Peter Lohmann's Mailing List - Issue #50

AppFolio dropped some big news this morning, and I found it interesting enough to briefly step away from my June vacation and write a little something about it!

Note: AppFolio has sponsored the newsletter before, but this issue is not sponsored by them. I’m genuinely excited about this announcement and wanted to talk about it.

AppFolio Realm

In a nutshell, AppFolio announced a new conversational AI-powered interface for their property management software called Realm. Here’s a screenshot from the press release:

What Is It?

AppFolio says this conversational interface can “Direct AppFolio to complete tasks, draft and send communication, and initiate actions or processes on 
your behalf.” In the example above, you can ask it to send a message to all residents at a specific property

If you watch the hype video on their brand-new AI page, you get a sense for what other types of things it can do:

• Ask it to show you a rent roll for a specific property.

• Draft messages to tenants and property owners

• Pull up a list of all open work orders at a specific property

• Ask it what painters are available and create a work order

• Ask questions about how to use AppFolio

• Create rental listing descriptions

We knew someone had to be first-to-market with a splashy AI-powered property management product, but I have to confess I wasn’t expecting it to be the large, publicly-traded incumbent! I figured a smaller, newer company would have been able to move faster on this. To be fair, Realm is not live yet, so maybe I’m giving them too much credit. But I was able to see a demo of the product last week, and it appeared to be fully functional.

Depth of Integration

What’s I find so interesting about this is the depth of the integration. We knew it wouldn’t be long before one of the major PM software vendors released an AI product that would allow you to query the existing help documentation as a way to get support more easily. But this goes way beyond that… it has access to your live account data like properties, residents, vendors and owners. And the ability to actually “do work” within the software (such as creating work orders and sending messages) just takes it that much further. This is not just a skim coat of fancy AI branding.

Here are some of the impacts I think a Realm-style AI interface could have for property managers:

• Let new employees become productive with PM software MUCH faster

• Drive efficiency in completing routine day-to-day tasks (this is the big one IMO)

• Reduce error rates

• Smooth over difficult outbound written communication (“make this email nicer”)

• Decrease response times to owners and residents

• Provide plain-English business insights without requiring difficult BI tools

It’s worth noting that AppFolio has been investing in AI for five years now (according the the press release). In fact AppFolio shared as part of this announcement that they are pulling all existing AI products under the new “Realm” brand:

AppFolio even has an AI executive on the team, 9-year AppFolio veteran Cat Allday. Teaser: I’m interviewing her for my podcast in a few weeks! Let me know what questions you have for her.

Open Questions

1. Pricing - nothing is known at this time. I don’t see any mention of it in the press release. Will it be free? Included with Appfolio Plus? An add-on? No idea. These are blue waters and whatever AppFolio does will surely ripple through the industry as other software vendors release their own AI-powered products.

2. Timing - again, nothing I can find or publicly share regarding when Realm will be available to AppFolio users.

3. Impact. AI feels like a buzzword right now, and most property managers I talk to aren’t getting massive value out of any AI-related products… yet. Will AI transform the way we manage properties and run PM companies? Or will it fizzle… or something in between.

4. Who’s next, and where will our industry be 5 years from now? The AI tools you see today are the worst they will ever be…

I would love to hear your take on this… hit reply and let me know!

-Peter

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