How much time does artificial intelligence save rental companies, in what ways— and how is it reallocated?

When used properly, artificial intelligence (AI) can produce significant time savings for rental housing industry companies across a variety of repetitive administrative tasks—time that can be reallocated to functions that only humans can perform.

A 2023 study from HubSpot, titled “Smarter Selling with AI,” which was not strictly rental housing-focused, found that AI and automation tools are saving sales teams more than two hours per day on average. Such results have “led many sales teams to turn to new AI-based tools that optimize the sales process, automate manual tasks, and help sales professionals actually spend their time connecting with prospects, getting more leads, and closing more deals,” according to the study.

And AI is clearly impacting the rental housing industry. “Every time I turn around, it’s entering another area of our world,” says Karen Kossow, Marketing Director at Paradigm Management, based in Arlington, Va. “We’re excited about adding it even further into our leasing process. We’re at the tipping point where the AI tools we choose to use long term will be responding to our leads, and leasing agents likely won’t be [interacting with] the customer until they’re ready to tour, or potentially even move in. Because AI has gotten that good.”

Quantifying the Time Savings

The 2023 AppFolio “Property Manager Hiring and Retention Report,” which looks at issues like how technology can improve engagement and productivity for Property Managers and their teams, found that overall, 69% of leadership and 55% of staff wish they had more time to focus on higher-level tasks. And they believe that nearly one-third of the typical workweek could be optimized or streamlined through technology like AI. 

An in-house study conducted by Greystar, which compared properties with “lead warming and nurturing” AI tools to those that didn’t, showed a divergence that included 31% more follow-ups, 27% more applicants, 37% more tours, 30% higher lead-to-scheduled appointments, and 62% more appointments scheduled in the end at properties that use AI tools, says Jesse Miller, Director of Real Estate – Hawaii with Greystar, and founder and President of the Pacific Housing Association. 

“I look at AI tools almost as if they’re a self-driving high-performance sports car,” Miller says. “The better you’re able to give directions and input, the faster you’re able to get to whatever goal, final outcome or solution you’re trying to get to. If you cannot give it proper instruction and a game plan for navigation, it can drive off the road or go in the wrong direction. But companies that are deciding not to get into the use of technology, whether AI-specific or not, are more so on a bicycle, or they’re physically running to get to their destination.”

James Scott, Director of the Real Estate Transformation Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Real Estate, notes that while studies measure industry averages, how much time AI saves a given organization will depend upon how that company operates, and how consistently it operates in the same ways.

“Where are you implementing the AI? Are you implementing it through chatbots? Automated report generation? Predictive maintenance systems?” Scott asks. “The outcomes of implementation depend on the company, how it runs its systems, what systems it has in place, and what tasks or functionalities you assign specific software to do. … If X and Y and Z all remain constant, then you’re going to get this level of efficiency. But, as we all know, businesses don’t always run consistently.”

AI providers may say, for instance, that if you implement their system, that you will gain a 15% to 20% efficiency in the process, Scott says. “And they’re correct, if you implement it in a very specific way,” he says. “It may not always be possible to do so. Each company has its own way of implementation, because of the way their culture is, the way their accounting systems operate, how personalities have integrated the use of the system.”

How Does AI Save Time?

The best uses of AI tend to involve clearing bottlenecks within a business “where you can automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks, to allow you to spend time in more constructive and productive areas elsewhere,” Scott says. “That’s where AI is making the biggest difference.”

For customer service, Scott says chatbots have improved dramatically in the past four or five years. “From a maintenance and scheduling point of view, you can achieve incredible efficiencies,” he says. “Chatbots work 24/7. That’s hugely helpful. If someone wants to schedule a property viewing, they are probably sitting on their couch at 8 or 9 o’clock, after work.” Chatbots have limits when asked questions beyond boilerplate standard inquiries, but that’s when the chatbot suggests, “Let’s schedule a call with Brian at 9 a.m. tomorrow.”

AI also can be extremely helpful in generating reports, Scott says. “That’s one of the most tedious aspects of property management: Helping to better understand [results] when you’re reviewing leases, reviewing documents [and] facilitating automated reporting generation,” he says. AI can also reduce time needed with resident screenings, background and credit checks.

