Just like that, another year is almost gone. And what a year it’s been! From the impact of AI to increasing regulations on real estate wholesaling to a still questionable real estate market, 2025 kept investors on their toes and gave them a lot to think about.

And next year is sure to be just as exciting! 

To help you prepare, we talked to some real estate industry experts to get their predictions for 2026 and how investors can prepare.

There will be more opportunity than ever in real estate over the next 5 years, but it’ll take a big change in how you do business. — Trever Mauch

Key Takeaways

• AI search and state regulations on residential wholesaling had a major impact on the real estate investing landscape in 2025.
• Real estate investors need to step up their game in 2026. Those who aren’t ready to commit to better processes, tools, and talent will find themselves out of a job.
• AI is going to be just as big — if not bigger  — in 2026 (surprise!). Real estate investors need to learn how to use it wisely and optimize for AI search.
• 2026 will be the year of focusing on the right deals instead of just deal volume. This involves building the right relationships and taking the right approach to each opportunity.

Table of Contents

• Impacts to real estate investing in 2025
• AI has a HUGE Impact on Search Traffic
• Growing Real Estate Wholesale Regulation
• How the real estate market will change in 2026
• Investors need to step up their game in 2026
• How to be a successful investor in 2026
• AI in 2026
• Prep for a Successful 2026

Lead generation, at its best

Attract, convert & close more motivated leads

Try Carrot Today

Impacts to real estate investing in 2025

In 2025, we saw some major impacts to real estate investing. You should know about all of these as we go into the new year.

AI has a HUGE Impact on Search Traffic

If your web traffic or leads have dipped this year, it might not be a softening market or increased competition. It might be the impact of AI search.

AI has been a major theme of 2025 across all industries, and one of the most noticeable impacts is how it’s changed people’s search habits. While the old routine was to go to your favorite search engine and click on a link that looked relevant, AI has swept that process away almost entirely.

A solid half (50%) of consumers purposefully use an AI search tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity, according to an October report from McKinsey & Company. And these folks aren’t just looking for information. The majority of users told McKinsey that “it’s the top digital source they use to make buying decisions.” Meaning they’re turning to AI for recommendations and insights, not just a list of potential services or providers. The report goes on to predict that AI search tools could reduce traffic from traditional search channels (like Google or Bing) by 20-50%.

Even consumers still using a traditional search engine are likely to be hit with an AI result first anyway. The McKinsey report found that roughly 50% of Google searches return an AI Summary Overview, and the trends point to that number increasing to 75% of searches by 2028 (though I’d honestly be surprised if it takes that long). Real estate investors who have honed in their SEO to rank high in search results have a solid foundation set for AI search, but they can’t rest on their laurels.

Learn how to adjust your SEO for AI search >

Growing Real Estate Wholesale Regulation

States regulating residential wholesaling is nothing new (it’s been happening since at least 2019, when Illinois updated its Real Estate License Act). This year, multiple states introduced, passed, or implemented their own wholesaling laws:

• Pennsylvania began requiring people who wholesale residential real estate to have a real estate license beginning in January 2025.
• Tennessee signed a wholesaling bill into law in late March 2025 that went into effect only two weeks later (on April 8, 2025).
• Ohio’s Senate unanimously passed SB155 in June 2025 to introduce state wholesaling regulations, and the bill was signed by the Ohio governor late this year.
• Oregon requires residential property wholesalers to register with the state, effective July 1, 2025.
• Maryland’s wholesaling disclosure law went into effect on October 1, 2025.
• Oklahoma started imposing several requirements and restrictions on licensed and unlicensed wholesalers on November 1, 2025.
• Connecticut passed legislation (as part of its state budget) requiring real estate wholesalers to register with the CT Department of Consumer Protection starting July 1, 2026.
• North Carolina introduced House Bill 797 in April 2025 that would impact wholesaling with an “effective” date of October 1, 2025. As far as I can tell, it’s still sitting with the NC Senate, but if you wholesale in North Carolina keep an eye out for potential legal requirement changes.

