AI has been quite the buzzword across many different industries over the past few years. In real estate, an industry that has been somewhat slower to adopt advanced technologies, AI is certainly starting to make some headway in improving business performance in ways that most business software available today cannot.
Traditional business software can only do so much for a firm. It can automate many tedious tasks, but it can’t automate all tasks. It can aid property managers in their communications with residents, but it can’t do real human communication on behalf of them or manage resident relationships. It also can’t make business decisions. No matter how you look at it, there are distinct limits to traditional business software today.
AI has the potential to flip that reality on its head — especially for the leasing process.
The Value Of AI
Artificial intelligence is starting to become and will continue to be a true business partner to property managers and leasing agents alike. Artificial intelligence essentially tries to mirror the human brain — it’s built with the ability, through billions of connections, to discover correlations and relationships between data points. This effectively enables AI to understand and generate human language as well as make basic, commonsense decisions. These new capabilities can automate a significant portion of the leasing process, filling all the gaps of traditional software.
AI also has the ability to learn from different inputs. For the leasing process, for example, AI could take insight from property management or leasing staff to learn how to answer or approach highly specific questions that crop up from prospects during the leasing process. AI could capture high-level, skilled knowledge from property management staff and then deploy it at scale, on demand and in real time.
Scaling expertise through AI would allow companies to keep leaner teams, even when expanding, and ultimately sets the stage for a better customer experience.
How AI Is Already Impacting Leasing Processes
Today, AI already has a place at the table when it comes to the initial stages of the apartment leasing process. For those of us in property management, one of the most challenging parts of the leasing experience is fielding all the prospect queries that come in looking for more information on open units. On the flip side, a challenging part of the process for prospects is reaching out about open units and never hearing back.
We’ve discovered how AI today can field all prospect queries, in real time, as well as schedule prospects for unit showings. The AI we employ texts back and forth in full, humanlike conversations with prospects, answering any questions they might have about the property and telling them additional information that might not have been included in the apartment listing, such as pet policies, screening requirements and amenities. It then accesses leasing agents’ availability and works with the prospect to schedule a showing. The first interaction a leasing agent or property manager has with the prospect is at the showing itself, where the power of persuasion and “closing the deal” is best left to humans.
In this respect, we’re already seeing AI giving ample time back to leasing agents and property managers to focus on more strategic work for their businesses, such as resident retention strategies, marketing vacancies, bringing on more units and reducing unit turnaround times.
A Prediction For The Future: AI Takes Over The Entire Leasing Cycle
In the future, I believe AI will be able to take care of the entire leasing cycle, from one resident’s exit to the next resident’s entrance. Here is what that could look like:
Advanced AI will proactively contact residents a few months before their leases end and ask if they want to resign the lease. It will then be able to handle processing renewed leases. For leases not renewed, AI will prep the unit once the resident moves out by automatically changing the locks and, potentially, conduct its own inspection of the apartment. It will do this by comparing the differences between the apartment move-in inspection video and the move-out inspection video to calculate any damages. From there, AI will automatically deduct funds from the previous renter’s security deposit to pay for damages. It will then handle connecting with appropriate vendors to handle all unit repairs.
Pretty amazing.
Upon tackling those immediate needs, AI could also handle answering all prospect queries for open units, setting up showings with leasing agents or even self-showings, where prospects are given a lockbox code via the AI and are able to enter the unit themselves for a look. Once a prospect signs a lease, AI will automatically change smart locks so future tenants are the only ones who have access to the apartment.
This is what the leasing process of the future will look like once in the hands of artificial intelligence. The end-to-end automation will be transformational for professionals on the leasing and property management side of the business who are often short on time to accomplish everything they need to. Leasing and property management can often feel like a 24/7 job, with last-minute queries from prospects or midnight complaints from residents about maintenance issues.
Given that, any technology that can alleviate burdens is a huge value-add for any business — and it looks like AI is up to the task. Professionals will get more time to focus on strategic business efforts, like building relationships with investors, instead of getting bogged down with administrative parts of the leasing cycle.
A central AI software that can coordinate the entire leasing process would let property management companies do more with leaner teams. The human factor in property management and leasing will never go away, but AI has great potential to take on some of the work that impedes professionals from accomplishing even more important work.