Published on January 22nd, 2025
By Megan Eales Monroe
Want to explore new ways to elevate your property management game in 2025? On this episode of The Top Floor, you’ll hear how five industry leaders are doing just that by positioning their organizations for greater success amid ongoing market shifts, finding innovative ways to boost employee satisfaction and retention, and embracing the convergence of AI and real estate.
Through exclusive audio highlights and snippets from their live, on-stage discussions at FUTURE, AppFolio’s annual real estate conference, you’ll hear from:
- JC Castillo, CEO at Velo Residential
- Stephanie Anderson, Senior Director of Communication and Social Media at Grace Hill
- Lia Nichole Smith, Senior Vice President of Education and Research at ApartmentRatings.com and SatisFacts Research LLC
- Bob Pinnegar, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Apartment Association
- Kristi Fickert, VP of Enterprise Growth at Realync
For even more insights into what’s in store for property management in 2025 and additional FUTURE highlights, check out our full conference recap after you listen to this episode of The Top Floor.
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Episode Transcript
Megan Eales Monroe:
Welcome to The Top Floor, the real estate management podcast that’s dedicated to keeping you one step ahead of industry trends, with expert advice and actionable insights. I’m your host, Megan Eales Monroe from AppFolio. Together, we’ll dig deep with today’s property management leaders and industry change-makers to help you unlock new possibilities, transform your day-to-day operations, and grow your business. And, no matter the size or type of real estate portfolio you manage, we’ve got you covered here on The Top Floor.
In October 2024, FUTURE — AppFolio’s annual real estate conference — featured more than 90 industry speakers, 40 inspiring sessions, two mainstage keynotes, and one Boyz II Men concert.
Over the course of three days, those industry leaders, innovators, and experts came together to share their unique points of view, provide real-life advice and insights, and to discuss the latest property management technology, tools, and trends.
But, most importantly, FUTURE attendees had the opportunity to explore what’s in store for property management in 2025 and create their own strategic roadmap for navigating the year ahead.
If you missed out on the conference, well, you’re in luck. On this episode of The Top Floor, we’re recapping three of the top themes that were touched on during the conference sessions. Those three themes are:
- New ways to boost employee satisfaction and retention
- What prospects really look for when evaluating properties; and…
- The convergence of AI and real estate.
In addition to diving into those three themes heard at the conference, you’ll also hear directly from five industry experts who spoke at FUTURE, with audio snippets of their live sessions.
Now, let’s meet our five industry experts and hear their top tips for property management success in 2025.
The topic of attracting and retaining top talent isn’t new — or even exclusive to — real estate. But it is a near-constant challenge for real estate companies, especially when it comes to meeting the ever-evolving needs of a rapidly shifting and diverse workforce.
One solution that has gained significant traction and generated plenty of conversation over the last few years is centralization. The biggest hiring and retention benefit that centralization offers is allowing employees to really specialize in their role and play to their strengths. And, as JC Castillo, CEO at Velo Residential, explained in his session, that ability to specialize isn’t just key to keeping teams happy, it could be a make or break for property performance.
JC Castillo:
Okay, So, here’s what I know about this business, okay? The most important thing that’s gonna make or break any of these properties is the site staff. Plain and simple, every time that we’ve had a successful property, there has been amazing site staff. Every time we’ve had struggles, the site staff, we haven’t done enough for them as, uh, the leadership team.
So the problem today that I see, and the reason why centralization is important is — I’m not a big fan of centralization for the word of it being sexy, yeah? — centralization is really important because all of you, amazing people that are out there working every day at the properties, you guys are faced with a major decision. You’ve got a whole bunch of back office work that you’ve got no time to do, and you would prefer to be building relationships with your residents, showing your prospects, those, those beautiful units and keeping your properties full and keeping your residents happy. And also, very importantly, your clients, your owners are wanting to have a profitable business that makes it easy for them. And so centralization was really born out, out of the necessity for, in my opinion, of giving you more time to do the things that really create the relationships with your residents and drive, uh, performance at your properties and all of that back office stuff that you guys didn’t get into this business to do.