This is a reminder to keep a close eye on the requirements and regulations in anywhere you wholesale real estate. Whether you’re just getting started or have been in the game for a while, things can change.

For those hopeful of preventing strict regulations on wholesale real estate, presenting the right message could be key.

“Wholesaling has been branded ‘predatory’ by the retail real estate lobby. In reality, the vast majority of wholesalers are doing a massive service to the market  — taking non-sellable real estate and getting more inventory on the market, solving problems agents can’t solve with a listing, tackling the hardest properties, increasing property values over the long term, etc.,” said Trevor Mauch, Carrot CEO.

Communicating these benefits to lawmakers could help make sure sensible — rather than overbearing — regulations are put in place in states considering them.

How the real estate market will change in 2026

The state of the real estate market has been a hot topic for several years now, and it’s clear that investment opportunities have cooled off since their pandemic-years peak. But what wil happen in 2026 is anyone’s guess. Some real estate pros think it will be more of the same, while others feel the dam will finally burst.

Dean Rogers, an expert flipper and wholesaler in California and trusted REI coach, doesn’t see things changing much. “The market will stay stagnant and relatively stuck.”

But Brandon Jarvela, an 8-figure investor with more than 600 real estate students, thinks 2026 could be the year the REI space sees more movement again. “I think this could be the year of the inventory snapback. For the for two years, we’ve all been living in this weird low inventory limbo with pent-up sellers and confused buyers. I think that tension is gonna break. We’ve got a wave of financial pressure that’s hitting every day homeowners, and I think we’re gonna see a sharp rise in off-market opportunity for the investors who are prepared for that type of velocity. Investors who aren’t just cherry picking are gonna win big time.”

Carrot CEO Trevor Mauch predicts real estate markets will stabilize a bit, with properties moving “a tab faster” than they did this year. But overall, he doesn’t see a huge change for next year. Those who want to survive, however, have to be ready to adapt.

“We’re in a transitioning market, and there won’t be big appreciation like there was in 2020-2024. This makes it so flippers who didn’t operate effectively aren’t covered by price appreciation, which will thin out flippers. Wholesalers will also be thinned out in the market even further in 2026. Technology + laws + the market are forcing wholesalers and flippers to adapt. There will be more opportunity than ever in real estate over the next 5 years, but it’ll take a big change in how you do business.”

Avrom Smith, owner of HAS Holdings LLC, also feels investors can no longer ignore regulations. “2026 will be no different from any other year in terms of deal opportunities. However, as a wholesaler, more states are beginning to regulate wholesaling, and it’ll be critical to have backup exit strategies in order to close deals.”

Investors need to step up their game in 2026

Trevor isn’t the only one who foresees the investor industry thinning out next year. Both Dean Rogers and Brandon Jarvela agree that things will get tougher and that investors who want to succeed need to adjust and overcome.

“Wholesalers that operate like real business owners and real businesses will dominate,” Jarvela commented. “The hobby people, the side gig type people, the people still slinging contracts in group chat site, I think they’re gonna have a really hard time. 2026 is the year where wholesalers are gonna get real lead sources through PPC, through agent relationships, data data-backed lists. They’re gonna have real dispositions systems or they’re gonna get wiped out by regulation. Regulation is getting heavier and heavier. You see lower spread and increasing seller expectation, so the bar is officially gonna be set higher for investors.”

Rogers agreed, noting that, “Investors have to level up their game. They have to lean into their systems even more, and they have to have better talent on their team. I think that everything has to bring the cream right to the top, so everybody’s gotta be on their A game to be successful. The biggest game changer is the talent piece. The people who are the best trained and are the best prepared are gonna be the ones who win. A lot of real estate investors will give up and the ones that don’t will rise to the occasion.”

But with challenges comes new opportunity. Stefon Henry of PNW Home Offer believes “there will be more off-market sellers, which in some markets means increased competition. Opportunity will be better in sub-markets.”

