Shares in commercial property services companies have tumbled, in the latest sell-off driven by fears over disruption from artificial intelligence.
After steep declines on Wall Street, European stocks in the sector were hit on Thursday.
The estate agent Savills’ shares fell 7.5% in London, while the serviced office provider International Workplace Group, which owns the Regus brand, lost 9%.
The UK’s two biggest property developers, British Land and Landsec, dropped 2.6% and 2.4% respectively.
On Wall Street, property service firms fell for a second consecutive day. CBRE shares plunged 12.5%, Jones Lang LaSalle lost nearly 11% and Cushman & Wakefield fell 9.1%, after even sharper declines on Wednesday.
Commercial property stocks have become the latest sector to be hammered by fears over the impact of rapid advances in AI, as the sell-off spread from legal software, publishing, analytics and data companies last week to insurance firms, price comparison sites and wealth managers this week.
The share declines were sparked by AI firms such as Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, releasing new tools, although there was limited news on Thursday, leading analysts to argue that the sell-off was overdone.
AI has the potential to automate a wide range of office-based tasks and could lead to swathes of job losses. There are also concerns among investors that demand for offices could fall, in a blow to property companies.
Jade Rahmani, commercial real estate analyst at New York-headquartered Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said: “We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labour-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption.”
However, he believes that the sell-off “may overstate the immediate risk to complex deal-making, even as the long-term AI impact remains a ‘wait-and-see’”.
Dallas-based CBRE on Thursday reported fourth-quarter revenue of $11.6bn (£8.5bn), up 12%, and core earnings per share of $2.73, above analysts’ estimates. In 2025, revenues rose by 13% to $40.6bn.
The real estate services firm forecast 2026 profit above Wall Street estimates, on the back of strong momentum in leasing and facilities management, as the number of datacentres rapidly expands and billions of dollars flow into AI infrastructure.
CBRE’s chief executive, Bob Sulentic, believes AI will benefit the business in the long run, with its transaction and investment work “most protected” from disruption.
“Clients engage CBRE to plan and execute complex transactions because of our creativity, strategic thinking, negotiating skills, deep base of market knowledge and broad relationships,” he said. “None of this seems likely to be replaced by AI in the foreseeable future.”
