Ever since the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) was introduced into society in the late 20th-century, thousands upon thousands of research studies, journalistic articles, and debates have occurred arguing both the potential benefits and downsides of integrating AI more deeply into modern society.
What it has shown, however, is its ability to vastly improve our quality of life in virtually every industry that has successfully integrated it to some extent.
AI’s growth in the property management industry
Originally formed in 2017 by co-founders Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov to address the multitude of operational and logistical challenges of affordable housing, New York City-based technology company MeetElise has experienced unprecedented growth and recognition as the Property Management industry’s leader of AI technology. This growth and recognition came, in part, after successfully launching the company’s AI-driven leasing assistant platform and partnering with two of the nation’s largest owners of multifamily apartment units.
One of these partners ultimately opted to test MeetElise’s AI-powered Leasing Assistant for a 3-month pilot at 10 of their communities, encompassing more than 2,400 housing units in total. This pilot was enacted to provide 24/7 responses to prospective tenants through SMS and email, as well as to schedule virtual appointments and tours, and to perform follow-up meetings with those prospects.
According to the partner’s spokesperson, his company’s goal when entering the pilot, “…was to see if AI could match our agent conversion rates” over the 3-month trial period compared to the same 3 months the year prior. Using a combination of MeetElise’s AI and the industry expertise of [our] human capital, the pilot was able to achieve a 112% increase in lead-to-tour conversion rates, along with a 317% increase in the total number of appointments made by prospective clients, and an average of 2 hours’ worth of time saved each day.
This success, the spokesperson says, is largely due to MeetElise’s AI’s ability to create a more personalized experience for each prospect, which — in turn — has allowed their company to generate a custom experience tailored to the unique wants and needs of each prospect. Furthermore, because nearly 20% of all apartment tours are scheduled from a follow-up conversation with a leasing agent, the partner’s utilization of MeetElise’s AI has prevented their agents from missing a single tour request, allowing them to instead focus on generating a higher number of quality leads from prospective tenants.
Before renting your next apartment, MeetElise
Since launching MeetElise in 2017, the company’s team of software engineers and machine learning experts have evolved their AI program using state-of-the-art conversational models that have been customized to maximize the performance of leasing teams at property management companies and firms.
MeetElise’s AI pulls inquiries from prospective tenants from virtually every marketing source available to the property management industry—be it through Google, housing listing sites such as Apartments.com, or even through a specific community’s standalone website. Because the AI is able to respond to inquiries both via email and SMS, this means that there is virtually no difference in response quality whether a prospective tenant submits their inquiry through a digital contact form or via their phone.
To add to this, the AI is completely integrated with the most up-to-date property management software to ensure each prospect is able to receive both the most updated pricing and available apartments offered on the market in their area in real-time. To make matters even easier for listing agents, leasing assistants, and property management companies, MeetElise’s AI also comes fully equipped with activity logs that act in a similar fashion to a traditional CRM pipeline, allowing for the most seamless handoff possible to a property’s leasing team when a prospective tenant shows up to their appointment for a tour of the property.
Final Remarks
MeetElise has showcased its ability to handle almost all of the essential (albeit time-consuming) lead management activities and be even more responsive to prospective tenants, freeing up valuable time at communities managed and operated by property management firms.
Likewise, because MeetElise’s language models are easily able to carry conversations and answer questions with unparalleled ease and accuracy, the company’s co-founders say that their AI model of ‘Elise’ has even been asked out on dates on multiple occasions. Though she is physically unable to fulfill these requests, Elise is still able to answer questions any prospective tenant may have via SMS or email in as little as 5-10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