The key to keeping up, according to Avrom Smith, is to not ease up on marketing. “Marketing will continue to be paramount in terms of generating lead flow.”

In fact, a small survey of real estate investors (conducted by Carrot) found that the majority plan to increase their marketing budget and the number of marketing channels they use in 2026.

Trevor recommends doubling down on direct-to-seller marketing, especially online. “We’ll see more sellers seeking to sell online,” he believes.

How to be a successful investor in 2026

How exactly do you step up your game for 2026? A lot of it comes down to where you focus your energy and the relationships you build.

“Master two things: speed and sophistication,” Jarvela said for 2026. “Speed to lead, speed to offer, speed to close. Then sophistication in your deal structure, like whether you’re doing innovations or doing creative finance. We use something called a retail buyer program, but also dispo optimization, JV workflows, all that stuff that separates the actual operators from the amateurs. I think 2026 is gonna reward investors who run these types of processes and systems and can solve more problems.”

Several pros recommend focusing even more on the right deals next year.

Stefon Henry recommends underwriting more conservatively in 2026. “Double down on lead quality, not lead volume. Find sellers who need speed + certainty more than the highest price.”

Tony Stewart, owner of Property Peace in Ohio, agrees. “Be very strict in working with the real numbers and not speculating.

“Focus on increasing margins, not higher volume. Fewer but better deals is the name of the game,” Trevor added. “Off-market property opportunities will increase in ‘26. Focus on expired listings, sellers in distress that need help, etc.”

Trevor also recommends partnering more deeply with real estate agents. 

“Most agents aren’t shifting to ‘hybrid,’ but they’re starting to get squeezed hard by a slow retail market and many deals can’t be done on the retail market, so they’re looking for opportunity to create new listings. Savvy investors will see agents as their best friends in 2026.”

Another angle to explore in 2026 if you wholesale real estate is taking down more deals yourself. “Take downs are going to be a key strategy to survive,” Trevor predicts. While this may be counterintuitive since you’re no longer wholesaling at that point, it’s a more advanced technique with better margins for investors who can pull it off.

“The real opportunity is to actually become the buyer. Wholesalers currently lock up contracts, close a low percentage of them, and create a bad reputation. In 2026, become the actual buyer, taking the property down. If you can get 2-3x the profit taking the deal down, quick clean out, list aggressively at a low price to sell quick — do that versus wholesale. If you can’t get 2x taking it down, that’s when you wholesale instead. You should be in and out of a deal in 90 days, 120 days max,” he said. 

When done right, this can give you an advantage over wholesale competitors, Trevor explained.

“Educate the seller on what wholesale contracts actually say, ‘You see this says [this other investor] can back out of the deal all the way up to the day of closing, they aren’t putting up earnest money, etc, etc. With us, we are the buyer and we stand by it. We can and will perform.’”

AI in 2026

The investors who adopt AI as a team member, not just a shiny toy, are going to pull away from the pack fast. 2026 is the first year that a small team can operate with enterprise-level firepower. — Brandon Jarvela

AI was big in 2025, and it’s not going to slow down in 2026. Almost every investor I talked to mentioned AI and everyone who responded to our survey said they will either increase their usage of AI or start using it.

“AI will continue to rewrite the books. We haven’t even scratched the surface of its capabilities,” Avrom Smith predicts.

“AI is going to outperform any and all lead generation, so focus on building a relationship with AI. Let AI get to know you, know your business,” another investor commented.

AI has been a big topic of focus here at Carrot, with Trevor recently hosting two webinars on the subject:

• Website Tweaks Investors Make to Rank in AI Search to Get Motivated Sellers
• The 3 OFF-PAGE Tactics that Drive 80% of AI SEO Results

And hosting monthly interactive AI Search Visibility trainings. So it’s no wonder that he agrees AI is going to play a big role in real estate lead generation next year. He recommends focusing heavily on dialing in elements that help you rank in AI SEO and increase website conversion. 

