Artificial intelligence is steadily creeping into more and more aspects of multifamily management. AI-powered agents are following up with prospective renters and drawing up leases. Evolving tech is even learning to automate property tax disputes and hound tenants for rent.

Tech firms are plowing billions into automating the bulk of rote tasks that keep employees busy for large parts of their day. But as the tech gets increasingly sophisticated, the future of nearly half a million workers is in limbo.

“There's a reality towards it that we definitely shouldn't dance around,” said Tyler Hochman, founder and CEO of proptech startup Fore. “As the way current jobs function, there will be aspects of those jobs that are rendered entirely moot as a result of AI.”

There were 466,100 property, real estate and community association managers working across the U.S. as of 2024, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With expenses increasing for volatile line items like property insurance, interest rates and construction materials for renovations, personnel salaries are a cost that landlords can control.

Public fear over AI-related layoffs remains high, despite executives’ pushback that the tech won’t lead to layoffs. Commercial real estate’s rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in property management offers a rare look into how AI is reshaping the way white-collar professionals work.

The efficiency savings that come from AI adoption are substantial, according to a playbook from EliseAI that offers a road map from AI adoption to job automation. The company — valued at $2.2B and used in a sixth of U.S. apartments — estimates that the technology can cut leasing and administrative hours by 40% and lead to 10% to 20% in payroll savings.

Deploying centralization and AI leasing has already impacted the workforce at Equity Residential, a $25B multifamily REIT that owns roughly 85,000 apartments. The REIT trimmed its headcount by 20% between 2020 and 2025 as a result of AI integration.

EliseAI Chief Strategy Officer Ian Weng previously told Bisnow that job losses are more likely to come from positions not being filled when workers leave than via layoffs.

Attrition is up to three times as high among property managers as in other white-collar professions. The average turnover rate for white-collar jobs was 9.9% in 2024, according to data from professional services firm iMercer, while annual turnover for property managers can reach 30% or more in some areas, according to the Community Associations Institute.

At present, most housing providers are looking at how they can deploy AI to expand existing employees’ roles, with the tech acting as the first point of contact for residents, said Kevin Donnelly, executive director and chief advocacy officer of the National Multifamily Housing Council’s tech affiliate, the Real Estate Technology & Transformation Center.

“We really see AI, but even more broadly, just technology and emerging tech, really as linchpins to move the needle on operations, lowering costs, really improving that resident experience, make their rental journey more sticky so they ultimately stay with us longer,” Donnelly said.

Property managers are incorporating AI slowly to minimize disruption to their teams’ existing workflows. That caution stems from an awareness that implementing AI tools isn’t always a seamless process.

Jennifer Panegasser, director of property accounting at NAI Hiffman, which brokers and manages properties, said her team was initially hesitant to fully lean into AI tools, with questions over where the technology is heading. The company has piloted an AI invoicing tool for about two years that automatically reads invoices and codes them to the correct property across a subsection of its portfolio.

“It was a really tough adoption, because at that point, you had to teach this AI system what you needed from it,” Panegasser said. “It felt like it was a lot more work as you were adjusting things and correcting it.”

The system has learned over time and now needs fewer corrections, she said. It has also helped the team absorb additional properties and clients without adding headcount, as less time is spent on manual input.

Panegasser said she firmly believes AI’s integration into property management will parallel how computer systems have revolutionized accounting during her career.

AI systems are already after the lowest-hanging fruit: Hochman said his company targets the work that is expensive and repetitive. That includes tasks like emailing tenants, creating leasing documents and appealing tax assessments.

Employees who are excited about using technology to speed up repetitive tasks so they can tackle the more challenging or interactive parts of property management are going to succeed, Hochman said. But those who want to keep doing those tasks manually will likely find their jobs in danger.

“They’re not going to love it,” he said.

Using AI to reduce headcount for its own sake would be shortsighted and could lead to a significant enough drop in tenant retention that the tech winds up adding costs for the property manager, said Andrew Steiker-Epstein, chief data officer and brokerage president for New York City landlord Charney Cos.

Instead, AI’s true advantage is that the company doesn’t need to add jobs to augment its resident experience, said Jared Zolna, the landlord’s senior vice president of asset management.

“Our question is, ‘How can we do more with what we have?’ not ‘How can we do more with less?’” Zolna said. “I don't know that that analysis is the same if you're a national public company and you are overstaffed. It may be a different analysis.”

AI is already enabling property management companies to collect and synthesize granular data on residents that would previously have eaten up hours of manpower, Steiker-Epstein said.

The company tracks things like pets’ names, gym habits and life events, such as when a resident mentions their upcoming nuptials to one of the doormen that staff Charney’s apartment buildings. That information then gets fed into a resident profile, allowing the landlord to deliver personalized experiences to renters.

Incorporating AI into property management will empower employees to do more specialized work, tackle tasks they may currently struggle with, and allow them to hone skills needed for more complex tasks, Hochman said.

“The skeptical way to look at this is saying, yes, it is going to cut a lot of jobs,” he said. “The optimistic way to look at this is saying it's freeing people to do aspects of the job that they were never able to access before. And the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.”