Apartments Have a Tech Story to Tell

Perhaps more than any other commercial real estate asset class, the apartment space has been eagerly adopting technology that eases life for both tenants and staff.

Just as eager are the vendors that are answering this demand, some of which are new to the market and others established companies. These firms are developing and upgrading their offerings across a wide range of functions from smart-home technology, touring and tour scheduling to maintenance inspections and turn scheduling, artificial intelligence-driven communication and rent payment.

Here are some of their stories.

BRIVO HELPS DRIVE RENT PREMIUMS

Vita Residential needed a platform to unify property security and smart apartment automation while integrating with property management software to deliver top-tier resident experiences.

It found a solution in Brivo that enabled its onsite staff to remotely open gates and doors and see a video recording tied to that access event.

Steve Sisson, president and CEO of Vita Residential, said the product soon led to a 40% ROI from its investment in smart unit technology and rent price adjustments.

He said his residents were willing to pay $35 to $55 more per month for this smart home experience.

Brivo Smart Apartment puts convenience in the hands of residents with one app for everything they need, including opening doors and controlling in-apt features like smart lighting.

BUTTERFLYMX ELIMINATES MANUAL UPDATES

Old analog entry systems at properties had become a bother for Timothy How, General Manager at Meridian Property Management.

“One of the biggest problems was that we couldn’t update resident directories remotely,” he said. “Every time a resident moved in or out, a staff member had to go on-site and manually update the building directory, which cost us several hours of our time every month.”

With ButterflyMX, the Meridian team now updates the resident directory at each property without leaving the office. And after integrating ButterflyMX with their Yardi property management software, rent roll changes automatically sync with the intercom’s directory. “We used to spend eight hours a month just updating directories,” says How.

“Now when a resident is added to Yardi, they’re automatically added to ButterflyMX. And when they’re removed from Yardi, they’re auto-matically removed from ButterflyMX—doesn’t get any easier than that!”

Additionally, choosing ButterflyMX means guests and vendors can seamlessly access any building as needed, either with a quick video call to a resident or a virtual key created in advance. And the convenient delivery PINs curb package theft, allowing delivery people to easily place packages inside the building.

KASTLE VIDEOCOM GRANTS ACCESS WITH QR CODES

Kastle’s videocom entrance system provides easy control of visitor access for apartment residents and managers. The KastleVideocom syncs with the Kastle access system, enabling residents and managers to remotely grant visitor door entry and monitor access activity from man-agement portal and KastleResident app. It provides for easy auditing of access activity, including video records.

Entrance can be granted through a QR code scan: Visitors receive temporary QR code to scan in text invite from resident; by dialing the office: Direct keypad dial to front office to request door unlock; through a video call to the resident, which is transmitted from the intercom to the resident’s smartphone to remotely unlock using app; or via PIN code access whereas management gives pre-assigned digital keypad codes to approved delivery vendors.

Daniel Rogers, Jr., Community Director, Penrose Square Apartments, said he installed the videocom system this year without a hitch.

“We’ve not had any issues with maintaining it, and we know that if there was an issue, it would be addressed and fixed quickly.

“Our onsite team is happy with it because they like the ability to see people via a video screen prior to letting them in.”

iAPARTMENTS CREATES A LIFESTYLE UPGRADE

The smart-home living resident experience continues to gain momentum in communities. iApartments’ platform enables owners to use a turnkey approach when retrofitting or developing new construction.

iApartments provides enterprise-level asset protection, energy management, touchless common area access, and comfort-control features.

Smart apartment technology gives residents front-door access through codes that are automatically assigned to that resident. Re-keying locks is no longer necessary so leasing teams are able to quickly and efficiently move residents in and out.

Its predictive analytics for HVAC health help reduce energy costs and enable maintenance teams to understand critical components that are beginning to fail and require attention before they break the budget. Its leak detection device alerts maintenance of potential trouble in homes before it becomes unmanageable.

iApartments’ platform integrates seamlessly with leading property management systems and is supported by iApartments’ installation team once activated. Its touchless access allows properties to streamline leasing through self-guided tours.

“Our residents now have keyless entry, smart thermostats, smart light switches, and leak sensors in their homes, which offer convenience, energy and cost savings, and asset protection,” said Linda Coburn, VP of Asset Management at NexMetro.

“We can now offer these lifestyle upgrades, which set us apart from the competition while adding value to our Avilla communities.”

LESSEN REDUCES LABOR AND TURN TIMES

Centralized maintenance management is gaining momentum as the industry struggles with hiring and retaining mainte-nance workers. Lessen is a software platform that enables apartment operators’ local field project managers to deploy and manage a network of vetted service professionals in 40+ markets.

It can reduce labor and turn times considerably for clients, such as Equity Residential. These clients also benefit from its supply chain and nationally negotiated pricing.

