AI in the apartment market takes over work orders, lease renewals and more.

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The days of tenants, where landlords knock on doors for monthly rent checks and chase after them to fix leaky toilets, are slowly coming to an end. Technology is stepping in to meet the needs of tenants, landlords and large multifamily operators, and artificial intelligence is now turning that slow progress into a rental revolution.

Work orders, lease renewals, tours, and even investor due diligence are carried over by software and AI. Like any technology launch, it is primarily fragmented among many vendors. Integrating all the technologies is a huge opportunity for startups and venture capitalists.

One of the more mature categories of AI in apartment spaces is virtual agents talking to future residents. This is where Agent AI appears. This means AI that can act autonomously and make its own decisions according to what consumers want. However, only a handful of companies use that advanced level of machine learning.

AI also proves to be useful for multi-family businesses’ investor sides, particularly underwriting and acquisitions. For example, investors looking to buy large properties will need to pass all leases and load them into rent rolls.

“If you’re buying properties that aren’t professionally managed, and they aren’t all loaded into market-leading software products, then someone may need to manually go through all the leases and capture all the information. John Helm, founder and partner of Ret Ventures, said it’s an AI-focused fund in both real estate and Rent Tech.

Instead, according to Helm, it can send leases into an AI model, spitting out a summary of all the data investors need. You can then load it directly into the underwriting model and evaluate the properties.

Ret Ventures said it doesn’t rely on capital contributions or pension funds, but on so-called strategic limited partners, who are consumers of the products of companies they invest in.

“We have 60 multifamily operators in our fund, with over 3 million units,” he said.

AI can also support real estate development and paid accounts. Multi-family developers often have multiple vendors, from landscaping to plumbing and heating. Many still use paper bills.

One of RET’s portfolio companies is Predictap. You need all these invoices, read them and re-set all the data you need in your company’s pavour system to make the process and payment more efficient. None of them need to be manually coded by humans.

Tyler Christiansen likens the multi-family industry to car dealers. All tenants’ interactions remained silent on individual property. As CEO of Funnel, backed by Ret Ventures, his goal is to “ensure multi-family experts can generate more profits, efficiency and insights across their portfolio.

Funnel works with large apartment real estate investment trusts such as Camden Property Trust, MAA, Essex Property Trust and Cortland, which owns 90,000 apartments. Christiansen said the tenant relationships are not related to the community, but the tenant relationships really lie with the brand. He calls it “centralization” of the industry.

“And what makes it unique within the funnel is that it’s not just automate interactions at the community level, it’s really opening up automation across the portfolio,” Christiansen said.

One example is that if a tenant is not renewing a lease in one community because it is moving to another market, the funnel AI system will open up the possibility of cross-selling that person to another client community.

Despite advances, the technology is still in its early stages and is expensive. The apartment operators and investors are in the experimental stage. It remains to be seen how much they will invest.

Furthermore, the multi-family industry is highly fragmented. There are nearly 50 million rental units in the US, mostly small and often owned by mom and pop landlords. The largest apartments each own around 50,000-100,000 units, with several large private operators such as Blackstone and Greystar.

“I think maybe over the next few years, the challenge is really going to be really sifting through everything and understanding where there’s a real business where there’s a chance that can grow into this. You’re still watching a lot of these tools start to unfold,” Helm said.