How Kittle Property Group Improved Leasing Performance on Less Ad Spend with EliseAI

Kittle Property Group is a national leader in multifamily housing with deep roots dating back to 1948. As a successor to companies with over 60 years of experience in multifamily home development and management, Kittle has built a comprehensive portfolio spanning 18 states across the Midwest and Gulf Region. Today, the company manages approximately 18,000 apartment homes across 170 properties in 20 states, representing investments totaling more than $3.5 billion, with a focus on both market rate and affordable communities.

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Like many other operators in a post-COVID world, Kittle Property Group identified slow response times to inquiries and poor lead nurturing as two areas that needed improvement.

As consumer habits shifted toward instant, eCommerce-style service, Chris Fields, Senior Director of Marketing and Corporate Communication at Kittle Property Group, realized their leasing workflow was stuck in a slower, manual era. Using his experience in eCommerce and PPC advertising expertise, Chris and the Kittle team set out to improve their lead management approach without overburdening onsite staff. They identified three major pain points that needed to be resolved:

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• eCommerce-Level Expectations, Multifamily Realities: Prospects waited hours, or days, for follow-up, limiting conversion rates and forcing Kittle to spend more on lead acquisitions.
  
  
• Always-on demand, limited staff bandwidth. Forty-one percent of inquiries arrived after-hours, stretching leasing teams thin and forcing trade-offs between managing new leads and supporting existing residents.
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• ‍Inefficient Delinquency Outreach: Manual follow-ups drained valuable staff time and weren't achieving Kittle's targeted collection rates.

After vetting multiple vendors, Chris and the Kittle team chose EliseAI for its proven automation depth, co-development culture, and ability to act as an “always-on” leasing engine. The results of the partnership have been incredibly positive. LeasingAI  has served as a 24/7 leasing-focused concierge, handling 91% of leasing messages, cutting lead-to-lease timelines by 65% and lifting tour-to-lease conversion rates up 15%. This increase in lead capture rates has allowed Kittle Property Group to slash their ILS spend, shifting budget to higher-ROI PPC campaigns and squeezing more leases from the same marketing dollars.

Having the ResidentAI solution in place has also helped Kittle Property Group drive improved collections performance, helping to recover $241K in 30 day+ bad debt while saving 27 staff-hours per community per month through persistent but polite outreach and payment reminders. EliseAI also offered staffing resilience for Kittle Property Group. When a property’s sole leasing agent quit, EliseAI absorbed the workload and that community posted the pilot’s second-best conversion metrics.

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Small-group and one-on-one trainings removed the fear of “dumb” questions, accelerating adoption, while hard performance data won executive sponsorship for a broader rollout. Today, Kittle Property Group is working to help co-develop new EliseAI features, such as affordable-housing lead qualification and ad-spend optimization, shaping the next generation of AI-powered property management through their insights.

By pairing EliseAI’s round-the-clock automation with a disciplined, data-first marketing strategy, Kittle Property Group has improved prospect conversion rates, accelerated leasing velocity, and reduced bad-debt liability, all without adding headcount. Combining new, innovative technology with strategic marketing budgeting has resulted in better than ever leasing performance at lower than ever costs. Kittle Property Group is continuing to scale their partnership with EliseAI across their portfolio, illustrating how progressive operators can blend human expertise with AI to deliver superior customers experiences while improving NOI.

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Read the original deep dive into Kittle Property Group's AI success story here.