Let’s face it, you love talking to your residents, taking care of your residents, taking care of the prospects, but you can’t do it because all this back office work. So all that back office work, it is, it is our job as leaders and innovators and multifamily in this industry to take that back office work and think about it and figure out how can we centralize it? How can we take it off your plate? How can we have people come in that can help you guys to let you focus on what you do best? And all the rest of the stuff we take it off your plate. That’s really the name of the game of centralization and why I think it’s becoming a big thing in our industry.
And I think that one of the things that we, we tend to miss as, uh, as owners, which I am, and also as third, third party fee managers, which I also am, is that the, the true optimal performance of a property really comes down to how satisfied and happy your residents are. Because the most expensive thing that we have as operators is a dissatisfied customer because they move out, you gotta turn the unit, you’ve got marketing costs, you’ve got units sitting vacant, and you’ve also got, uh, extra load on your maintenance staff that they could otherwise be servicing your, your other residents.
And when they’re more likely to renew their lease, you are going to accelerate your profitability greatly. And so the key that we have to all focus on as owners and also as, as, as fee managers, is that we have to always go back to the experience. How can we make the experience better? And by the way, I also believe this to be true: Happy site staff make for happy residents. If you are not thinking every day as a leader at your company, how you can make your site staff’s lives better, you will automatically have less satisfied residents by default.
Um, the other thing I think about, you know, asking about leasing and, and how we think of it in the centralized world, I always try to simplify it back to, um, a simple sales function, right? A leasing agent is a sales person. And so if we wanna, uh, figure out what the things are that we can centralize, we simply have to, um, classify the sales person into an inside sales role and an outside sales role, that’s something that’s very common in a lot of other industries. The outside sales person is the person that is interacting with the client directly. They’re building the relationships.
That’s a very personal connection that you do not want to virtualize or centralize that has to be done in person. The inside sales person’s job is to give all of the back office support on the sales side to support the outside salesperson, to be out there with the prospect building that relationship. So what you’ve really, what you’ve done is you have allowed your outside salesperson or your, your leasing agent on site to be completely focused on building that relationship, understanding the problem, and getting that person to convert to becoming a tenant. And you’ve taken all that back office work that they will normally have to spend time doing, you’ve outsourced that to the inside sales person.
Um, I think that what excites me about the centralization play on the maintenance side is the concept of the Uberization, I would call it, of maintenance. It’s the, “Hey, instead of me having to have, you know, my three, uh, maintenance guys focused on, you know, anything under the sun,” I can start to, um, backfill certain tasks that may be highly specialized with people that can come in on an Uber style approach and maybe service ACS specifically if there’s something happening there.
And then I don’t have to have an AC specialist on my maintenance staff. Well that, that starts to free me up with a whole different, uh, amazing amount of things, which as Dom said perfectly, uh, proactive maintenance instead of reactive maintenance. Um, on the office staff side, I continue to believe that we will continue to go the way of centralizing back office work to the extent that we can continue to improve the ability of our site staff to interact more with the pro, with the prospects and the, the residents to, uh, to build that relationship and understand how that experience is going and make that experience better. I think the things that don’t have to do with the experience of the residents will absolutely continue to go, uh, and be pushed further with, uh, bots and, and with, with, uh, with humans, uh, in the virtual world. And I think that that certainly will go, but I don’t think we’re gonna get to a point where maintenance is centralized completely in terms of, um, you know, you just need people out there to go be at the property and, and turning a wrench.
Megan Eales Monroe:
As JC explained, centralization gives employees the opportunity to specialize in their role, get distractions off their plate, and really excel in their day-to-day positions. In addition, there’s also a chance that centralization can create potential for more flexible, hybrid, or remote property management positions, all of which have gained significant traction and interest since the pandemic.
In fact, the most recent AppFolio Property Manager Hiring and Retention Report revealed that 92% of property management professionals say that work-life balance is important, yet only 61% are satisfied with their current work-life balance.
Here’s Stephanie Anderson — Senior Director of Communication and Social Media at Grace Hill — with her insights into how shifting our approach from “the way things have always been done” to “this is how work can get done” can make a massive impact on your team’s happiness, productivity, and retention.
