Trust, Training, and the AI Race: What Lease Admin Teams Need to Know
AI was the conversation at NRTA this year
I just returned from the NRTA conference in Tucson, and one topic came up in nearly every session, hallway chat, and vendor booth: artificial intelligence in lease administration.
For lease admin teams at national retailers, this is not an abstract trend. AI tools promise faster abstraction, quicker clause review, and sharper portfolio insight. But the conversations I had made it clear that the reality inside most departments is messier than the marketing. Here are three lessons I brought home, and what I think they mean for your team.
The quote that stood out to me was “You won't lose your job to AI. You'll lose your job to somebody who uses AI." - Jensen Huang. It stood out to me not as a statement meant to create fear but one to command action. Get on board but do it smartly. If you position you and your team with AI as a key part of your toolkit, you can unlock incredible value with less resources than in the past.
1. Generic AI training isn’t enough
Most lease admin teams I spoke with are already experimenting with AI. Some are using enterprise tools their company rolled out; others are testing on their own. What almost none of them have is meaningful training that is focused on lease admin.
Where training exists, it tends to be generic: a company-wide session on prompting or acceptable use that never touches a lease. That leaves lease administrators to figure out on their own how AI handles co-tenancy clauses, CAM reconciliations, radius restrictions, or critical dates.
The result is predictable. When people don't know how a tool works or where it fails, one bad output is enough to lose confidence. Trust erodes, adoption stalls, and the tool quietly goes unused. They key is lease admin specific prompt training and AI workflow implementation that is going to shift your team’s work from manual abstraction to quality checking AI abstraction, for example.
2. Skepticism is the professional standard
There is a tendency to frame skeptical team members as resistant to change. I'd argue the opposite. In lease administration, skepticism is not a weakness. It is the professional standard.
AI can do real work here. It can review lease language, surface obligations, flag inconsistencies, and support strategic decisions. But a lease is a legal and financial commitment, and a single missed clause can cost a retailer real money in rent, remedies, or lost rights.
That is why a human must always verify. The right model is not AI instead of lease administrators. It is AI doing the first pass and the heavy lifting, with experienced professionals checking the output against the source documents before anything is acted on. Teams that build verification into the workflow will trust their tools more, not less.
3. The race for lease admin AI business is fast and furious
If the exhibit hall was any indication, vendors see lease administration as a major opportunity. Established lease management platforms are adding AI features, and new entrants are pitching Agentic AI-first solutions. Everyone is moving quickly, and everyone wants your department's business.
That competition is good for retailers, but it also raises the stakes for buyers. When every demo looks impressive, the differences that matter are harder to see. Some questions worth asking any vendor:
Ask them to abstract a lease right in front of you. Not a curated demo.
Can I see easily see the document citations?
What workflows and controls have been built into the system? Humans and controls are required.
Where is our lease data stored, and how is it used? It should not be available to any other companies or for training.
Is the system actually setting up workflows (Agentic AI) or is it just adding queries to my lease admin system (Generative AI)? You want option 1
The best partner won't just have the most features. It will understand lease administration well enough to support the people doing the work.
What this means for your team
The teams that come out ahead won't be the ones that adopt AI fastest. They'll be the ones that adopt it thoughtfully. A few practical steps:
Invest in role-specific training. Teach your team how AI handles the lease provisions they work with every day, including where it tends to get things wrong.
Define verification standards. Decide which outputs require human review, who reviews them, and how that review is documented.
Start with contained use cases. Lease abstraction QA, clause search, and critical date checks are good places to build confidence before expanding.
Evaluate vendors on your own data. Ask to test tools against a sample of your actual leases before committing.
Treat skepticism as an asset. Your most careful team members are often the best people to pressure-test new tools.
Let's keep the conversation going
AI will reshape lease administration, but the fundamentals haven't changed: accuracy, accountability, and a deep understanding of the lease. The technology works best when it is paired with trained professionals who know when to trust it and when to check it.
At Delker, I work with lease admin departments at national retailers to implement best practices. If your team is working through how to bring AI into lease administration, I'd welcome the conversation.
