Optimizing Property Management with Leasing Automation

Yolanda Muchnik:
Today we’re chatting with Barak Shamir, Head of Sales and Customer Success at Showdigs, an AI backed leasing automation platform for your entire rental funnel. I’m excited to dig into AI and how it’s being used to tackle significant issues property management companies are facing today. Barak, welcome to the show.

Barak Shamir:
Thank you, Yolanda. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Charles.

Charles Buggs:
Thanks for coming, man. We’re happy to talk to you.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Barak, can you give us a quick overview of your role at Showdigs and what sparked your interest in joining the team? If I’m not mistaken, you’re relatively new to this industry, is that correct?

Barak Shamir:
I’m new to the industry. I’m completely new. I joined Showdigs about five months ago. I’m not new to tech. I am new to proptech, as we call it. What sparked my interest? A lot of it. It was a long conversation. Kobi, the founder of Showdigs, and me, we had a lot of conversation around this. The idea of what Showdigs does and the disruption it does. A lot of tools come into the market and they stream into it.

It’s kind of natural. There aren’t a lot of tools that bring in something completely new and have the chance to impact it in a very different way and change behaviors. And that, to me, was very attractive. I previously worked at a series B startup. What that tells you, and this is a seed stage startup. It’s a different environment. It’s a lot more hands on. It’s a lot more building a team from scratch.

I had four teams. I had 30 people that I was managing before, and now I have two people, and I do a lot of the groundwork myself, and I kind of missed that. So that was part of the decision, part of the appeal. Again, the fact that I truly believe that Showdigs is disrupting and giving huge benefits to our customers and our future customers. That was the appeal.

Yolanda Muchnik:
That’s awesome. And I’m excited to learn a little bit more about that. I’m wondering if you can paint a picture for me. What were the unique challenges in the property management market that you think paved the way for Showdigs to come to life?

Barak Shamir:
So our founder came from the multifamily industry. And he recognized the trend that if before a certain generation, specifically the millennial generation, was moving into apartment buildings and renting out, the same started happening in the single family market. The same people that were once renting apartment buildings are now renting single family homes. And there is the industry of single family rentals for property management.

Property managers getting a lot of tech now in, but it’s more of an old fashioned industry. A lot of it is still in person, not a lot of automation. There is room for improvement, room for accepting new, new software. And the biggest challenge any company has, or the biggest spend any company has, is the manpower. And basically what Showdigs is trying to do is bring the simplicity of the multifamily environment. So think big. Complex buildings where you have an on premise team makes everything really easy to do. Anything 24/7 Showdigs tries to bring that simplicity, and that is to property managers and single family rentals. So the fact that we can reduce the overhead of hiring, firing, training, seasonality, automating the funnel, all of that built into one tool that reduces your costs, increases your margins, improves your operational cost, all of this, efficiency, it’s all built into one. So that was, in my mind, a very good base, base ground to say, okay, Showdigs has a place in this market.

Let’s test this out. It’s been around for six years, and our clients are raving fans. So it’s probably working out so far.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Awesome.

Charles Buggs:
I love that. And I got to jump in here and ask a question. Now that you’ve kind of hit the ground running, so to speak, and getting familiar with the industry, in your view, why has AI become so essential?

Barak Shamir:
AI is essential in anything. And I think one sentence that stands out across every industry today is master AI before it masters you. I’m not a tech guy. I’m not developing AI, not an AI geek, but I believe in that sentence because machine learning AI [has] probably been around longer, but it’s becoming more significant now with some breakthroughs, and if you’re not on it with it, you’re behind. So it’s significant in any industry in my mind.

So you want to adapt and you want to see what tools you can offer to yourself and to your clients to make sure to reap the harvest of the AI.

Charles Buggs:
That’s amazing. I can say that one more time. Master.

Barak Shamir:
Master AI. Before it masters you.

Charles Buggs:
You guys should write that down. I’m going to write it down.

Barak Shamir:
Not mine. Not mine. There’s a guy on LinkedIn that’s his thing.

Charles Buggs:
Come on, you got to take credit, man. That was great.

Barak Shamir:
Not mine.

Yolanda Muchnik:
No worries, no worries. So Barak, you recently appeared on the property management brainstorm podcast and discussed common inefficiencies faced by operators, like high volume of phone bookings and cancellations, that sort of thing. And so I’m wondering, can you explain how you would leverage AI to optimize these specific operational headaches?

Barak Shamir:
So there are two ways that we help property managers there today. One has AI behind the scenes and one has AI front and center. Automating the, the lead funnel, your prospect funnel, is something that saves all those, not all, but 90% or more of your phone calls. All the inefficiencies of dealing with prospects, putting a leasing automation tool front and center reduces that. We leverage AI behind the scenes for the prospect experience, for the pre-screening that we have in place, we have a very secure, robust pre-screening tool that leverages AI to make sure that we match the right tenant to the right property. And if there is an issue there, then we’ll probably suggest that that tenant does not go and see that unit.

