MULTIFAMILY FOCUS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
screen at least the first round of calls from potential tenants, buyers, and sellers. You also should consider tracking employee productivity to identify potential weak links in your process and help employees get the most out of their workday. Lesson Learned: AI programs can help you free up time, make decisions that will maximize long-term results for you and your clients, and track productivity to match employees with roles best-suited to their strengths. 2. MAXIMIZE YOUR MARKETING Some real estate investors love the marketing side of the business, but many simply endure rather than enjoy. If refining and evaluating your market- ing does not appeal to you, then you are likely missing a lot of minute adjust- ments that could be helping you better reach existing and potential clients. Just a few subtle changes could streamline your marketing. Constantly refine your process as your clients’ needs constantly, subtly change. New software programs can help with this process. Here’s how it might work: Many real estate investors who manage multiple properties, multiple residents, or some combination of both, already know just how powerful a series of syndicated communications can be to their business. You can send reminders to applicants about deadlines, notifications about maintenance issues and responsibilities to existing tenants, and even fire off forms to interested prospects. All of those individ- uals can then respond to you in real time and are quite likely to do so. For example, if a potential tenant indicates that they would like to be notified when a unit that meets certain parameters becomes available, you could set your system to email or text them a notification of availability and a link to your online application form. A few simple clicks, and a task that previously
would have had to wait on a sales rep to be free and remember to call that lead now has likely initiated contact with someone highly probable to end up as a new tenant. I suspect that in the next 12 months, we’ll see increasingly customized programs designed to capture more data about lifestyle choices and other preferences outside of just the number of bedrooms a tenant desires. Benefit from this evolution! Every data point you collect gives you clearer insight into why a prospect has decided to rent with you or opted not to. Lesson Learned: Automation does not just make your clients’ lives easier. It also enables you to more effectively market to new clients and maintain a productive relationship with existing ones! As your digital and social media pres- ence expands, your workload expands as well. Handle your web presence correct- ly, and soon your workload will expand exponentially as more leads begin reach- ing out to you with questions about your properties and product. Did you know that chatbots can inter- act with these leads? Many multifamily investors and real estate investors with large portfolios of all types of properties are currently using chatbots to answer basic questions on their websites and social media profiles. The result is a highly responsive lead-generation system producing dynamic, quick results. IT’S NOT LIMITED TO FAQS: You don’t just have to program a chat- bot to answer frequently asked questions, either. They can do a lot more. In fact, thanks to advances in video streaming, you can integrate multiple YouTube channels and even create a series of videos that use AI to elicit information 3. CONSIDER BRINGING A CHATBOT INTO THE CONVERSATION
BLAST OFF: What Should Go Into An Automated Text Message
Weather alerts
Maintenance alerts
Basic calendar notifications about scheduled repairs Notifications about specials you are running Reminders about unfinished applications
3Ways to UseArtificial Intelligence to RampUp YourMultifamily Game A LITTLE CREATIVITY CAN SEND YOUR PORTFOLIO VOLUME AND VALUE SOARING.
about potential tenants, real estate deals, or just about anything.
AI IS OUT THERE. GET READY TO USE IT EFFECTIVELY. You are probably already starting to get a feel for the vast potential embodied by effectively leveraging not just automa- tion, but also the data collection inherent in most technologies available today. Imagine the resident profiles that await you: They include lifestyle preferences, amenity usage and preference, architec- tural needs and desires, and many, many other facets of every individual tenant,
by Linda Liberatore
know the value of automation. You may have already elected to automate tenant screenings, evaluation of potential leads on new deals, or even your entire prop- erty management process. If you have not, I recommend it so you can finally get some sleep! You might be expecting me to tell you it’s time to replace your receptionist, call screeners, or property managers and maintenance professionals with robots, or at least to get an automated calling system. Not necessarily. Even if you prefer to keep things personal (and human), you can still benefit from AI in your real estate business. There are many simple programs out there that will help you
tiple rental properties or are involved in multifamily real estate, you should be excited too. In fact, as soon as I read about the latest technological and elec- tronic evolutions showcased at CES, I could not help but start thinking about how I might use them to optimize and expand my real estate investing business and the associated profits. Here are three ways that you might not consider using AI in your real estate investing business:
ne of the most exciting events of the year (at least, if you are an
early adopter or a techie) is the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that takes place every January in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year, the event featured a variety of show-stoppers and head- line-grabbers, including self-driving cars, a vast array of robotics, and perhaps most appealing to real estate investors, a wide variety of smart-home appliances and gadgets along with countless busi- ness- and time-management tools. Sure, the last items on that list may not be quite as glamorous as those before them, but I think they’re quite exciting. If you, like me, manage mul-
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Linda Liberatore is the founder and CEO of Secure Pay One and a Think Realty Coach. She may be reached at lindal@securepay- one.com, and her coaching materials may be viewed online at https:/ thinkrealty.com/coaches.
1. AUTOMATE YOUR MUNDANE BUSINESS OPERATIONS
If you own more than one property of any size, then I suspect you already
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