AI is moving into the apartment market, taking over work orders, lease renewals, showings and more

Angel Santana Garcia | Istock | Getty ImagesA version of this article first appeared in the CNBC perty Play with Diana Olick. perty Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.The days of landlords knocking on doors for monthly rent checks, or tenants going after landlords to fix a leaky toilet are slowly coming to an end. nology has been stepping in to address the needs of tenants, landlords and large multifamily operators, and now artificial intelligence is turning that slow gress into a rental revolution.Work orders, lease renewals, tours and even investor due diligence are being taken over by software and AI

As with the start of any nology, it has been largely fragmented among a multitude of vendors

The integration of all that nology is a huge opportunity for startups and the venture capitalists backing them.Rent One of the more mature for AI in the apartment space is virtual agents talking to spective residents

This is where agentic AI comes in — meaning AI that can act autonomously and make its own decisions depending on what the consumer asks

There are still, however, just a handful of companies using that advanced level of machine learning.AI is also ving useful on the investment side of the multifamily , specifically underwriting and acquisitions

For example, investors looking to purchase a large perty have to go through all the leases and load those into a rent roll."If you're buying a perty that hasn't been fessionally managed, where those aren't all loaded into some market-leading software duct, somebody may have to manually go through all those leases and capture all the information

Well, AI is great for that, right?" said John Helm, founder and partner at RET Ventures, a fund focusing on AI in both real estate and rent .Get perty Play directly to your inboxCNBC's perty Play with Diana Olick covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, dered weekly to your inbox. here to get access today.Instead, according to Helm, you can leases into an AI model, and it will spit out a summary of all the data the investor needs

They can then load that directly into an underwriting model and value the perty.RET Ventures said it doesn't rely on endowments or pension funds for its capital, but instead the consumers of the ducts of the companies they invest in — so-called strategic limited partners."We have 60 multifamily operators that have over 3 million units in our fund," he said.perty managementAI can also help with perty development and accounts payable

Multifamily developers will often have multiple vendors, from landscaping to plumbing to heating

Many still use paper invoices.One of RET's portfolio companies is PredictAP

It takes all those invoices, reads them and then repopulates all the necessary data into the company's payables system to make the cess and payments more efficient

None of it needs to be manually coded by a human

FunnelTyler Christiansen ns the multifamily industry to car dealerships

Every renter interaction was siloed to an individual perty

As CEO of Funnel, which is backed by RET Ventures, his aim is to line the apartment marketing and leasing cess, "enabling multifamily fessionals to generate more fits, efficiency, and insight across their portfolios," according to the company website.Funnel works with large apartment real estate investment trusts such as Camden perty Trust, MAA and Essex perty Trust, as well as Cortland, which owns 90,000 apartments

Christiansen said that rather than the renter's relationship being with the community, the renter's relationship is really with the brand

He calls that "centralization" in the industry."And then AI, what makes it unique within Funnel is that rather than automating interactions simply at a community level, we're really opening up automations across the portfolio," said Christiansen.One example would be if a tenant is not renewing a lease at one community because they are moving to a different market, Funnel's AI system would open up the possibility of cross-selling that person into another client community.HeadwindsDespite the gress, the nology is still in its infancy, and it's expensive

Apartment operators and investors are in the experimental phase

It remains to be seen how much they will invest.Plus, the multifamily industry is highly fragmented

The largest apartment REITs own roughly between 50,000 and 100,000 units each, with a few larger private operators, Blackstone and Greystar."I guess the challenge is going to be, bably in the next several years, really sifting through everything and understanding where there are real es that could grow into this

You're still seeing a lot of these tools just starting to get deployed," said Helm.