantly. It's no longer unusual for a valuer to be asked to model a site across multiple scenarios: build-to-sell versus build-to-rent, student housing, co-living, affordable housing splits. All for a similar fee. All requiring DCF modelling with proper rigour.
That's a lot of lateral thinking. And it's happening against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, where the margin for error on a valuation is slim and the accountability is very real.
This is precisely the context in which AI tools have genuine value, not as a shortcut, but as a way to handle the administrative and computational weight so that professional judgement can be applied where it actually counts.
What AI Can Do (and What It Can't)
This was probably the most important part of our conversation, and I want to be direct about my own position here.
I use AI tools (including Claude) in my work at Aprao. Specifically in the research phase of development appraisals: gathering comparable property data, populating initial appraisal inputs, running background research that would otherwise take hours. AI handles that legwork quickly and well.
But here's what I'm equally clear about: AI does not replace the judgement call. When I'm looking at a set of comparables, it's my expertise (not the AI's) that decides which ones are actually relevant to this asset, in this location, in this market. The AI surfaces the information. The human decides what to do with it.
Nick put it well: the surveyor's expertise during an inspection and in applying professional judgement is irreplaceable. And the risk of becoming over-reliant on automated tools is real. The standards exist partly to protect against exactly that.
The hallucination problem is also worth naming plainly. AI can generate plausible-sounding outputs that are simply wrong. Given that a valuer is fully accountable for their professional opinion (regardless of how it was produced), every AI-generated output needs to be cross-checked against official databases and reliable sources. Human quality control isn't optional; it's a professional obligation.
The Future: From Static Appraisals to Continuous Monitoring
One of the ideas I find most compelling (and that generated a lot of discussion) is the shift away from static, point-in-time valuations toward something more dynamic.
Imagine a world where, instead of starting from scratch each time a client asks for an updated valuation, you have a live desktop view of an asset's position relative to current market conditions. Not a replacement for a formal appraisal, but a continuously updated baseline that means the work of refreshing a valuation becomes a matter of verification and judgement rather than reconstruction.
Technology is already moving in this direction. The question is whether the profession moves with it, building the frameworks, the standards, and the workflows that allow continuous monitoring to be used responsibly.
The Red Book update in 2028 will be a significant moment here. The profession needs to be ready with a clear view of what responsible dynamic valuation looks like before the standards catch up.
On "Vibe Coding" and Custom AI Tools
One of the more memorable audience questions asked whether RICS has any specific rules preventing members from building their own AI-powered tools, what some are calling "vibe coding."
The short answer from Nick: no. There's nothing in RICS regulations that prevents members from writing their own applications or using custom code in their workflows. The requirement is simply that any output used for client work must comply with the professional standards and the Red Book. The tool doesn't matter; the output does.
I think this is the right framing. The profession should be experimenting, building tools, testing approaches, figuring out what works. The guardrails are on the output, not the method.
The "One-Person Unicorn" Question
Someone asked whether AI could eventually enable a single valuer to run what amounts to a unicorn-scale practice, essentially an AI-powered solo operation.
It's a genuinely interesting question. Nick's view, which I share, is that the practical constraints make it unlikely in the near term. Physical property inspections require a human presence. The complexity of development valuations (with all the scenario modelling, the site-specific judgement calls, the professional accountability) resists full automation in a way that more standardised valuation work might not.
That said, the direction of travel is clear. AI will allow individual valuers and small firms to operate at a scale and speed that would have been impossible five years ago. The leverage is real. Whether it creates unicorns is a different question, but it will certainly reshape the economics of the profession.
My Takeaway
What struck me most across the whole session was the maturity of the conversation. The audience wasn't asking whether to use AI; they were asking how to use it well.
That's a healthier starting point than the hype cycle would suggest. RICS has done something important by publishing mandatory standards rather than aspirational guidance. It sets a floor. It creates accountability. And it gives practitioners something concrete to work with.
The Red Book update, the forthcoming practice guidance paper, the AI consultation: these are all pieces of a framework that the profession needs. The technology isn't waiting for the framework to catch up, so it matters that RICS is moving quickly.
At Aprao, our job is to make sure the tools we build are worthy of that framework: rigorous, auditable, and genuinely useful for the professionals who rely on them. That's what I'll keep pushing toward.
Leave a comment