REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVES THAT COUNT

Answering the Call for Operational Efficiency

In the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for self-guided touring solutions grew exponentially as renters sought safer, more flexible options for visiting properties. But it quickly became clear that self-guided tours would have staying power beyond the pandemic.

After all, not only did self-guided touring platforms offer a means of exploring apartments while maintaining social distancing, they also provided prospective renters with more flexibility to visit available units on their schedule — offering self-guided tours outside typical office hours, and on weekends and holidays. And beyond the benefits to renters, self-guided tours also offer multifamily operators other benefits.

To navigate today’s complex business landscape, operational efficiency has become essential, with many property managers seeking solutions that reduce their operational costs. By reducing the responsibilities of staff — freeing them to work on other critical projects — and associated costs, self-guided tours allow property managers to allocate resources more effectively.

A More Flexible, Convenient Touring Experience

These ongoing shifts — and the large number of multifamily owners and managers moving toward centralized operations — led to RET‘s most recent investment in Tour24.

Tour24 is a best-in-class self-touring platform that provides prospective tenants with curated tours of apartments and amenities spaces. Through the pre-recorded audio tours, leasing agents can highlight key property features without being present, creating an interactive, innovative experience that’s easy to navigate, customized to the prospects’ location within a property and attractive to younger renters.

For example, owners who want details about state-of-the-art kitchen appliances or a fitness center can customize the tour and audio guide to emphasize these features as residents view the space.

Tour24’s platform also provides multifamily owners and operators with data on tour performance and insights into the most inquired-about features of a property, facilitating more targeted follow-up after the tour.

What’s Next for Tour24

In less than five years since it was founded by Georgianna Oliver in 2020, Tour24’s technology has gained significant traction, and it now serves 525,000 units across 2,065 multifamily properties in the United States including properties owned by several RET strategic investors including GID, Berkshire Residential Investments, Highmark, AMLI Residential, and LCOR. Critically, Tour24 also integrates with property management systems, fitting seamlessly into operators’ tech stack.

Tour24’s proven track record of providing a best-in-class technology that generates a strong ROI for multifamily owners and operators solidifies our confidence in its continued potential, and we’re excited to support its expansion across the market.

Generative AI is transforming the real estate industry in a host of ways, revolutionizing property operations, improving resident experiences, and enabling more informed decision-making. But its effectiveness depends heavily on the quality of the data behind it.

At RET Ventures’ most recent “Multifamily Kickoff Summit” at the annual Blueprint event in Las Vegas, RET Vice President Jaymie Fung Bingham moderated a panel on “AI’s Impact on the Multifamily Sector” that focused on data quality and AI more broadly.

In a conversation with Stephanie Gonzalez, vice president of Innovation at Venterra Realty; Ardalan Khosrowpour, CEO and founder of OnsiteIQ; and Russell Franks, president and COO of Predict AP, Jaymie discussed the current and future state of AI as it relates to the multifamily industry. Specifically, the panelists delved into the various data challenges in evaluating AI technology (i.e. including data quality and integration), educating employees and customers regarding the implementation and capabilities of AI, as well as the primary factors that drive multifamily owners and developers to adopt new technologies. (In most cases, users anticipate — and enjoy — significant ROI from AI deployment.)

The panelists also weighed in on the overall value proposition of AI, which benefits not only executives but property staff. Through automation, AI-powered technologies can improve the management team’s efficiency as well as employee and resident experience, improving nearly every aspect of real estate in the process.

Watch the full session below:

The Rise of Centralization in Multifamily

The multifamily sector experienced unprecedented growth during the pandemic as lifestyle shifts and a national housing shortage pushed rents up and encouraged many owners and operators to expand their portfolios. Now, several years post-pandemic, the market has experienced a correction – large waves of new supply in many markets have outpaced demand, and rent growth has slowed across the country. These dynamics, coupled with general economic uncertainty, have multifamily owners and operators looking internally to create value and boost their net operating income (NOI), and technology that drives centralization is a top priority.

Many owners have been using solutions that streamline leasing, resident communications and engagement, and marketing for some time now, but there is an increasing demand for technology to optimize every aspect of property management. This includes things like maintenance and repairs, which are typically quite cumbersome and often require time-consuming coordination between onsite staff, vendors, and residents. For owners and operators of large apartment portfolios, each month brings thousands of new work orders and hundreds of new turns, presenting an extremely complex maze of to-dos for property teams that can be costly if not handled efficiently.

Optimizing the Maintenance Management Process

As the industry continues to move toward centralization, RET is committed to investing in companies that leverage sophisticated technology to drive efficiency across all management processes – including maintenance. It is this objective that led to our most recent investment in SuiteSpot.

Originally developed to streamline and improve multifamily maintenance management, SuiteSpot’s platform has evolved to help property owners and operators centralize every aspect of maintenance and capital operations at scale. The platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to help property owners and managers complete maintenance and capital projects like make-readies and unit turns in an efficient, cost-effective manner, helping them get vacant units back to market as quickly as possible. The entire maintenance workflow, from work order origination and execution, to vendor management and resident engagement, is facilitated through the SuiteSpot app.

SuiteSpot also collects property data so management can easily track key performance indicators (KPIs), including average turn time and budget usage. Using SuiteSpot, owners of geographically dispersed portfolios can compare performance across their properties and gain insights into future spend. The platform also reduces risk for property owners by tracking progress on preventative maintenance and compliance as well as incident reporting.

