OPTECH Special Report: Multifamily Continues Embrace of New Tech
Among other highlights, a former industry foe was welcomed as an ally.
As the OPTECH conference kicks off in Las Vegas this week, attendees might notice that the event has a new host: the Real Estate Technology and Transformation Center, or RETTC.
The National Multifamily Housing Council, which ran previous OPTECH meetings and is still playing a role this year, launched RETTC last year as a source of advocacy for real estate technology, and passed off hosting duties to the new entity for this year’s event.
At OPTECH’s opening session, Kevin Donnelly, RETTC’s executive director and chief advocacy officer, led a panel of the organization’s leadership to reflect on RETTC’s first year and the outlook for real estate technology.
“The people in this room saw that the real estate tech industry can’t operate in a vacuum,” Donnelly said in his opening remarks. “It has to work in the real world, with real policy pressure and opportunity for progress.”
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Rick Haughey, senior advisor at RETTC, described the differences between this year’s OPTECH and the first conference he attended back in 2012 as evidence of growth in the industry’s attitude toward technology.
In 2012, for example, Haughey said the top issues at the conference were bed bugs and cellphone policies–a far cry from the high stakes discussions around AI development, centralization and policy issues taking place today.
A former foe makes an appearance
As even further evidence of the industry’s embrace of technology, the first day’s keynote speaker was Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Airbnb, a product that the industry was hesitant to accept when it first hit the market.
In the keynote address, Blecharczyk spoke about Airbnb’s founding and the company’s friendly apartments initiative, which launched three years ago in partnership with multifamily operators across the U.S. The program gives owners more involvement in the listing of units on the website and allows them to earn a share of revenue gained.
Through collaboration, Airbnb and its multifamily partners built a platform that aims to be a win-win for both the company and owner-operators, as the initiative enables both property managers and residents to earn additional revenue. RETTC speakers noted that this type of collaboration is crucial to helping multifamily improve through technology.
Robots: the next frontier
Just when the industry was beginning to wrap its head around how AI software can upend workflows, here come the robots.
OPTECH attendees can visit a robot “petting zoo,” where they can go hands-on with the latest advancements in robotics that can complete tasks ranging from cleaning to security surveillance.
In a panel discussion on the rapidly advancing technology, Whitney Kidd, senior vice president of innovation and technology at Preiss, said that the time is now for property managers to begin thinking about how to integrate future robots in their buildings.
“It is not just, ‘Are we going to be utilizing robotics?’” Kidd said, “It is, ‘Are residents, too?’”
Kidd pointed to the development of humanoid robots that aim to complete household tasks. To make a property robot-friendly, she added, the key is to implement smart home technology now like electronic locks and managed Wi-Fi.
“What smart home means to us is mobile access, and that’s not just the front door,” Kidd said. “It’s the entire community, everything from the gate to the fitness center. The access experience should all be cohesive.”