Join the next AI Search Visibility Challenge >

Brandon Jarvela agrees that using AI wisely can have a major impact next year. 

“Not the cheesy ‘AI wrote my email’ type stuff,” he said. “I’m talking about the real-time lead scoring, predictive, seller motivation, automated follow-up that sounds human, and even dispo engines that match buyers to deals instantly. The investors who adopt AI as a team member, not just a shiny toy, are going to pull away from the pack fast. 2026 is the first year that a small team can operate with enterprise-level firepower.”

Prep for a Successful 2026

While what will happen over the next 12 months is anyone’s guess, these real estate pros have been in the game for a while and know how to recognize a trend. At a bar minimum, pay attention to changing local regulations and DO NOT ignore AI. Whether you’re optimizing your brand presence for AI SEO or using AI tools to get more done in less time, its impact is here to stay and ignoring it will just make you fall behind. 

What are your predictions for the real estate marketing and future of investing for 2026? Let us know in the comments!

Hey, I’m Jamie! I’ve been a professional digital marketer since 2010 and have spent a ton of time building lead scoring models over my career. So let me tell you all about lead scoring, how it’s useful, why it’s important, and how to set it up in a way that actually works for you. (Plus, I’ll share a template so you can build your own lead scoring matrix!)

Key Takeaways

• Lead scoring rates how well new leads fit your ideal customer profile based on their activity and details about the opportunity.  
• Lead scoring helps you quickly identify the best leads, telling you where to focus your time and resources for the best chance of closing lucrative deals.
• Real estate investors should use lead scoring to identify the most motivated sellers. You can do lead scoring manually with a spreadsheet or use an AI lead scoring tool.

Table of Contents

• Why Real Estate Pros Should Use Lead Scoring
• What Criteria to Use for Real Estate Lead Scoring
• Free Lead Scoring Template
• How to Set Up Lead Scoring
• Focus Where it Matters

Lead generation, at its best

Attract, convert & close more motivated leads

Try Carrot Today

Why Real Estate Pros Should Use Lead Scoring

Professional marketers have used lead scoring for years, particularly at B2B companies. It’s one of the ways we decide who the sales team should spend time reaching out to. Put simply, lead scoring is a way to rate how well new leads fit your ideal customer profile based on their activities and details about the opportunity. 

Real estate investment teams with high lead volume should definitely use lead scoring to prioritize the most promising leads. Without lead scoring, you’re likely treating each new lead the same when they, quite frankly, are not. This leaves you vulnerable to wasted time and missed opportunities. Not only does lead scoring tell your team which leads to focus on first, it also helps with lead distribution. Give higher score (more promising) leads to your more experienced managers to ensure deals are done quickly before someone else locks it up. Lower score leads can be routed to newer managers or assigned to AI outreach tools that collect additional information for you while your team focuses elsewhere.

Even investors with more manageable lead volume can use lead scoring to decide which leads to follow up with first or more aggressively. If someone isn’t a good fit for your business or isn’t likely to turn into a deal, it’s not wise to spend the same amount of time, energy, and effort trying to close them. A low lead score tells you this quickly,

Lead scores change over time based on the lead’s engagement and the intel you collect. This tells you if a particular lead is turning into a stronger opportunity or is becoming less promising. Working with up-to-date lead scores ensures you stay focused and don’t waste your time. If you’re doing lead scoring manually, be sure to update the score each time you gather new information. If the lead stops responding, this should also negatively impact their score. If you use an AI lead scoring tool, the score automatically updates over time and as new information is added to the opportunity. 

Essentially, without lead scoring you’re flying in the dark or spending too much time manually reviewing each opportunity to identify the best ones. Focusing only on the best-fit leads helps you close more deals and stop wasting time.

What Criteria to Use for Real Estate Lead Scoring

Customize your lead scoring algorithm based on what you find most valuable. If you already have a defined Ideal Customer Profile, great! If not, take a second to jot down the attributes your perfect lead would have — the one that is a slam dunk deal that you’d love to see come through your pipeline.

