RETCON Special Report: Tech Goes on Trial
Panelists stressed that any successful technology solution should make both residents' and employees' lives easier.
On the second day of RETCON 2025, owners, operators and property managers of multifamily portfolios of all shapes and sizes dove into their strategies for choosing, using and optimizing their technology solutions in an increasingly saturated technological landscape.
Panelists at the conference, hosted in Las Vegas, varied considerably in their approaches to the tech stack. However, a near universal point of agreement was that the most worthwhile solutions are those that make both renters’ lives easier while making employees more productive.
Be scarce, but present
In a market where renters by necessity are becoming the norm, the last thing that property owners and managers need to deal with are obstacles to renters’ satisfaction, alongside their own ability to effectively manage their properties.
Here, a successful implementation of technology is one that makes experiences, be it anything from connecting to Wi-Fi, filing work orders to paying rent, “seamless and frictionless,” according to Rukevbe Esi, chief digital officer of AvalonBay Communities. In his mind, the less that a renter has to interact with property managers or IT support, the better.
“These are things that the resident feels, and they play the biggest role in whether they decide to renew or not,” Esi said at a panel discussion titled Boosting Retention: Enhancing & Measuring Resident Experience to Increase Occupancy.
Bolstering lease renewals should be a top priority for stakeholders, one that’s a cut above lead conversions. “It costs us more to get a new renter in a property than it does to retain one,” detailed Lela Cerjakovic, JLL’s managing director of multifamily property management. Rather than identifying what works in terms of keeping renters happy, Cerjakovic advises stakeholders to take more stock of what doesn’t.
“It’s (about) understanding where tech might fail, and having a process to support that failure,” she said. JLL’s approach to optimizing this portion of net operating income is made easier by JLL Spark, an in-house venture capital arm that invests in proptech startups.
When a bottleneck pops up, however, tech is and should be an assistant to the on-site team, rather than an outright replacement for their services. Though the interactions should ideally be few and far between, it always helps to have a face for the name.
“The touchpoint should always stem from a hospitality perspective,” Cerjakovic said. “What people don’t expect is a call from a property manager checking in.”
Feedback loops
Equally important to getting positive feedback from renters is an ability to measure it and turn it into actionable insights. Internal and external surveys through different third-party providers are an operator’s best friend.
Polls conducted following move-ins and midway through a residents’ lease are a good frequency to adequately gauge resident satisfaction, but a similar modus operandi can be applied to employees, according to Esi. And they don’t necessarily need to be surveys, either. Property management or information technology teams can send videos of a software or hardware’s use to a product management team, which can more quickly find solutions.
READ ALSO: 5 Must-Attend Events for Multifamily Marketers in 2025
“To the extent that we can improve the experience that associates have, we can improve their retention, which can improve resident retention,” Cerjakovic agreed.
But the act of improving resident retention is a case-by-case basis. As a general rule of thumb, the more refined and use-case specific that a tech stack is, the better. This idea even extends to the type of internet provider that a renter chooses.
“The future is one of hyper personalization, and it speaks to both automated technology and physical interactions,” Esi said.
Equipping for success
A happy team will always be one that is equipped with the right technology. For starters, an in-depth training process with field specific specialists can make all the difference when it comes to ensuring that a given solution is used properly.
“I love it when vendors offer training to our teams that will be consistent across times rather than just the roll-out,” said Kevin Owens, RKW Residential’s new president of property management.
This process also allows for some pain points to be addressed before a technology is widely implemented across a property or portfolio.
“Our marketing teams and IT teams will use this every single day, and all of them will have a perspective on some of the challenges that may come with implementation,” said Joe Krumrey, chief operating officer of property management at CWS Capital Partners.
Consequently, the best method for gauging the efficacy of any piece technology is often a simple meeting or phone call with a regional manager, who are required to be on-site three to four days a week at Krumrey’s firm. Consequently, they are often the first involved with any test pilot of new technology. “They’re the interface between what is happening on site and what is happening at the VP level,” Krumrey said.
But when a piece of technology does not work, Krumrey prefers to look inward at how a team operates, rather than a specific flaw with the tech solution itself.
“If something is not going right, our first instinct will be to look in the mirror,” he said.
Centralization: pros and cons
One area where the lives of employees can be made easier is in the act of consolidating or centralizing their operations under one office. Some are all-in on the practice, compressing administrative tasks such as lease administration under singular offices.
The best candidates for these unified roles are experienced property managers, according to Jackie Ware, CEO of Pegasus Residential.
“They are paid well, and now they are overseeing five to six properties in a centralized role,” Ware said.
Jeff Krohn, executive vice president of client strategy at Avenue5 Residential, said that his team is a bit skeptical. Some of this hesitance to adopt a centralized model comes from the diverse nature of tech stacks at properties operated by the same firm.
“The technology has not yet caught up,” Krohn said. “We are not system agnostic, and in order to truly centralize you have to switch out software providers, which creates its own challenges with third parties.”
For most operators looking to adopt a centralized operations model, a balance between the two is the best approach. For their part, Ware’s firm “started with a small beta, so we could get the data in place.”
Cognizant of Krohn’s concerns, Ware believes that actively showing the teams and operators what can be accomplished will get them on board. “It’s a matter of renting 20 apartments a week versus 10 a week,” he said. “Once you start, you’ll be addicted. We have a manager turnover from time to time, but I have a SEAL Team Six of people that are on all my sites and getting the maintenance support.”
