The one-person real estate unicorn is closer than we think

In other industries, the idea of a one-person operation is no longer unusual. In parts of the consulting world, highly specialised individuals operate with minimal organisational structures and significant leverage. In real estate, this model has long seemed unrealistic. Transaction complexity, regulatory requirements and data volumes appeared to demand ever larger teams. That assumption is now beginning to change.

Alexandre Grellier is CEO and co-founder of Drooms

For decades, real estate transactions have followed a simple rule. The larger and more complex the deal, the larger the organisation behind it. Research, due diligence, documentation and coordination were spread across departments and external advisers. Transaction capability was closely linked to organisational size. This logic is now reaching its limits. Transactions have not become slower because markets lack capital or interest. They have become more demanding because regulatory requirements, ESG obligations and documentation standards have permanently increased the level of complexity. Preparing a deal today requires far more information, coordination and validation than it did just a few years ago.

Current market data confirms this shift. According to the Drooms Real Estate Trends Report 2026, real estate transactions across Europe now take on average around one year to complete. After several years of continuous extension, transaction times have stabilised, but at a historically high level. More than half of market participants still report further delays, with regulation and coordination between stakeholders remaining the main drivers. The traditional response to this growing complexity has been to add manpower. Larger teams, more specialists, more layers of review. In practice, this approach often produces the opposite effect. More people create more need for coordination, which slows down decision-making. At a certain point, organisational size stops increasing speed and starts reducing it.

This is where the role of artificial intelligence changes fundamentally. The decisive step is not automation or content generation alone. It is the emergence of agent-based systems that actively steer processes rather than merely respond to instructions. Traditional automation follows predefined rules. Generative AI supports analysis and interpretation, but remains reactive. Agentic AI works towards defined objectives. It identifies missing information, prioritises tasks and initiates next steps. In transaction preparation, systems no longer wait for input. They organise complexity proactively. When preparation, structuring and first-level analysis are handled in this way, transaction work no longer needs to be distributed across unnecessarily large teams. Responsibility can be concentrated. Human expertise shifts from coordination and repetition to evaluation, negotiation and decision-making.

The crucial effect is not automation alone. It is the restoration of decision-making capacity. As transactions become more complex, the real bottleneck is no longer access to information. It is the ability to turn information into clear, defensible decisions. AI reduces noise, highlights what matters and creates a basis on which decisions can be taken faster and with greater confidence. This shift makes a new organisational model possible. Transaction capability no longer depends on the size of a department. In extreme cases, it can be concentrated around a single decision-maker supported by the right infrastructure and a small group of experts. The idea of a ‘one-person real estate unicorn’ is not a literal forecast, but a way of describing how far leverage can increase when analysis and coordination are fundamentally restructured.

The implications go beyond efficiency. Lower organisational barriers open access to complex transactions for increasing competition and liquidity at a time when transactions take longer and risks have risen. In this sense, the one-person real estate unicorn serves as a symbol of a broader shift. It captures how transaction capability can be concentrated when complexity is structured and decisions are enabled, rather than dispersed across large organisational setups. Roles will change. Certain tasks will disappear, others will become more important. 

What will not change is the growing complexity of real estate transactions. In this environment, the decisive advantage will no longer be organisational size. It will be the ability to structure complexity and turn information into clear decisions.

Artificial intelligence shifts this boundary. Not by replacing expertise, but by enabling decision-making where complexity would otherwise paralyse it.