The conventional multifamily operating model is a straight line, predictable and scalable. As unit counts go up, staffing requirements go up in a linear fashion. This model hasn’t been challenged to date because there aren’t many multifamily operators who would argue that the same amount of full-time employees that run 1000 units could suddenly take on 2000. But what if they could? What would it mean for the multifamily industry if we uncouple the need to grow headcount from portfolio growth?
AI breaks the linear relationship between unit count and headcount, injecting new efficiency gains and automating the tedious manual work that has traditionally required teams to scale commensurately with their portfolios. Crucially, this automation-focus is about more than just improving margins—it’s about improving the onsite experience, improving the prospect journey, and improving conversion rates for both new leases and renewals. With AI automating as much as 90% of the repeatable, transactional communications that currently eat up a majority of an onsite team member’s day, what new approaches to staffing could we unlock?
But first, let’s look at the shortcomings of the existing staffing model.
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The Staffing Status Quo Is Broken
Between historic inflation, rising labor costs, and sky-high onsite turnover rates, the historic staffing ratios operators have opted for are under attack. Of all the successful AI-powered outcomes for operators we’ve showcased on our site, 95% of these stories start with the same pain point: difficulty hiring and retaining top talent. We’ve covered the factors that have driven onsite turnover rates towards 35% before, but one key takeaway is that so much of the frustration of onsite team members is driven by elevated customer expectations like 24/7 support, self-serve workflows, and digital-first experiences.
The pressure on existing staffing ratios doesn’t stop at changing consumer behaviors. Elevated owner and onsite team expectations factor in as well. Owners are expecting their fee managers to do more with less in a tight economic climate, and onsite team members are looking for more out of their work than simply responding to the same inquiries 50 times a day. With so much of the property manager’s day taken up by transactional communications, meaningful social interactions with residents and prospects are fewer and farther between than they were 10 or 20 years ago.
Traditional scaling processes also break down per-employee efficiency over time. As roles overlap when new team members join, per-employee efficiency decreases due to longer lag times between task handoffs, more internal meetings filling the calendar, and communication gaps. So while you may be able to run 1,000 units across 10 communities with 10 good team members, the odds that you can run 2,000 units across 20 communities with 20 team members is unlikely due to the hidden cost of role overlap and overtime pay.
Staffing Ratios, Reinvented: AI as the Force Multiplier
While AI can’t automate all the unique and strategic tasks that your human staff handles today, it can automate all the transactional communications that prevent you from efficiently scaling your unit count independent of headcount growth. Think of AI as a force multiplier rather than a replacement, allowing your team members to punch above their weight and serve a larger amount of units than they were able to before by taking repetitive but necessary tasks off their plate. Plus, AI provides 24/7 availability without breaks or sick days, helping to reduce onsite burnout by handling after-hours communications and buffering your agents from upset residents.
With AI automating at least 80% of the tedious manual tasks property management teams are responsible for today, operators are no longer required to maintain traditional staffing ratios and scale headcount commensurately with portfolio growth. AI injects these new efficiencies into two primary focus areas: lead management and resident services.
Breaking Down Core Automation Areas
AI improves operational efficiency in several key streams, automating tedious work and giving teams time back to make a measurable impact on the resident experience.
Lead Management
With AI instantly responding to messages from leads around the clock and handling follow-up across phone, email, webchat, and text, what was once a painfully manual process for leasing agents is now largely automated. Let’s do some napkin math: today, a leasing agent is responsible for 2 communities and fields 100 messages a day, scheduling one tour per community per day. What if they only had to field 20 messages, with 80 being automated by AI, every day, but still had the same amount of working hours? They could either handle more tours or more communities in the time they get back, allowing them to scale their impact from 2 communities to 5 or more.
Resident Services
By providing 24/7 support for routine inquiries, AI both reduces onsite burnout and allows for the formation of dedicated resident account specialists who are able to serve more communities efficiently. Instead of needing one ACM per community, and in turn having to hire every time your portfolio expands, AI automating tasks like rent collection and work order intake mean you can simply add this new community to an existing centralized resident account specialist’s plate. This extends to renewal management as well, increasing the capacity of your resident experience focused team members.
Real Results: Operators Scaling Unit Count without Scaling Headcount
The uncoupling of headcount and unit growth isn’t just a theory or an idea. At EliseAI, we see real-life examples of operators scaling their portfolios without needing to add the headcount traditionally associated with growth every single day. Two customer success stories demonstrate the uncoupling of unit count and headcount in action: Flatz Living and MG Properties. At first glance these operators don’t look like they belong in the same sentence together—Flatz owns and operates 1,100 units whereas MG has closer to 30,000, and Flatz maintains a local, Michigan based portfolio while MG is nationwide. But when you look closer at how they’ve used AI to enable leaner staffing models, you’ll find a lot in common between these two owner/operators.
Flatz Living: AI Enables Sustainable Staff-to-Unit Ratios
For Flatz Living, being tech-enabled and using AI to support a 1-to-100 staffing ratio has helped them control costs as they scale. As a relatively young organization, they’ve had to lean into all the competitive differentiators they can to ensure occupancy growth and strong financial performance. Since adopting the EliseAI platform the Flatz Living team has managed to decrease FTE headcount from 45 to 35 through the elimination of redundancy and overlapping roles, while simultaneously capturing more leads through round-the-clock automated replies.
Flatz Living is a great example of a boutique operator doing more with less, being quick to embrace technology and driving positive outcomes for investors and residents alike.
MG Properties: AI Enables a Scalable Centralized Team
AI is enabling MG Properties to efficiently scale by serving as the backbone of their centralized teams, recognizing that centralization was the most cost-effective way for them to scale their operations as their portfolio continued to swell. Today, force-multiplying AI technology is in place to help a team of 10 centralized specialists handle the work that was previously done by 54 dedicated ACMs. This was bigger than simply a cost-cutting initiative for MG Properties, it represents a wholesale change in how they deliver incredible experiences at scale.
By using AI to empower their centralized team, MG Properties has broken the traditional linear headcount scaling approach and is able to more efficiently support the rest of their onsite teams.
Breaking the Headcount to Unit Count Ratio with AI
Today, over 500 operators around the country are using EliseAI products to scale their unit count beyond what traditional staffing ratios would require. MG Properties and Flatz Living are just two of the visionary owner/operators taking the plunge and delivering better outcomes with AI. Interested in learning more about implementing AI at your organization? Get in touch with us today.