Multifamily Tech Talk with 20for20

In this episode of Multifamily Tech Talk, Dom Beveridge and Jonathan Buckelew are joined by Minna Song, CEO and Sarab Bhasin, Senior Data Engineer with EliseAI to discuss the company’s evolution, the architecture behind its technology and the launch of Apollo, the new prompt-based property management interface.The panel explores:

• From leasing to the resident journey: EliseAI’s development from lead response into delinquency, resident communication and other property management workflows.
• One agent rather than many products: AI can work across functions that traditional software treats as separate categories, creating a more continuous experience.
• Apollo: EliseAI’s new embedded agent lets users request actions, retrieve insights and create reports through a single natural-language interface.
• Proactive intelligence: As AI gains access to more operating context, it can surface problems and opportunities without waiting for users to ask the right question.
• A different view of tech consolidation: The objective is not simply to reduce the number of vendors, but to reconsider which tasks people need to perform at all.
• Purpose-built AI and general LLMs: The panel contrasts frontier models with systems that contain property-specific context, operating rules and the ability to take action.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Jonathan Buckelew (Co-Host) is the co-founder of the CRE AI Studio, a resource for real estate owners and operators adopting AI. Learn more at: creaistudio.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

In this episode of Multifamily Tech Talk with 20for20, Dom Beveridge and Jon Buckelew are joined by Donald Davidoff and Jason Whittington of Real Estate Business Analytics (REBA) to explore what it means for an analytics platform to become AI-first.

The panel explores:

• How AI allows users to converse with their data, adding a new way to access insights, and where that belongs relative to dashboards and other established tools.

• How new capabilities increase the need for clean, governed and consistently defined data remains the foundation for trustworthy analysis.

• The role of the semantic model: Normalizing data from different systems ensures that users and AI agents work from the same business definitions.

• Where not to use AI: Rules and conventional statistics remain better suited to decisions that must be reproducible, defensible and consistent.

• Where multifamily operators should build their competitive advantage, and the role of trusted technology in an LLM-driven world.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Jonathan Buckelew (Co-Host) is the co-founder of the CRE AI Studio, a resource for real estate owners and operators adopting AI. Learn more at: creaistudio.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

In this episode of Multifamily Tech Talk, Dom Beveridge and Jonathan Bucklew are joined by AppFolio’s Matthew Baird, CTO and Teddy Ho, Director of Product, AI.

AppFolio was built long before generative AI, but began rethinking its platform soon after the arrival of ChatGPT. The resulting journey from a traditional system of record toward an AI-first platform is the subject of this episode.

The panel explores:

• The recent history of AppFolio’s technology, and its early response to generative AI and its decision to let users interact with property management software through natural language.
• How customers’ embrace of AppFolio’s natural language interface breaks down conventional feature boundaries in property management software, 
• How repeatable processes and operational knowledge can be encoded into workflows rather than remaining in spreadsheets, employees’ heads.
• How AppFolio combines the language model with property management context, permissions and rules governing how work should be performed, and how it incorporates external LLMs.
• What AppFolio learns from customers’ prompts and how it provides a clearer view of what customers expect the platform to do than conventional clickstream data.
• What’s coming next: How AI may raise expectations, reduce manual data assembly and change how we interact with software.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Jonathan Buckelew (Co-Host) is the co-founder of the CRE AI Studio, a resource for real estate owners and operators adopting AI. Learn more at: creaistudio.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

In this first episode of the new season of Multifamily Tech Talk, Dom Beveridge and Jonathan Buckelew are joined by two seasoned CTOs: Greg Carey of The RMR Group and Doug Pearce of Waterton to discuss how their organizations are adopting AI and what they are learning along the way.

The panel explores:

• Three levels of AI adoption: Personal productivity, workflow automation and proprietary platforms each offer different sources of value.
• How the biggest opportunity lies not in accelerating existing processes, but in redesigning them around the outcomes companies want to achieve.
• What AI automation has to do with centralization and automation
• How build-versus-buy decisions are changing as AI-generated code makes internal development more practical, while increasing the value of vendors with proprietary data, scale and genuine integration capabilities.
• A new “front door” for technology: Core systems will remain the trusted source of record, but AI may become the interface through which users direct work across multiple platforms.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Jonathan Buckelew (Co-Host) is the co-founder of the CRE AI Studio, a resource for real estate owners and operators adopting AI. Learn more at: creaistudio.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Maintenance improvement is often framed as a route to lower staffing costs. In this episode of Tech Talk with 20for20, a panel accompanying the release of The New Economics of Maintenance Improvements explores a much broader source of value: better operations, happier residents and stronger NOI.

Dom Beveridge is joined by Josh Gampp of UDR, Gregory Stobart of MG Properties and Sorin Michnea of SuiteSpot to discuss:

• The real sources of ROI in maintenance, and how time savings translate into faster turns, better service and stronger retention not necessarily direct labor savings.

• A single source of truth: Bringing maintenance, resident and operational data together gives teams the context to identify problems and make better decisions.

• Workflow-driven operations: Consistent playbooks improve planning and execution while preserving the flexibility required by different properties and markets.

• Communication built into the workflow: Automated updates keep residents informed and reduce the delays and administrative work caused by manual handoffs.

• KPIs as diagnostic tools: Metrics should reveal where workflows need attention, rather than becoming narrow targets that teams learn to manage around.

Download your FREE copy of the new 20for20 White Paper “The New Economics of Maintenance Improvement” here.

Special thanks to our sponsor for this research project, SuiteSpot.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

This bonus episode showcases six conversations from the 2026 edition of the 20for20 Annual Survey.

Each year, we invite six sponsors to contribute a new and important idea for the year ahead. The articles appear in the annual survey, and in this video, Dom interviews each leader to understand each perspective.

