All Stories
Stories
Reporting, workflows, and tool breakdowns for the people who own and operate retail real estate.
Opinion
The Tenant Screening AI Headlines Are About Residential. Here Is the Narrower Thing That Applies to You.
HUD guidance, a DOJ statement of interest, and a landmark settlement have made algorithmic screening a live legal issue. Almost none of it governs a retail lease. The part that might is smaller, older, and easier to get wrong.
By Eli Bock · Wed Jul 22
Tool Breakdown
Foot Traffic Data Is an Estimate. Price It Accordingly.
Panel-based location data is the most retail-specific tool in the category and the most widely misread. Here is what it is actually measuring, and when it changes a decision you would not otherwise have made.
By Eli Bock · Tue Jul 21
Opinion
Why Multifamily Got the AI Tools and Retail Got the Leftovers
Proptech funding hit $16.7 billion in 2025. There are venture firms dedicated to multifamily technology. There is no equivalent for retail, and the reason is structural rather than accidental.
By Eli Bock · Thu Jul 23
Opinion
Every "Best AI Tools for Retail Real Estate" List Is Written by Someone Selling One
We checked who publishes the guidance retail owners are relying on. Almost all of it comes from vendors, brokerages, or trade associations with something to sell. That has a cost, and owners are paying it.
By Eli Bock · Sun Jul 26
Workflow
The Six-Center Stack, Explained
What we would actually put in place if we owned six centers tomorrow, in order, with what it costs and what we would deliberately skip. The long version of our starting stack.
By Eli Bock · Sun Jul 26
Workflow
CAM Reconciliation Is the Most Automatable Job in Retail Ownership, and Almost Nobody Has Automated It
Every year you rebuild the same schedule from the same messy inputs, and every year a tenant's asset manager finds something. Here is what actually breaks, and which parts of it a machine can genuinely take.
By Eli Bock · Sun Jul 26
Opinion
Almost Every Retail AI Tool Is Built for a Portfolio You Do Not Have
There are 116,214 shopping centers in the United States. The software serving them is priced and designed for the owners of a few thousand. Here is what that leaves for everyone else.
By Eli Bock · Sun Jul 19
Workflow
Entitlement Research Is Public, Scattered, and Perfect for AI
Every jurisdiction publishes its zoning code, its review process, and its meeting minutes. Almost none of it is searchable in any useful way, which is exactly the problem this technology solves.
By Eli Bock · Sat Jul 25
Tool Breakdown
The Five Clauses That Break AI Lease Abstraction
Extraction tools are genuinely good at dates, square footage, and base rent. They are unreliable exactly where retail leases carry the most money, and the failure is quiet.
By Eli Bock · Mon Jul 27
Case Study
The Structure an Attorney Would Paper, and the Business Logic They Do Not Provide
A value-add retail operator in Atlanta needed a syndication structure that was competitive for investors and safe for him. Here is what the system produced, and what his attorney was never going to give him.
By Eli Bock · Mon Jul 27
Workflow
Percentage Rent Is Collected on the Honor System, and AI Only Fixes Half of That
Tenants self-report sales. Landlords rarely audit. The arithmetic was never the hard part, and automating it does not touch the thing that actually leaks money.
By Eli Bock · Mon Jul 20
Opinion
Seven Things a Retail Owner Should Not Automate
We spend most of our time arguing for these tools. This is the other list, and it is shorter, more specific, and more useful than the general warnings about keeping a human in the loop.
By Eli Bock · Fri Jul 24
Work With Us
Your team already has AI. Almost nobody uses it.
The licences are bought and the accounts are open, and most of them sit in a tab nobody opens on a Tuesday. Woodworks Realty Studio gets an assistant into the hands of every person on a team, one at a time, each one set up around how that person actually works. My own business runs on it before any of it reaches anyone else.