Flatz Living Implements a Leaner Management Model with AI

Flatz Living is the in-house management arm of Simtob Management & Investment (SMI). Launched in 2020 with one 11-unit property, it now oversees more than 1,100 Class B and C apartments in Lansing and Kalamazoo, Michigan. The team pairs strategic renovations with tech-forward processes to fulfill its promise of clean, safe, affordable housing, while operating as leanly as possible.

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Before turning to EliseAI, Flatz Living’s rapid portfolio growth began to expose several operational bottlenecks, issues that threatened both resident satisfaction and the company’s goal of maintaining a lean, 1-to-100 staffing model. The team distilled these challenges into four core pain points:

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• Slow After-Hours Response Time: Prospects and residents expected instant answers, yet agents worked traditional 9-to-5 shifts, stretching lead-to-lease timelines and lowering resident satisfaction.
  
  
• Headcount Pressure: Founder Bradley Simtob targeted a 1 FTE-per-100-unit ratio, but a high volume of routine tasks, like scheduling tours, chasing delinquent rent, sending follow-ups, resulting in staffing ratios closer to 1 FTE-per-70 units. Payroll growth threatened NOI just as insurance and interest costs continued to rise.
  
  
• Need for Increased Differentiation: Competing communities offered similar rents and finishes, resulting in whoever replied first typically won the lease. Flatz Living needed a service edge without adding additional staffing costs.
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• Fragmented Tech Stack: Separate tools for email, phones, and payment reminders forced staff to bounce between dashboards, causing friciton in the onsite experience.
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Fortunately, Flatz Living found EliseAI to enable their streamlined management model with AI and automation.

Simtob’s own personal leasing experience at a community in the area, where a hyper-responsive leasing agent turned out to be EliseAI, solidified his conviction that AI could be a powerful lever in creating a more efficient operating model. He chose EliseAI for its comprehensive automation suite, fast rollout timeline, and clear ROI benchmarks from hundreds of other operators.

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Within six months of deployment, EliseAI's products quickly demonstrated value for Flatz Living. LeasingAI handled over 90k+ messages and 4.4k calls autonomously, with sub-five-minute replies. Move-ins per specialist more than doubled (7 → 15+) while headcount held steady.

The ResidentAI product automated delinquency outreach, in turn lowering bad-debt exposure by 230 bps and generating ~$250,000 in annualized bad debt savings. The AI also negotiated 300+ renewals in an average of four days, giving staff 74 days of runway to fill non-renewals.

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Today, AI-Guided Tours are the norm at Flatz Living's communities, allowing prospects to inquire, tour, and apply on the same day. This quick turnaround time for potential residents has been a key competitive differentiatior, and helped Flatz Living stand out from other, less tech-enabled operators in the area.
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Overall, the portfolio now records a 4–5x return on its AI investment, driving higher occupancy rates, and better employee satisfaction levels.

By automating the highest-volume, lowest-value tasks across the prospect-to-resident journey, EliseAI has turned responsiveness into Flatz Living’s competitive moat and preserved lean staffing even as the portfolio expands. Today, Flatz Living regularly joins EliseAI beta programs, gaining early access to innovations such as voice-based maintenance triage and proactive renewal forecasting. The feedback loop helps EliseAI sharpen new features while giving Flatz an ongoing first-mover advantage.

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The EliseAI and Flatz Living partnership shows how midsized owners can protect NOI and elevate resident experience simultaneously—proof that smart automation is not just a means for cost control, but a catalyst for growth and competitive differentiation.

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Read the original deep-dive into the Flatz Living story here.