Stephanie Anderson:
You know, mindset is everything. And I think in our industry we’re a little bit slower to adapt than many other industries. And while that’s not always a horrible thing because it is good to sometimes be cautious and, uh, you know, mediate risk. It’s interesting though how the mindset really changes the game of do we try something new or do we always just do the same thing? ’cause it’s what we’ve always done. When I speak to a lot of people across the country, they will tell me their number one concern. With this changing the mindset really comes down to we’re a customer facing business. How are we supposed to manage homes 24 hours a day and not be physically there for our residents? Now, is that because we don’t have the budget to have technology in place to do it? Is it because it’s uncomfortable because change is, is uncomfortable?
Or is it just because it won’t work for us and I just know I have this gut feeling it won’t work. So that mindset there is something that you really have to address with the teams. And you know, interestingly enough, we have six generations in the work field right now. And that means that all six generations are motivated differently. They have different mindsets and they think about work in different ways. You know, when I compare how I think about work as a Millennial to, let’s say how my mom thinks about work as a Boomer, they are very, very different. Um, it’s not to say that they’re still not, um, equating to productivity and getting the work done, but the way we go about things are slightly different. And again, not a right or wrong scenario, but that one-size-fits all doesn’t apply here. So when you’re thinking about that mindset, to me it really has to be, um, getting in that uncomfortable zone and trying something new.
I will tell you a great starting point is in 2019, so pre-pandemic, uh, before the world went a little bit, um, different, you know, I have written a best practices for the National Apartment Association and it really detailed what you should be thinking about. You can actually access it if you’re a member of NAA for free on their website and download it. But it really breaks it down into some of the most simplistic matters. Um, you know, when you think about staffing and you think about your team members, the first thing you wanna do is figure out what is driving your employees, what is motivating them. You know, I, I already kind of mentioned that six generations are in the workspace right now. And, and some of them, you know, may have that, “I wanna work a nine to five.”
Others are like, “Nope, I don’t wanna come in until 11 and I can stay till seven.” And the beauty here is that that is allowing you to cater to your residents and some of their individual needs a little bit more. But when you think about that, look at your schedule and say, oh, we, everybody doesn’t need to be here the same hours of every day. We’ve done it like that because that’s how it’s always been done. But ultimately it’s not necessary. Um, and do you need to close your offices a day during the week? Do you need to be open every weekend? I I can’t answer all those questions for you ’cause there’s so much that goes into that thought process and strategy. But the key is to think about how can you rotate? How can you look at your flexible schedules? How can you allow your employees that are taking care of ailing parents or they, or parents themselves or they have other commitments outside of the workplace.
How do you allow that to happen but that you’re still getting the best of them? You know, what are your core business hours is really crucial. You know, look back at your data. When are you touring the most? When are your residents coming in the most, you know, try to find what that core, like three hours a day is where you’re like, someone has to be here because that is where we are making a difference with our residents the most. And then alter everything else around that. And then you’re gonna see your, your retention is going to increase significantly, your productivity is going to increase and ultimately your employees are gonna be happy. And that’s great for branding and just morale in general.
Megan Eales Monroe:
As JC and Stephanie discussed, happy teams are essential to retaining top talent and current residents.
But what about attracting and converting prospects? With the multifamily housing construction boom taking place, residents will have more options than ever before, which means it’s going to take a lot more to stand out in a crowded real estate marketplace.
Thankfully, Lia Nichole Smith, Senior Vice President of Education and Research at ApartmentRatings.com and SatisFacts Research LLC, was able to highlight exactly what it takes. Here are her insights on what property management companies need to make sure they’re covering in 2025, based on real resident research.
Lia Nichole Smith:
I think the biggest thing, and I love where Danielle started, um, talking about when there really is a lot of options for your renters and the playing field is pretty level product looks the same, prices, you know, aren’t really a big difference or a big change. How do you stand out? What are renters looking for? And in that, uh, comment that Danielle made, they’re looking for reasons to check you off the list, right? So what are some of those reasons that would make them move away from considering your community? What we’re finding is that renters are gravitating towards transparency. They need to be able to feel very confident that this decision is a good one for me. Um, and it’s not a good decision because the cheapest, or it’s the one that’s closest to my job, it’s the one that’s gonna offer me the most well-rounded experience.