Critically, SuiteSpot integrates with RET portfolio company, Funnel, and other leading real estate tech tools, creating an optimal experience by fitting seamlessly within the existing workflow stack.

SuiteSpot’s Core Value

SuiteSpot’s solution is powerful, and it has already experienced significant traction in the market. The platform is currently tracking to be deployed across 500,000 rental units, and users have reported significant improvements to maintenance processes with clear in-year ROI, including up to 50% reduction in apartment turn times and 40% faster work order completion times.

As multifamily owners continue to prioritize technology that improves and centralizes key operations like maintenance, SuiteSpot will remain an indispensable solution for stakeholders looking to boost their NOI. For many of its users, SuiteSpot is fast becoming an indispensable technology tool, and it’s an exciting new addition to the RET portfolio.

The multifamily industry has undergone a significant shift toward centralization as slowed rent growth and general market uncertainty have many owners prioritizing optimizing internal operations to cut costs and create greater efficiencies.

During RET Ventures’ second annual “Multifamily Kickoff Summit” at the Blueprint event in Las Vegas last month, RET Partner Christopher Yip moderated a panel entitled “Centralized Property Operations: Creating Efficiencies Across Leasing, Maintenance, and Broader Property Operations,” featuring panelists Josh Glastein, CTO of Berkshire Residential; Elik Jaeger, CEO & Founder of SuiteSpot; Andy Larson, CRO of Tour24; and Fred Schreiber, EVP & COO of AMLI Residential.

In the discussion, panelists explored the driving forces behind centralization, including economic challenges, labor costs and shortages, and a desire to enhance the resident experience. Panelists also dove into the specific ways centralization is solving challenges throughout leasing and maintenance, enabling owners to create more consistency in their operations and utilize their resources in smarter ways.

In concluding the session, the experts shared thoughts on which currently underserved areas of multifamily management would benefit the most from centralization, leaving the audience with a holistic understanding of the current innovations within the sector and where the asset class is headed in the years to come.

Watch the full session below:

RET Ventures recently welcomed its extensive network of multifamily, SFR and real estate tech professionals to Park City for the sixth annual RET Summit.

With 100+ strategic investors and 20+ portfolio companies in attendance, the event brought together leading industry executives for three days of networking, strategy conversations, and portfolio company presentations. Discussions at this year’s event included the growth of centralization within real estate and the tech initiatives that leading real estate operators are finding drive the greatest improvements in NOI.

After seven successful years as an industry-backed leader in the real estate tech space, we continue to see the success of our collaborative business model. The annual summit — which brings so many stakeholders together in one room — is a critical part of this collaboration. Thank you to everyone who attended the event, making the summit a resounding success and helping us all bring continued innovation in the real estate sector!

While the COVID-19 pandemic gave the commercial real estate industry some challenges, it also served as a catalyst for innovation, forcing property developers, owners, and operators alike to reevaluate decades-old real estate models. Initially, the real estate industry was slow to adopt technology. But the prevalence of working from home changed resident activity, as well as the way in which property management and residents interact. Because of that, real estate technology has become essential in meeting renter needs.

This was one of the topics of discussion at RETCON — a proptech-focused event in New York City — this spring. During a Fireside Chat led by RET Ventures Partner John Helm, LCOR Chief Operating Officer Mike Hogentogler talked about his career journey in multifamily operations and management and how LCOR approaches the selection and implementation of proptech solutions across its 12,000-unit multifamily portfolio.

LCOR was ahead of the curve at proptech adoption. While many real estate companies are just now learning how to integrate technology into their properties, testing the water with a few technologies, Mike talked about the twelve distinct tech solutions LCOR has rolled out across various properties in the past four years. Embracing the shift away from single-stack solutions, LCOR has focused on adopting technologies that play a role in accelerating and easing the renter’s overall experience, as well as those of property management teams. While this shift is universal, Mike noted that it has even greater benefits for small-to-midsize property owners and operators who cannot support dedicated workstreams for all operational activities; integration of technology has been crucial in streamlining operations and ensuring renter satisfaction.

The market is seeing an abundance of proptech solutions being developed, and two of the criteria LCOR uses when deciding which technologies to deploy may not be intuitive: one, the tech company’s leadership, and, two, its financial stability. By considering both of these factors, LCOR has been successful at implementing tech solutions that will deliver tangible benefits for their operations team for years to come.

Mike also talked about the importance of purposeful implementation, including focusing on technologies that integrate with other proptech solutions and being intentional about which properties pilot these technologies. Also critical when rolling out any technology is effective change management to ensure that companies are driving the best possible results that maximize the technology’s impact.

As innovation continues,​​ integrating effective technologies will be crucial not only for operational efficiency but also for meeting the ever-changing expectations of residents. As John noted, RET Ventures has played a major role in moving multifamily technology forward, helping to ensure that future technologies are well-capitalized and perform in a way that is most impactful for the industry. Through its partnership with a large cohort of multifamily operators, RET helps LCOR and others make technology investments that align with their strategic goals and enhance resident experience.

As Mike noted toward the end of the session, the power of technology in multifamily real estate is transformative. By embracing innovation, collaborating with forward-thinking partners, and prioritizing tenant experience, LCOR has set a precedent for implementing innovations that drive operational excellence and future-proof the industry.