So that’s how AI is leveraged on our end, on the backend. So part of our pre-screening and scheduling process. But we also have, offer an additional tool to our clients and that’s basically an AI leasing line. It’s not a call center. I don’t think we’re there. I wouldn’t want to call someone, think it’s a person and realizing later it’s a bot.

Yolanda Muchnik:
I wouldn’t either.

Charles Buggs:
Very good, very soon.

Barak Shamir:
But I myself as a consumer, I chat with AI every day. As a consumer, for my personal needs, for my work needs, I chat with AI. One thing we do for our customers is if they choose to, we build a custom AI leafing bot line for them, phone number with their area code, it doesn’t pick up the phone, it’s a message. Hey, we’re not here right now, but we’re going to text you and let’s take it there. And that’s a very ChatGPT like experience. But that bot is fully aware of you, mister property manager.

This is how you were built. This is all the information you have, you’ve given me, you’ve trained me. It’s like another employee, but just for a fraction of the cost of a VA. For example, the VA would be anywhere between $1,500 to $3,500. This would be 10% of the cost.

Charles Buggs:
Wow.

Barak Shamir:
Again, don’t hold me specific. I mean costs there, but a lot less, a fraction of the cost. You’d feel less, a lot less. And you basically, it’s a texting experience.

Okay, thank you for showing interest. Or is there a specific area that you would like to see? Units or do you have any questions? Then mister prospects asks their questions and the AI said, okay, yes, we have that unit for you. Here’s a link to schedule. It’s available as of an hour and a half from now. If you’re using Showdigs agents. Sorry, had to squeeze that in. But it’s like that. And then the prospect may come back and say, oh, but I have section eight, or, oh, but I have a pet.

Does it allow pets? And again, it’s like an employee of yours. We train it that way. It takes us about a week. And it knows all those things. It knows everything about your business so it can answer those questions. So that’s a front and center AI that a prospect sees reduces a lot of effort from property managers.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Excellent. So I’m sure you hear many customer stories in your role. Is there an example that stands out that you can share with us where maybe a customer or company solved one of these insurmountable problems with AI?

Barak Shamir:
Yeah. So I think a wide range of examples for us would be the first example I gave of how AI is in the back end of our leasing automation. Basically, even today we spoke with a prospective customer and he says, I’ve been taking calls myself. I hired a VA. They’re dealing with 20-30 calls a day. This is a service that’s going to significantly improve my flow. I recently put a deck for my sales team and part of that deck were quotes from our customers that they left us on Google and online sources.

And one of those quotes there, I’m not going to, I can even give you the exact quote.

Charles Buggs:
So we’re not taking credit for this one either.

Barak Shamir:
No, no, no. I was a bit slow to adopt Showdigs because I’m a control person and I’d like to be in control of everything. But now that I use them, it’s truly a game changer for me. It has freed me up to work on other areas of my business while knowing my properties are in very capable hands. It’s just one of those quotes and basically a customer that says, I used to do it myself, I’m not doing it anymore. And I think that’s the biggest value proposition we want to offer, is that with AI, with what we offer, you can focus on growing your business and not focus on the mundane, repetitive work that you do.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Got it.

Charles Buggs:
I love that. And kind of jump in here. I think one thing that I’ve learned in working in the software space for a while is to expect that. Expected. Do you have any unexpected customer stories? And what I’m looking for here is more of like someone utilizing your software in a way you didn’t anticipate.

Barak Shamir:
That’s interesting. So our software is very straightforward. I think the best example here is not how they use, but who uses. So we built a software that serves property managers in single family rental environments. What we didn’t expect is ownership to want to use this. We’re not working with many owners, but recently we have a new customer that’s [a] tenant placement specialist. He’s not a property manager. He works with property managers and he’s using us to help him manage his day to day. It saves him time, it saves him money.

Barak Shamir:
The unexpected here would be who he is. Our software is built on simplicity. It’s very straightforward and very easy to use, so it’s hard to complicate it. One thing that is sometimes unexpected. So on that front, so something that property managers would use, once we have our out of the box solutions, anything you can use from the software. But a big part of our offering isn’t AI. It’s actual on demand agents, on demand people, and they have a set amount of things that we usually train them to do.

Barak Shamir:
Out of the blue somewhere, a property manager would come and say, hey, can you perhaps do this thing that you’ve never done, but maybe it makes sense for you to do? Yes, we can do that if it makes sense, if it’s in a range, if it’s not, if it’s relevant to a property manager’s work, and if our network can take it. I think the best example would be our agents usually would do the showings for the property manager. But one request that we don’t have out the box, but was requested then, depending on the situation done, was come pick up a lockbox and a key and put it on a new door.

So, sorry. Not a very exotic example, but it’s an example nonetheless.

Charles Buggs:
I think that’s important. Who’s looking at your data and how they’re changing their business or even evolving and working better within their business. I think we can’t ask for more than that. That’s great.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Thank you. So there’s been actually a lot of talk in the industry recently about the importance of balancing technological and human interactions. And so I’m curious, what’s your take on the need for such a balance when it comes to applicant and resident interactions?

