Dr. Sopon Pornchokchai
President, Agency for Real Estate Affairs
FIABCI Board Member
President, FIABCI World Council of Experts

On June 10, 2026, Dr.Sopon spoke at the 76th FIABCI World Real Estate Congress in Vienna, Austria about the Future of Valuation Profession in the AI World.

First, in the case of artificial intelligence or AI, many people are afraid that AI may replace valuers. However, many people also say that AI will help reduce weak and tedious reporting, but won't replace valuers.  That may be optimistic, but actually AI replace so many valuers already.

For example, in the case of valuation for mortgage purposes, nowadays we can use desktop valuation and AI to help appraise properties. There may be some disparity in the AI valuation, but maybe just only five to ten percent only. So this is not a big deal. So this means that valuers are already replaced by AI. However, in the complicated model, one can see that the Computer-assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) or Automated Valuation Model (AVM), one also need valuers to do the modeling, not just only using AI. 

Another thing is that AI valuation can also be unsuccessful.  You know that there are big firms in the US, they were using AI to appraise millions of properties quickly, and they also had a subsidiary company to buy and sell properties. But it appeared that they valued properties too high in value to buy and then became bankrupt. Valuers may know what those names of those companies. So this implies that AI does not often help in some huge business activities.

Considering global investment trends, one can see that top tier class assets interest international investors. However, those are only five to ten percent only or in particularly maybe a few percent only. So it won't affect the overall property markets, particularly properties for local uses. Global investments and buyers do not worry really local beneficiaries.

There are also some geopolitical realignment, like in the case of China. A lot of Chinese people try to go buy properties abroad in many countries. On the contrary, in the case of US citizen, most of them just buy properties in their own country themselves because USA is very big, like continent. There is no need for them to go to buy properties abroad although some of them may do.k

And in the case of cross border investment, they may consider about capital flow in the case of real estate. But if one wants to invest a wise way, they can go through stock exchange that is more secure and more regulated. One can pull back his money easily. Investing in real estate afar may be more risky. So real estate investment may not really a big market as exaggerated.

In the case of big data, many say that one needs good and reliable data particularly similar to Western Europe or USA. On the hand, you can see that India and China with 1.4 billion people each, they may not have good official sources of information in accordance with Western standards. The same situation is the same in Africa, Asia and many other parts of the world. But they can also value properties properly.

Why so? It means that they also need to do some research or something. Data may be one thing but it is related to quality too. As understood, it is the matter of “garbage in, also garbage out”. If the data is not clean enough, maybe you'll be in trouble as well.

In the case of ESG (Environment Social and Governance), some say that when one values properties, he has to consider ESG factors this into the valuation as well.  It might affect the value of properties. Many big international valuation organizations try to talk about this. But ESG itself is still blur or unclear. There is no measurement tools to measure ESG properly.

So in this case, how can a valuer incorporate ESG in his valuation? It can be to some extent, like when one sees the risk. If any company with no ESG or very low ESG, obviously, it may possess a lot of risks or so higher risk than usual. That might be some adjustment of valuers arrived from the higher capitalization rate.

The role of valuers in the future is not only giving the figure of value, but as a consultant. They may work in the court as a witness, and also in different other fields such as valuing a brand, intangible asset, business valuation, agriculture activities and something else.  However there will be also competitors like accountants, environmentalists, tree specialists or other specialists related to intellectual properties. They also claim that they can value related properties.  Valuation is interdisciplinary approach, so we need to incorporate their other knowledge for valuation as well.

We need to protect our profession. For example, when there are foreign investors want to have a valuation conducted in Thailand, they should not just hire an international valuation firms. They must hire a local one so that they help promote labelers of our country as well. Fees of local valuation firms should be cheaper. And valuation fees in general are very cheap compared to brokerage fee.

So, in this case, they can hire two or three firms to ensure that the value is correct by the comparison from different firms. This professional protection must be enforced in all developing countries as well.

Valuers of all lands unite. Therefore, we can empower ourselves and can develop our professional, our professions strongly.

 

Dr.Sopon: The Future of Valuation Profession in the AI World : 
https://www.facebook.com/reel/894584377007660

 

Dr.Sopon: The Future of Valuation Profession in the AI World : 
https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.sopon4/video/7649928120522345749?lang=th-TH

 

Dr.Sopon: The Future of Valuation Profession in the AI World : https://youtu.be/F4Co8l5bnkI