Morgan Properties Hires Tech Czar To Deploy AI Across 110,000 Apartments

A multifamily behemoth has tapped a tech whiz with decades of experience in the financial services sector to guide its artificial intelligence push.

Morgan Properties last month brought on Devang Patel, an alum of Vanguard and Manulife, as head of technology. It is a new role for the company, which previously had its technology teams led by its chief strategy officer. 

Based outside Philadelphia, Morgan is the second-largest apartment owner in the country, with more than 110,000 units across 400-plus properties. Jonathan and Jason Morgan, whose father founded the company in 1985, became co-CEOs in February. 

Patel is now in the early stages of crafting a strategy for using AI tools that Morgan can roll out across its portfolio. He told Bisnow this week that corporate landlords are behind the curve on AI compared to the industry he came from. 

“I frankly have a lot of experience in how this is done outside of the real estate multifamily space,” he said. “Financial services as an industry has adopted AI in a much more meaningful way.”

Patel is now wading through a proptech landscape littered with a wide array of AI tools that each solve a highly specific need.

Part of the challenge at this point is figuring out which ones are worth investing in.

“If we have such a large product suite, that challenge then becomes: How do we integrate all that data?” Patel said.

“How do we do more with less?” he added. “How do we feed that data in a centralized data warehouse so that we can start connecting the dots between HR data, property data, resident data, financial data? The key for us is using that in a very intentional way to drive insights.”

He aims to use AI to create a greater understanding of everything in Morgan's portfolio, from occupancy and renewal rates to expense trends and maintenance cycles.

The technology could also help Morgan effectively absorb newly acquired properties without sacrificing service, and it could notify the company about specific issues at buildings so managers can address them in hours instead of weeks.

“To close the time from going from insights to actions is key,” Patel said.

Some of the most concrete changes for tenants will be on the leasing front. AI-powered chatbots will eliminate wait times and prevent leasing managers from playing phone tag as prospective residents consider properties.

AI isn’t completely foreign at Morgan Properties, which has certain teams and employees already using it independently.

Claude Code is a staple on the tech teams Patel is leading, he said. They use the Model Context Protocol, an open-source standard developed by the platform’s parent company, Anthropic, that allows users to connect the software to a wide array of datasets.

Microsoft Copilot’s chatbot is ubiquitous in other parts of the company as individual employees have begun using a variety of tools to enhance their work, Patel said. 

But he said this piecemeal adoption won’t allow Morgan to glean the full benefits of AI.

His goal is to have a base-level internal program the entire company can access and a more powerful option for people in more data-centric, analytic roles.

Patel is still trying to figure out exactly how the staff will be trained to use these tools, but he said he will likely use a mix of strategies, including video call lectures and written information posted to the company website.

Even if AI and automation can eliminate some of the repetitive “low-value work” being done at Morgan, Patel doesn’t think it will eliminate the need for a personal touch when it comes to the resident experience.

“In this space, there will always be the need for the human element in moments that matter,” he said.