And so when we look at some of our data, um, one of the things that we ask them, of all the stuff that you can find on the internet, what is most important to you? And there were about 18 options on this survey, and they were, had to give us a rating between one and five. The highest most important was transparency. I wanna know information beyond the mandatory advertised rent that was rated more important than things like your videos, photos, floor plans, pricing, general pricing, concessions, um, even reviews. So having that transparency upfront is already going to help keep your community in the conversation. And then when we’re looking at more things when it comes to transparency and trust, you can see that 73%, um, look to online ratings and reviews. We had 55% in terms of referrals. Um, I don’t know why the friends and family is no longer this fountain of information and wealth of like advice.
Maybe they’ve been burned before when they’ve asked, you know, their friends and family to recommend a restaurant. And I go to the restaurant, it sucks, you know? Or you know, you say, oh my God, you need to watch this movie. It was amazing. And it’s like, that’s two and a half hours of my life. I’ll never get back. You know? So I think the trust in friends and family, um, has actually started to take a bit of a dip. And then if you look at the apartment, uh, community’s website in terms of, you know, what’s in there, these are our marketing messages, right? We put the photos up, we put the copy up, we choose what we wanna show. And so when you’re looking at trust, you’re not finding a lot of trust. Renters don’t find a lot of trust because that’s a message that we manipulate and control.
And so they look to find, you know, who’s in my position, who is, you know, kind of the where I am in my life. Oh, it’s not my friends and family. It’s not the company website who put out this marketing message. It’s other renters like me. That’s why they’re looking for the stories from people that are in their, we call them tribe, you know, they’re, it, they’re part of my tribe. So, yeah. Um, I think you guys can keep giving friends and family’s recommendations, but just know every time it doesn’t work out, they’re not gonna come back to you. They’re not gonna be asking. But yeah, that’s where we are with, um, reviews being the most trustworthy sources for renters right now. And I think you can kind of see why that is.
And then 70%, uh, this was a question. We’ve been doing the survey since 2011. We’ve never asked this question before, but we started seeing a rise in people that really were filtering for negative reviews. So we asked renters, you know, did you actively filter for negative reviews during your search? 70% said, yeah, and here’s the thing with that 70%, they already know why they want to live at your communities. The negative reviews tell them why they shouldn’t. And so that negative reviews, let’s say someone is like, negative reviews are all about parking, parking sucks, parking’s horrible, but I don’t have a car. That’s not really a negative for me. So it’s starting to get us as an industry to rethink, um, negative reviews.
And then responding. I’ll keep this brief, but it makes a big difference when you respond. Um, what we’re starting to find in the past, it was like, we just want a response. Now. What renters are looking for is the quality of the response. So those templates, those, you know, auto generated responses actually do more harm than good, because again, if I’m looking for a place that I can trust is gonna offer me a great living experience, that’s, you know, they haven’t met you yet. And so all they know about your customer service is how you respond to your residents. Some interesting stuff.
Yeah, I think with tech, um, we’re almost in sort of like a catch 22, right? We’ve gotta have tech, we can’t operate our portfolios without it. We can’t really fully service our residents without it. However, where’s the breaking point for your residents? When is too much tech, too much tech? You know? Or are we using the tech that really does enhance their lives? So sometimes you hear things, you see things, there’s trends. You read an article might go to a conference and you’re like, oh, we gotta get that. We gotta get that asap. And your residents are like completely ignoring it. You know, like it’s not something that was important to them. So tech for tech’s sake may not necessarily help but technology. When you combine it with that personal service, that really thoughtful approach, right? Is what’s going to help you with, um, your overall resident satisfaction.
