The AI Playbook Telling Landlords How To Cut Jobs And Manage The Message

While executives try to calm growing public fears about potential job losses due to artificial intelligence, EliseAI is pinpointing how multifamily operators can quell employee concerns while simultaneously introducing automation capable of eventually replacing human workers.

In a 262-page manual, the $2.2B proptech firm pitches its software and services to struggling multifamily operators through an incisive how-to guide for cutting costs. Firms can start by automating administrative tasks, then leasing and finally shrinking payroll by cutting jobs. EliseAI’s manual also offers wording to protect employers outsourcing job functions from being cast as villains.

“As rents remain flat and costs rise, there is increasing industrywide pressure to find innovative ways to increase NOI,” the playbook says. “Payroll is the budget category where operators have the most control to reduce expenses.” 

Multifamily operators have grappled with flat property incomes in recent years, at the same time as expenses like property insurance, interest rates and materials costs have skyrocketed. 

EliseAI says centralization — the shift of operational tasks from on-site teams to off-site specialists aided by AI — can offset other operational costs. Landlords can already speed up apartment leasing by tapping AI to handle about 60% of the process. It can also be the first point of contact for residents when something in their apartment needs fixing, and it can filter maintenance staff requests by urgency.

One in every six U.S. apartments uses EliseAI's software, according to a release from the company. Its clients include publicly traded companies, like Brookfield, AvalonBay Communities and American Homes 4 Rent, as well as scores of private operators, including Scion Group and Invitation Homes.

The efficiency savings are huge, the playbook claims: AI can reduce leasing and administrative hours by 40%, drive 10% to 20% in payroll savings, and deliver a 20% annual improvement in net operating income. 

Deploying centralization and AI leasing has already shaken up the workforce at Equity Residential, a $25B multifamily REIT that owns roughly 85,000 apartments. The REIT reduced its headcount by 20% between 2020 and 2025 from AI integration, according to an investor presentation dated Feb. 27.

“Leveraging AI is really about helping to realize efficiency,” Ian Weng, EliseAI’s chief strategy officer, told Bisnow. “Operators see the sort of dollars and cents and the savings that are available.” 

But to achieve those savings, operators need to ensure they don’t scare current employees with what AI implementation means and its impacts on their positions.

“The difference between successful centralization and expensive failure often comes down to how well you manage the people side of the change,” the playbook says.

Multifamily operators need to proactively acknowledge employee concerns about the major business shift. The playbook advises company leaders to “speak about the evolution of work, not just the reduction in staffing.”

Employers should proactively acknowledge concerns, explain the why and emphasize value over reduction, the playbook advises. The company says it “offers more than 30 communication templates” to communicate automation strategies to existing employees who may feel that the technology is “threatening.”

EliseAI declined to provide these templates to Bisnow. However, the playbook lays out how operators should tailor messaging around how AI will change roles.

“This isn’t about cutting heads — it’s about making room for higher value work,” the playbook says.

Executive leaders should be informed between two and four weeks before rollout, with an emphasis on why EliseAI’s centralization strategy will lead to greater success for the company. On-site teams, meanwhile, should learn about changes in their daily workloads on the day that the initiative goes live, according to the playbook.

Firms can win employee buy-in by emphasizing how AI has helped teams work more efficiently from the get-go, according to the playbook. One example offered is a mocked-up companywide email attributing improved resident satisfaction and a quicker response time to requests to centralization, framing it as a “big win” for the team.

Managers should be equipped to coach their direct reports through role transitions, whether by ensuring employees understand their tasks, reducing “emotional friction” or communicating “the upside” to career trajectory changes. It also provides guidance for realigning compensation and designing bonus programs to “shift mindsets and behaviors” toward integrating AI.

The payroll cost savings won’t come from multifamily operators proactively cutting jobs in response to the technology's efficiencies, Weng said. Property management is already a profession with high turnover — the difference is that with EliseAI’s centralization and automation model, employers won’t have to backfill positions.

“This is everything you need. This is an instruction manual,” Weng said. “It's similar to, I guess, almost building Ikea furniture, in a sense: Here is how you do it.”