'The Future Of AI' Is Already Being Used By Multifamily Giants To Cut Costs

Agentic AI has become the latest artificial intelligence iteration to enter the multifamily industry, catalyzing significant investment from startups, apartment operators and established proptech players. 

While it has yet to be realized at scale and in everyday operations, the vision of agentic AI in property management — in which an autonomous program guides potential tenants through the leasing journey — is of a future with increased efficiency, fewer vacant apartments and lower operational costs. 

The technology offers a different experience than chatbots, the current AI interface to which most consumers and multifamily tech providers are accustomed. Chatbots simulate conversation using large-language models and can respond to questions by pulling information from a database.

Agentic AI would take a step forward and not just be able to respond to resident inquiries but perform tasks, acting like an agent, as the name implies. It will evaluate applications or follow up with potential leads when occupancy in a building begins to creep up.

The pitch from AI firms is that the tech can improve a property's operating income through gains in lead conversion, resident retention, labor efficiency and cost control. Spending on agentic AI could reach $155B in the next five years, Bank of America estimates. 

“I think it’s the future of AI,” said Kevin Donnelly, executive director of the Real Estate Technology & Transformation Center. “It’s one of the more practical places where you can see AI impacting the real estate landscape in the long term.” 

The technology took center stage during the National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize show this month — nearly every tech platform noted its plans to release or develop agentic AI. Many leading apartment owners, operators and brokerages are investing heavily in this technology and touting its potentially seismic impacts. 

JLL Senior Vice President and Head of National Operations Mendowa Martin believes there’s a major shift in tech investment priorities across the multifamily industry. The past decade was focused on centralizing data, and now agentic AI could “be the next CRM,” or customer relationship management, she said, calling it a “game changer.”

JLL is currently developing agentic technology as part of its own Falcon AI system, she noted.

“Agentic AI, it's like they're your smartest leasing agent,” Martin said. “It works 24/7, doesn't miss follow-up, doesn't make mistakes. It's constantly learning how to close faster, where chatbots really were glorified autoresponders.”

Leaders in the space include New York-based EliseAI, which raised $75M last summer for its automation platform for the housing market, and AppFolio, which boasts 20,000 customers and just announced its Realm-X Performers agentic product at Apartmentalize.

Donnelly said established players like AppFolio and EliseAI have been pushing to add agentic technology to their platforms, along with Yardi and RealPage, which just launched Lumina in partnership with OpenAI.

Many startups are seeking to create their own AI models to sell to operators, investors and managers. Funnel, which just launched its Fenix AI agent tech in April, is used by Greystar.

“This agentic stuff is pretty new to the entire industry,” AppFolio Vice President of Product Cat Allday said. “All the competitors in the space are running full speed at this.” 

Most agentic AI tools come as part of a wider subscription service for CRM software or operations platforms for multifamily operators, allowing the agent to more easily plug into the program’s existing database of information on the user’s property portfolio. 

Donnelly said fully automating the leasing process and removing humans from the loop is still a ways off. But he sees a number of housing operators pursuing the technology to address staffing and budget challenges and to seize the opportunity to make the resident and leasing experience more seamless.

“Does a human-centered business like multifamily ultimately go 100% automated and remove the human experience completely?” Donnelly said. “I don't see that personally happening.”

Folding this technology into larger efforts to centralize operations can offer significant operational benefits. 

Cortland, which controls about 78,000 units across the U.S., has integrated Funnel into its leasing communications. At its central leasing hub, where workers oversee leasing for Cortland’s entire portfolio, a virtual agent called Cortney handles initial contacts with potential tenants over text and email. 

Last year alone, Cortney engaged with 80,000 potential tenants and booked 60,000 tours, operating with a 98% accuracy rate, Cortland Chief Experience Officer Mike Gomes said.

He says that Cortney has a personality — he calls it a she – and says it has been very useful as a way to augment the team of human workers responding to email and text inquiries. It’s also bilingual, able to respond in Spanish.

Cortney has limitations, though: It can’t answer emails with multiple questions, which can get confusing, or direct tenants to other buildings for fear of being accused of violating fair housing laws via steering. In all such cases, it hands the query over to a human colleague. 

“It’s not replacing our humans,” he said. “Cortney is an augmenting tool that allows us to ensure super-fast responsiveness to prospects.”

Gomes doesn’t think we’re quite at the age of agentic AI. It’s far from fully embraced outside of early adopters, and with even current users not utilizing the full capabilities of the technology, it’s more promise than reality — but it’s coming fast.

Cortland is testing a system where a voice version of Cortney answers calls in select Virginia markets. And in its Georgia and Florida properties, it is testing an AI agent to answer resident maintenance and repair requests. 

Executives at Equity Residential, another apartment giant, said on their most recent earnings call that “we are in the process of expanding the deployment of our conversational AI capabilities across the entire leasing journey.”

The speed at which agentic AI becomes more embedded in customer service roles for the multifamily industry isn’t yet clear. But it is clear that industry players see significant value in investing in this technology.

It’s also helping larger players gain an advantage in scale and operating margins. Gomes said Cortland has an entire technology team, including in-house AI developers, engineers and a full data team — advantages he says a smaller portfolio owner couldn’t afford. The Atlanta-based company even has an internal quality control tool that records every single call a human agent makes, transcribes and analyzes their interactions, and grades them against a series of predetermined criteria.

“Whether that's communication automation to the customer, or task workflow automation, we still think it’s a big, relatively untapped opportunity in multifamily,” Gomes said.

CORRECTION, JUNE 27, 4 P.M. ET: Cortland's virtual agent is called Cortney. A previous version of this story misstated its name. The story has been updated.