This next slide, this is a stat when we’re we ask on our online renter study, how important is it for you that the community or management company really takes technology seriously? I only gave you the last five years or the last five cycles of the, um, study, but you can see it’s always been important. 2021, we were just coming out 2020, so no surprise there that we saw a spike in the importance of technology because you had renters who couldn’t just walk into the office and just place their service requests face to face or just tell you what’s going on. But you see how that numbers dropped back down in just two years. I think what we’re seeing is that for some renters, it’s like enough, like I don’t want a 100% tech based experience. I still need people, I still need, you know, to have a cup of coffee with someone or see someone walking in the office.
If it’s 100% tech, they can’t see their dollars at work. And when residents can’t see their dollars at work, they start to question where are those dollars going? Does that make sense? So they have to have a level of, um, you know, tangible proof that the company, the community is being run by actual people. So we’re never gonna get away from, you know, having to have, um, a staff on site service team member.
Megan Eales Monroe:
For even more insights into what prospects want and expect, check out the 2024 AppFolio Property Manager Renter Preferences Report, available now at appfolio.com/renterpreferences. We’ll also make sure to include a link in the show notes.
To round out our conversations today, let’s talk about the third — and possibly most prevalent — theme from AppFolio’s FUTURE conference: Artificial Intelligence.
AI is now just part of our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. And for real estate management, AI is already transforming workflows, boosting team productivity, and supporting resident experiences today.
Yet, even with incredibly powerful and custom-built property management AI solutions available today, not all teams and businesses have fully embraced AI. But as Bob Pinnegar — President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Apartment Association — explains, AI is more than just a piece of technology the industry can use — it’s the future of property management.
Bob Pinnegar:
AI is, um, has been well with everything. AI can help the residents in many ways. It can help with efficiencies on the operations side. I’ve been in the industry long enough to hear a lot of companies come and say, we’re gonna save you staff, and with this software update or this new thing, it’s gonna change things and you’re gonna save on full-time employees.
I don’t know that it’s gonna do that because I don’t know that anything, uh, has in the past. But I think it will allow your people to focus on the things that they need to do. And we’re trying to talk with legislators about that. Um, I think one of the challenges that people in the audience need to consider as you’re looking at these new technologies is 10 years ago there were no general counsels and there were no risk manager managers, even in the largest companies. And I think that portfolios of all sizes, whether you have half a dozen single family homes, or whether you have hundreds of thousands of units, is you need to look at new technologies you’re using and really look at them objectively and say, how does this work? Does…what is this impact of this with regards to fair housing? ’cause if you’re in California or other parts of the country, disparate impact is a real part of your world and your environment more so than other parts of the country.
From the standpoint of, um, of, of antitrust, there’s some things that you need to, to just understand and be aware of. And so the more you can work with your existing providers, you have to get information at conferences like this to join IREM, to join NAA, to join whatever group out there that gets you the information you need and creates an environment where you can network to gather information. That’s how you’re going to adapt through AI and the trends over the next five years. Because we’re gonna be different in five years than we are today, whether we know it or not. Um, in June, we had our, our, our big conference, and we had meetings going on. And I had a past chair when AI was discussed and said, that’s for the big guys. That’s never gonna impact me. And I had to pull ’em aside and explain to him how it was already impacting them. He just didn’t know it.
The challenge is, this is not an industry that has ever embraced change in a meaningful way. And so I, you know, the, the, the going thing I used to say is, if you love change, and you were very entrepreneurial, you went into the tech industry, um, you didn’t necessarily go into real estate. Real estate’s the same. I remember when I first started with the association and we had the ups and downs of cycles and the people who said, “I’m gonna take it easy for a while and play a little golf, and then I’ll get back in the market at a point in time in the future when it makes sense.” Um, they never got back in the market. So those people I never saw again.
Those that, um, that adapted to change, that began to incrementally change, to try to work forward. Those are the ones that were thriving. Um, and you know, it wasn’t too many years ago that offices had a lot of manual processes that were going on. And the technology changes that have been able to create efficiencies in office, in the offices and background operations is, is very, is very real.
Megan Eales Monroe:
When it comes to leveraging AI, property management companies and teams are always going to get the most out of solutions that are tailored for real estate management’s unique needs and specific use cases. But even the most basic and general generative AI tools can still offer massive benefits for property management teams, as long as they are used properly and effectively. Here’s Kristi Fickert — VP of Enterprise Growth at Realync — to explain how.