Do you have an ideal:

• Seller/buyer motivation
• Closing timeline/urgency
• Ownership type
• Decision maker
• Property condition or location
• Occupancy status
• Lead source (e.g. PPC versus cold calling)

Don’t forget to factor in less concrete criteria that nevertheless impact a lead’s willingness or ability to make a deal, like how responsive they are to your communications and if you know (or suspect) you’re not the only investor they’re speaking to. While these are harder to measure, they can have a big impact on opportunity potential. 

These are just some examples of lead scoring criteria you can build into your model. You can make it as complex or as simple as you’d like based on your “buy box.” If you’re practicing manual lead scoring, I recommend keeping things simple so it’s easier to maintain as you gather new information.

Want help planning your lead scoring matrix? This free Real Estate Lead Scoring Template is an interactive worksheet you can use to build your customized manual or AI lead scoring models.

Over time, as you gain a better understanding of what makes a good or bad lead for your business, refine your scoring matrix. 

Note: Be cautious of lead scoring programs that decide your scoring criteria for you. They often claim they analyze your deals to identify the most important factors and commonalities. But without full control over your lead scoring algorithm, you can’t ensure leads with a high score are truly a good fit. If you decide to change your business focus, these “smart” AI scoring models need time to adjust, meaning your lead scores are blatantly incorrect until they catch up.

How to Set Up Lead Scoring

In the most manual way, you can use a spreadsheet for lead scoring. Add all your criteria in the first column and define how you’ll score each value (our lead scoring template has this pre-setup for you). You can manually enter the values each time or build dropdown options to keep scoring consistent. Then use the SUM function to add up the individual scores to get a total. 

If you’re lead scoring on a spreadsheet, I recommend using a single document to track scores for all your leads. This allows you to easily see which leads have the highest scores for outreach prioritization. You can even set conditional formatting to color-code leads based on their score (this feature is already built into the lead scoring template linked above).

Every time you get a new lead, give them their own column in the spreadsheet and set their initial scores. Whenever you gather more information, adjust the relevant scores. You may want to add an additional row to keep track of their most recent lead score before adjusting any values so you can see if the score goes up or down.

As you can see, this can be a tedious process to do manually and is vulnerable to scoring discrepancies because of user error or forgetfulness.

AI lead scoring takes a little bit of upfront work (and an occasional tweak as you refine your process), but once the setup is done scoring is handled for you. Any time new information is gathered, the score updates. You don’t need to do anything special and there’s no risk of forgetting.

AI lead scoring also allows you to add another layer of nuance to your sources — attribute weight. Does urgency, motivation, or property condition matter more to you than lead source or occupancy status? With AI lead scoring, you can tell the algorithm that some attributes are more important than others and should account for a larger percentage of the overall score. 

With manual lead scoring, if you have 10 attributes, each accounts for 1/10th of the total score (unless you want to get into some seriously complicated spreadsheet formulas). But with AI lead scoring, you can tell the algorithm that seller motivation should account for 20% of the overall score while lead source is only 6%. So a high seller motivation score will drive the total score up while a high lead source score won’t have much impact on the total. This allows you to index off what matters most to you.

There’s a worksheet for mapping out your AI lead scoring algorithm in the Lead Scoring Template, or you can build it directly in CarrotCRM’s AI Lead Scoring settings.

Focus Where it Matters

Lead scoring is a tried and true tool that marketing and sales teams have long trusted to identify the most promising leads. It’s not always perfect, but it can be a game changer, especially if you find yourself chasing bad leads. 

Sophisticated real estate investors understand this and have adopted lead scoring in their real estate CRMs. The good news is you don’t have to be a high budget investor to use lead scoring! You can do it manually, or you can turn on AI lead scoring with a CarrotCRM account starting at just $69/month. AI usage is pay-as-you-go, so there’s no need to make a high value commitment!

No matter your lead volume, lead scoring keeps you focused and helps flush out the trash early, giving you more time to work better deals. And in the numbers game of real estate investing, time matters.