The six conversations are:

• Margette Hepfner, president of housing at Bilt challenges conventional multifamily thinking on loyalty and rewards, refocusing on the renter’s world, with the home at its center.

• Matthew Woods, CEO of Apartment List explains why multifamily leaders must think beyond single metrics like conversion rates in a world where AI is transforming leasing funnels.

• Donald Davidoff, CEO of Real Estate Business Analytics (REBA) explains what AI is adding to multifamily analytics and explains what companies must do to reap the benefits.

• Matt Baird, CEO of AppFolio explains how the AI-first mindset is not just automating operations, but enabling a new, outcome-driven focus on performance.

• Tim Ray, CEO of Verifast shares learnings from a busy few years in fraud prevention, focusing on some specific process and organizational changes that are strengthening screening.

You can read all of the viewpoints in this year’s 20for20 Annual Survey - download your free copy at: 20for20.com/annual-survey.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

This bonus episode is a presentation of brand new research on AI-driven sentiment analysis, which debuted at OPTECH 2025. The research uses resident perspectives on Wi-Fi to reveal new insights into what actually drives experience and renewal.

Dom Beveridge is joined by Kevin Donnelly, Executive Director and Chief Advocacy Officer at RETTC, and Arjun Kannan, Co-Founder of ResiDesk, to discuss the methodology, findings, and broader implications for

Download the research White Paper at: https://lp.20for20.com/25-wp-wifi-sentiment-analysis 

The presentation includes:

• How AI-driven conversation beats surveys: Adaptive, low-friction text conversations over time capture open-ended resident input at scale, without the rigidity and bias of surveys.

• Signal vs. noise: AI helps separate volume of complaints  from meaning and importance. What residents say is negative isn’t always what creates business risk.

• What residents care about + the renewal linkage: Reliability dominates (more than speed, features, or “value” pricing), and outages are the one issue that meaningfully correlates with churn/renewal risk.

• Regulation and “consumer choice”: Policy debates often fixate on provider count, while residents “choose” outcomes enabled by reliable connectivity.

• Broader lesson for multifamily research: Treat assumptions as hypotheses and let residents lead; this method can reframe amenity/CapEx decisions by revealing what actually matters in daily life.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

In this final episode in our season on fraud prevention, we explore the impact of another huge industry trend, centralization, on fraud prevention, as screening increasingly moves out of the leasing officeIn this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Marlee Murdock of Western Wealth Communities, Gardner Rees of Greystar, and Christi Weinstein of BH about how centralization changes accountability, decision-making, and compliance.

The conversation covers:

• Three different centralization journeys: an owner-operator, the industry’s largest operator, and an NMHC Top 10 owner/operator with a mix of owned and third-party properties, approached centralization in different ways.

• Centralization as a compliance discipline: Screening is one of several onsite activities that are moving into small groups of subject-matter experts, improving consistency while reducing training burden and policy drift.

• The benefits of removing conflicted decision-making, separating approval decisions from leasing incentives, limiting overrides driven by occupancy pressure and reducing insider risk.

• Operational readiness and cultural change, and how successful centralization depends on preparing teams for new workflows, redefining roles, and retraining staff to manage systems rather than perform manual underwriting.

• Why fraud is an organizational problem, reframing screening as a portfolio-level risk function, not a site-level task, aligning decisions with long-term asset performance.

• Lessons learned, and the need for continuous improvement: centralized fraud prevention is iterative—adjusting staffing, workflows, and controls as fraud patterns evolve and portfolios change.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification  by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Fraud detection has become more automated, but is there a case for more human intuition in the process? In this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Damon McCall, founder of ApproveShield, about how human judgment, conversation and case-level review can improve outcomes for both operators and onsite teams.

The conversation covers:

• The human role in screening: Bringing together identity, income and rental history, applying context and judgment to find edge cases that automated checks might miss.

• Centralized casework instead of onsite burden: How dedicated teams handling applications separates sales from screening and removes the onsite conflict of declining applicants.

• Detection of behavioural red flags: Can people spot patterns that algorithms might miss? Implausible income movement, repeated false identity-theft claims, inconsistent narratives—that often evade automated checks.

• Why friction is your friend: Keeping some manual steps by design helps, because a purely low-friction process creates blind spots and raises exposure to fraud

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification  by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

Fraud in multifamily has evolved from individual and opportunistic to a more coordinated and sophisticated enterprise. In this episode, Dom Beveridge speaks with Jess Tierney, chief integration officer at Verifast, James Stilwell, head of fraud forensics at Snappt and Maitri Johnson, senior vice president at TransUnion, about the mechanics of organized fraud, how it spreads, and what operators need to understand about the threat.

The conversation covers:

• Fraud rings, testers, and influencers: How organized groups test properties share techniques, and sell full “rental packages.” Some even create shell management companies to probe fraud systems. Social channels accelerate the spread.

• Inception fraud and synthetic identities: How fraudsters build real credit profiles from fabricated identities, using child, deceased, inmate and CPN-based SSNs.

• Insider risk and incentives: Overrides driven by occupancy pressure or commissions remain a material vulnerability. Centralized workflows reduce the surface area for insider manipulation.

• Signals in the data: Including cross-market patterns, late-night applications, single-document submissions, mismatched device data, repeated use of lightweight payroll tools, or multiple applicants linked to the same fraud ring.

Sponsors for this episode:

Western Reporting, resident screening and income verification  by Inhabit

EliseAI, AI-driven automation that helps streamline communications and improve operational efficiency.

To get access to the latest 20for20 articles, papers and news about forthcoming events, subscribe to our blog at 20for20.com.

Connect with Dom Beveridge (Principal, 20for20) via LinkedIn, or email to [email protected].

Our theme, “Beautiful Geometry” by Phish Funk is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.