Kristi Fickert:
So you have the amazing AI that AppFolio has been talking about that they’ve got built into their products this week. I have great AI built into the products that I work with, but this is generative AI that you can use every day that you don’t need to buy another tool or service.
Now today we’re gonna talk about Chat GPT, but a lot of these principles, y’all can sub these in for any other platform that you’re using. So there’s Perplexity, uh, Bard, there are a lot of different platforms coming out. And so these things, you don’t have to strictly use these for chat GPT, but that’s what I’m going to reference today. So a few things to know in case you didn’t already.
One is security. These platforms are not always secure. So when you are asking questions to your GPT when you’re loading information in there, you wanna remove all identifying information, remove your company information, remove the name of your partners that you’re working with, remove any, um, financial data or identifying factors. But we also work in multi-family, so we have to abide by fair housing laws. Obviously, if it gives you an answer, double check that and make sure that that is in line with what your local zoning and laws are when it comes to fair housing. And lastly, it can hallucinate. So it does give good information. But it is still learning and it’s going to get better as it runs.
Um, but you also, when you are asking a chat GPT or a generative AI platform to do something, the prompt and the information that you give it is what’s going to give you a better response. Basically, it’s like anything else we do: BS in, BS out. So your prompts, when you’re giving it a prompt and telling it what to do, give it as much detail as you can.
So for example, give it the background info when I’m asking it to do something for me for work, I’ll say act like you are a VP of marketing for a technology company. So I tell it the role that I want it to play, and then I’m gonna tell it what exactly do I want it to spit out to me? I don’t want you to just give me an answer, but for example, with your conference notes, if you’re taking notes and you want it to write a summary, instead of asking it to just write a summary for you of everything you learned at the AppFolio FUTURE Conference, you want it to write a summary and you want it to categorize it by topic and you want it to put it into a format that you can share with your boss.
And we’re gonna be really specific there. As far as your prompt frameworks, you’re going to tell your chat GPT the role, context, action and format of what you want it to do. So we’ve, given I’m taking that RCAF framework, and now I’m acting like a couple of different roles in our industry. Some of you might hold these roles in the industry, and I’m giving examples of what you could potentially ask it to do. If you’re in marketing, you could tell it that you are looking for digital marketing trends in 2024. What were the biggest trends this year and what you want it to do? Well, we want it to describe the latest trends, but we want it to be, um, we want it to tell us the impact that they made this year and then the format. We want it to be concise and formative and, um, for it to, it’s gonna be something that we put into an annual report that we’re writing.
But then you can see if you’re, you’re, if you’re on the maintenance team, you know, maybe you wanna write a plan for how to manage warranties on your property. Maybe you have new builds or new construction. And so you’re trying to manage all of those warranties that come with it and explaining how do you manage a, a program like this. And then we wanted this to actually be a guide that we can share with other new hires or other maintenance people throughout the company. So you can use, again, these different frameworks, but this is a good cheat sheet to keep on your desk or to keep just in a file somewhere. So when you’re starting to write your prompts, if you’re adding the this information and thinking of it this way, you’ll get much better results.
Megan Eales Monroe:
The top trends we covered and experts we heard from on today’s episode are just a small portion of what was covered at 2024’s FUTURE conference. To learn more about the speakers and topics covered — or to learn how you can join us in 2025 — visit futureconference.com.
We’d like to say thank you to all FUTURE conference speakers and attendees. And we’d also like to give an extra special thank you to the industry experts who were featured on today’s episode.
Be sure to check out the show notes for even more resources and expert insights to help you see success in 2025 and beyond.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Top Floor, brought to you by AppFolio. If you enjoyed the conversation, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen to this podcast — we’d love to hear your feedback. Also, make sure you’re subscribed to The Top Floor podcast to get notified as soon as our next episode goes live. Until then, we’ll continue the conversation around all things real estate and association management on the Industry Insights section of our website: appfolio.com/industry-insights. We’ll see you there.