Miller sees a broad scope of functions that could potentially be automated on the administrative side. “As an example, you and I could have a conversation on [Microsoft] Teams and have an AI program transcribing everything we’re talking about,” he says. “After we’re done with the conversation, the AI platform will take the conversation and summarize everything we discussed. If you and I are on a research team, it could pull the stats out we talked about, evaluate them for accuracy, and then put them into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.”

Another use-case is asking AI to “read” and then draft responses to emails, which the human in the scenario reads and approves or modifies before sending out, Miller says. “I’ve never been an expert writer,” he says. “You don’t have to have that skill to be successful in property management. But you have community newsletters that need to go out.”

CAPREIT, which has a little more than 10,000 units in 50 communities throughout the Eastern half of the U.S., uses AI for efficiency and also to partner with its humans, says Katie Nelson, Vice President of Marketing of the Maryland-based company. “AI is highly effective during our off-hours in handling routine inquiries, thereby freeing up time for our onsite teams,” she says. “For instance, questions regarding service requests, which would typically require a phone call to our site staff, can now be addressed by our virtual leasing assistant, available 24/7.”

CAPREIT will open its first entirely remotely managed community later this year in Greenville, S.C., Nelson says. “AI plays a crucial role in our leasing, screening and ID verification processes. Managing an entire community remotely will be an interesting experience,” she says. “We have a national service team with a few members available to travel as needed, primarily for walk-throughs.”

Chicago-based Trilogy, with 8,500 units in 27 buildings in 11 states, uses AI to film walk-through videos of units that can be used to generate still images. Faith Barker, Marketing Manager with Trilogy, says the AI rates the videos and resulting stills on perceived aesthetic and technical quality. Previously the company had videos stored on YouTube, and “it was sometimes a pain to go back and forth between the videos—which was the good one, which was the bad one,” she says. “I love that this has the ability for us to look quickly.”

The company also has used AI to schedule tours, answer frequently asked questions and otherwise start communications with a prospect, which has led to more than 1,800 leads, an overall lead-to-tour ratio of 28% and a book-to-tour ratio (of qualified leads) of 54% in the past 30 days, Barker says, adding that AI also handled 57% of after-hours correspondence. It’s particularly helpful in high-traffic areas that get two or three times the number of typical leads. 

Paradigm Management also uses video-still-caption AI. While trying to lease up a 443-unit building in Alexandria, Va., in a tight market, “that personally saved me at least two to three hours, in that we could capture the photos directly from the videos that I was able to get up onto the website,” Kossow says. “Without it, we would have been trying to lease up a community with no pictures of our apartments.”

How Does Time Get Reallocated?

Every company will have a somewhat different idea about how the time saved through AI is best reallocated, Scott says, although property managers have told him that between two and two and a half days a week are tied up in scheduling, viewing properties and dealing with questions from prospective residents. 

“If you reduce that to a couple of hours a week, you can deal with other issues where AI isn’t able to make as big of an impact and where human interaction is the most valuable,” Scott says. “Ultimately, where is their time better spent?”

Miller agrees that automating administrative tasks allows team members to dedicate more time to engage with residents—and their colleagues. “AI helps to get team members out onto the property, with the residents, doing community outreach and networking opportunities—and then also, whether virtual or face-to-face, providing training opportunities for team members,” he says. “It’s freeing them up from those administrative tasks.”

CAPREIT also tries to reallocate its focus on current and prospective residents, Nelson says. “AI also assists in managing phone traffic,” she says. “Onsite managers have reported that it significantly enhances the tranquility of the office environment, particularly in larger communities that receive a high volume of calls. Virtual leasing assistants can handle phone calls, texts and emails, ensuring that staff are not constantly interrupted by ringing phones, especially when they are attending to residents in person.”

Similarly, AI has allowed Trilogy to focus on the human touch, “to better prioritize those things that might get pushed aside,” Barker says. “Being able to actually call someone instead of sending them an email or being able to sit down and go through an application with somebody if they have questions. Things that people … often push to the side because it’s easier to send a text or email.”

At Paradigm Management, AI has given onsite teams the ability to spend more face time with residents and improve customer satisfaction, Kossow says. “Things are less rushed,” she says. “You don’t have the task you need to get done hanging over your head when you’re working with a person. … Being able to use AI allows me to get through what I need to get done faster and allows me to do more of it. It allows me more time to work on the strategic end of things rather than constantly getting the day-to-day done.”

Ed Finkel is a freelance writer.