Its director of operations strategy, Brandon Winter, said with centralization and outsourcing, EQR can operate its communities with fewer on-site service employees.

“It’s a challenge to fill open positions with quality service employees these days,” Winter said. “So, [reducing] our need to rely on dedicat-ed on-site service personnel is a ‘win.’ In a recent takeover of a new market, this approach enabled us to work through a backlog of turns from the previous management, allowing us to staff these communities with fewer service employees than traditionally.

“Fixed contracted rates allow our teams to more accurately budget and project turn costs. Shifting the responsibility of the make-ready process to a vendor, allows our onsite teams to focus on the customer experience and asset preservation.”

PROPERTY INSPECT LEADS TO GREATER COMPLIANCE

The past few years have been a wake-up call for real estate, shifting to an increasingly online presence to make regular business operations more efficient. Property Inspect features a live dashboard for timely alerts, inspection app for offline data capture, interactive reports with tracking and audit trails, and digital signatures to customize and simplify the property inspection and operations process.

Its goal is to make every building compliant, transparent and safe. Asset managers utilize Property Inspect to report on maintenance of assets, allowing them to keep an eye on operating costs and upcoming maintenance issues/purchasing through customizable checklists and workflows.

Elizabeth Nicely, Senior Property Manager at McGurk House Apartments, said her team uses the software to complete move-in/move-out inspections for units and for monthly maintenance inspections.

“We have also used the system to streamline winterization and summer startup checklists and other similar checklist types of reviews for the properties,” she said. “Almost any type of review, audit, or inspection can be created in that system to make things easier on property managers and maintenance crews.”

INFINITYY LEVERAGES IMMERSIVE TOUR TECHNOLOGY

Infinityy has developed a real-time, customized tour that blends the familiarity and dependability of Google Street View-like visualization with a reliable, “always on” texting connection through mobile devices or laptops.

Launched in summer, it takes apartment communities about 48 hours to launch this immersive experience after uploading through Drop-Box its assets such as Matterport content, 3D images, renderings, drone footage, videos or any other visual assets. At a minimum, the prop-erty can share 2D images.

It’s not screen-sharing, isn’t a video conferencing platform such as Zoom, and doesn’t involve watching recorded tours. It then allows for groups of people to simultaneously explore potential square footage in any property in ways not offered before.

Participants (prospective residents or tenants) aren’t required to schedule a tour with agents, brokers, or onsite staff. The technology ena-bles them to sell 24/7 by having someone in place who can respond, accommodate prospects and answer their questions, and fits into to-day’s centralized leasing models and hybrid work structures.

Apartment operator Mike Procopio, CEO, at Boston-based Procopio Companies, began using Infinityy at his properties a few months ago. Alliance Residential, CBRE, Avison Young, and Brooke Team at eXp Realty are among others also using it.

ELISEAI COMMUNICATES IN CONVERSATIONAL QUALITY

From its inception, EliseAI has focused on delivering the highest possible AI conversational quality, making significant investments in re-search and development in the field of machine learning.

“A lot of the ongoing value of artificial intelligence and machine learning lies in continuous improvement,” said Tony Stoyanov, co-founder and CTO of EliseAI. “With true machine learning, each conversation helps the AI to learn and improve, so the more conversations you have, the better your AI will be.

Our long history and high conversation volume enable us to improve our conversation quality at an ever-increasing rate.”

Alongside these consistent improvements in conversation quality, EliseAI has released transformative new features, including EliseCRM, cross-selling within portfolios, and newly announced integrations with Knock, Funnel, and Resman. This broadens its product offering and enables more owners and management companies to partner with EliseAI.

EliseAI recently surpassed 1 million multifamily units on its AI platform.

Mark Halling, principal, director of portfolio management, for Stratford Partners, said, “It helped reduce strain on our onsite staff, who were feeling overwhelmed, even before the pandemic,” he said. “When we had spikes in our lead traffic, it became a situation where we’d get to them when we had the time. Our leasing teams had to work through the list via email.

“Now, when tour appointments have been set automatically, and our prospects have had most of their questions answered, our team can step in personally and handle these customers.”

BLUESNAP GIVES ONSITE TEAMS MORE FINANCIAL CONTROL

Letus’ digital payment platform allows residents to pay their rent online and offer an embedded payment solution into the residents’ journey by using BlueSnap’s global payment solution.

The cloud-based platform helps communities seamlessly facilitate and streamline rent collection and eliminate manual payment processing, reducing risks and increasing collection rates while empowering tenants to pay rent on-time in a fast and secured way.

Letus is supercharged with a Txt2pay solution and an innovative suite of financial inclusion tools for tenants.

Manuele Adrian Mizzi, Director of Property Management at North44, said his communities moved from paying with cash and checks to now 80% paying online.

“The payment process became faster and allowed our staff to focus on achieving more financial control for tenants, more time, resources, and accuracy in the process,” Mizzi said.