JLL: AI reconstructs commercial real estate and future office landscape in Asia Pacific

The Zhitong Finance App learned that JLL's latest research shows that despite market concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) will cause job loss, up to 61% of senior business executives in the Asia-Pacific region expect the number of employees not to decrease but increase in the future. However, the region is also facing the most serious shortage of AI talent in the world. According to the data, there is a clear contrast in the Asia-Pacific market: enterprises in the region are leading the world in AI applications in the fields of technology management (52%), real estate portfolio optimization (51%), and commercial real estate strategy formulation (47%), but it is difficult to find enough talent to support related development, and they face the most serious capacity gap in the world.

JLL conducted the “2026 Future Work Model Survey” from January to April 2026. We visited more than 2,200 senior corporate executives and commercial real estate leaders in 21 countries around the world to understand their key priorities, challenges and strategies.

The survey found that although 78% of respondents expect AI to drastically change their real estate portfolio strategies, only 31% of companies are actively preparing to transform their office space to support “human-robot collaboration”; while only 15% of companies have entered the “optimization phase” of AI applications. This gap between corporate vision and actual actions is the core challenge currently facing enterprises. It mainly stems from the mutual tension between decision execution, internal capabilities, and budget restrictions.

According to a JLL survey, although companies generally believe that AI can improve human work efficiency, most of them are still evaluating the impact of AI on business performance, so actual application is still in the early stages. Currently, only a few companies (15%) have successfully crossed the pilot and expansion phase and entered the “optimization stage” of actively reshaping jobs and office space. In contrast, most companies are still in the observation and analysis stage: 46% are closely monitoring AI trends, while 40% are still evaluating the potential impact of AI on their commercial real estate business. Since management often links spatial transformation to workforce decisions, companies are stuck in a wait-and-see state, slowing down the overall pace of transformation.

Susheel Koul, CEO of JLL Asia Pacific Work Dynamics, said, “Companies in the Asia Pacific region have reached a clear watershed in AI applications. A few leading companies have entered the optimization stage, but more are still waiting and evaluating. Notably, these leading companies don't necessarily have the best budgets; their advantage is to continuously build adaptability and see AI as an engine for business growth rather than simply a cost control tool. If not addressed early, the gap between companies will widen rapidly. As a result, there is no time to delay filling the skills and competency gaps.”

This capability challenge has also directly impacted the company's talent pool. Judging from global data, 36% of respondents believe that lack of skills related to AI, data analysis, and emerging technology is the biggest obstacle to commercial real estate value creation. This is the first time in 15 years since the survey was conducted that the skills gap has surpassed budget limits, becoming the biggest obstacle faced by enterprises. The situation in Asia Pacific is even more serious: 42% of respondents see the AI skills gap as the biggest obstacle, leading the world. Nearly half of companies in the Asia Pacific region (49%) expect talent shortages caused by the need to retrain AI skills will dominate the labor landscape over the next three to five years, and the proportion is also the highest in the world. Furthermore, lack of change management expertise (26%), fragmentation within the enterprise (25%), and difficulties in measuring effectiveness (23%) further complicate the complexity of the problem.

Companies in the Asia-Pacific region are speeding up the deployment of AI, making the problem of the capability gap particularly prominent. In the most strategically influential commercial real estate business sector, AI deployment in the region is at the forefront of the world, but at the same time, it is also the most vulnerable to the risk of talent shortages, which may hinder the development process.

This has created a “technology dilemma”. On the one hand, companies must invest in advanced technology to achieve productivity goals. Currently, 46% of senior executives surveyed have listed productivity as the core key performance indicator for commercial real estate, replacing traditional cost-based measures; but on the other hand, among the four major real estate portfolio risks, apart from economic fluctuations and budget pressure (43%), the remaining three are all technology-related, including cybersecurity and data privacy (47%), the disruptive impact of technology or AI (41%), and the uncertainty of AI's impact on office space (40%). In the Asia Pacific region, companies' concerns about technology and AI disruption are even stronger: 44% of Asia Pacific respondents ranked it as the main real estate portfolio risk, the highest proportion in the world. This not only reflects that technology has become the core of real estate strategies in the region, but also highlights the deep concerns of business leaders about the associated risks. In the Asia-Pacific region, as data sovereignty regulations become more stringent, and geopolitical factors increasingly influence site selection strategies, these risks present more complex challenges.

Kamya Miglani, head of work dynamics research at JLL Asia Pacific, said, “There is widespread belief that AI will reduce demand for physical office space, but our findings are quite the opposite. Companies that are at the forefront of AI transformation are instead investing more in physical office environments. They know that AI enables higher-value, deeper thinking jobs, and requires space where employees can think, focus, and communicate in the best possible state. Technology and the workplace experience are by no means a zero-sum game; the two complement each other to lay the foundation for lasting cognitive performance.”

As the positioning of commercial real estate shifts from simple cost control to capacity empowerment, the investment focus of enterprises has also changed. To improve employee productivity, critical infrastructure such as advanced technology and AI support (46%) and reliable technology infrastructure (44%) has become the primary strategy, and its importance even surpasses physical space elements such as flexible office space (31%) and physical and mental health facilities (24%).

In the Asia Pacific region, 39% of companies require employees to fully implement a five-day office system, the highest proportion in the world. This means that companies are under extreme pressure to ensure that physical workplaces can effectively improve productivity. However, global business leaders also see the cost of implementing this vision as the primary concern, including AI-driven labor automation costs (39%), technology infrastructure requirements (32%), and rising energy costs (44%). Faced with the tension between ideal vision and cost reality, companies mainly adopt the following three strategies to achieve balance: optimization of operations, strategic outsourcing, and capacity building.