Barak Shamir:
I would prefer a bot.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah.

Barak Shamir:
Hands down. So. And here’s why. Yesterday, I went to a NARPM chapter lunch, know what it is? And there was a lawyer speaking, guest speaker, and he talked about a bit of the issues with fair housing and how you can mess things up. A bot can do that [when] properly trained. Just, I mean, dealing with it’s a delicate matter. Yeah. If, again, if you train AI correctly nowadays with the technology that’s available to every tech company, you can make sure your bots can manage a wide range of personalities that they interact [with].

They will always be compliant with fair housing. They’ll never say something that puts an owner or property manager at risk because they’re, they’re coded to not do that. And don’t, don’t ask me, ask property managers the amount of times they got in trouble because one of their employees said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Yolanda Muchnik:
That’s such an interesting point. I never considered that the liability might actually be lower.

Charles Buggs:
I think, just like, as I say all the time, I was a property manager at one point, and I don’t think people realize how small of a thing you can say. It could be [as] simple as like hey, so you have kids? How old are your kids? And it’s a conversational thing that you’re just going with the conversation, but it’s not okay to say that kind of stuff when you’re talking to a product in reference to housing. So that standardization and that protection, I think, is a really big deal that you guys did.

Barak Shamir:
Yep. Yep.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Wow. Well, thanks for that. Great point. Now, I’m super curious about this one. Share with me what you can. I’m not sure what you can share at this point, but with AI continually and rapidly evolving, how does showdigs plan to stay ahead of the curve in its emerging market?

Barak Shamir:
Well, we’re a tech company, and we have to. So, again, master AI before it masters you again, we’re looking into ways all the time. I think the biggest area that we’re trying to make AI help us get an advantage in the market, help our customers, is the area of security. So today, more and more property managers prefer to go with the self guided tour example, self showings instead of human showings.

Barak Shamir:
It has obvious advantages. It has very distinct risks. Squatting. Just in 2022, owners and property managers lost almost $400 million because of squatting, and that was two years ago. So with, with how popular self guided tours have become, you need to. You need to find creative ways for technology to make it as safe as possible. I’ll be the last to say it’s safe, it’s not safe, but we already have a very powerful way of dealing with that. Again, never bulletproof, but we’re looking at how AI can make this even more robust, add more security around, around, that.

But again, here there is always the human element. Humans that will take a prospect to the whole home will be your safest bet against the squatter. And they’ve become really sophisticated. That’s one aspect where we want to take AI to the next level down the road. We also want to make Showdigs a more powerful tool for property managers., beyond just automating prospects. We want to give them more of a CRM experience.

A lot of CRMs exist today. We’re more using HubSpot, HubSpot has ChatSpot. I don’t know if you heard of that. I’m a big fan of that. Using it weekly, not daily. And we want to get to a point that for our clients, Showdigs is also kind of a CRM for their prospects for their prospective tenants and AI can definitely make their lives easier there. With inner team interactions and tasks that they assign to themselves or to each other, and how it can make their day and their operation better. So those are two aspects we’re looking into with AI to improve our software.

Charles Buggs:
I think that is some of the coolest things I’ve heard all week. And just curious though, we’re talking about like security and squatters. I’ve had some experience on the CRM side and I think the automation piece is really, really cool. Are you guys really tracking like a prospect journey from lead to lease and our reporting?

Barak Shamir:
Yeah, we even offered this today. Basically within Showdigs, you can see all the inquiries coming in, if they scheduled a tour, if they completed a tour, if they applied, and if they signed the lease. So you can know every step of the way where your prospects are. It makes it really easy for property managers, especially if you have a team and you as the owner usually, or the operations manager, you want to know where things are.

You want to know where things are, per property manager or leasing manager. Makes it really easy for you. Also makes it easy for the PM’s themselves to work their leads. If you have some pressure from an owner, okay, I know who completed a tour and I can reach out to, I know who inquired, but didn’t even schedule a tour, I can reach out to them. So it gives you visibility into what you can do to progress things depending on your current needs.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, Barak, before we close out our conversation, if a listener wants to integrate an AI tool like Showdigs into their property management process, what first steps would you recommend? For instance, is there any pre-work that should happen internally to ensure the company [is] set up for success as they roll out AI across their properties?

Barak Shamir:
I would say for property management managers specifically, I’m likely talking to the vast minority, but I would say the first step is make sure you have property management software that you work with. We’re not affiliated with any of them, so there are many on the market, but that’s the first step. I know some still work with Excel, but I recommend that as a first step. Once you have that in place, putting a solution like Showdigs in place takes two steps. One that’s very challenging and one that’s very simple.

The simple one is implementing Showdigs. It’s very fast, it’s very straightforward, it’s a very simple solution. The challenging part is changing. It’s you, you embrace, embrace the fact that, yes, you won’t talk to all your prospects. You mean like that, trusting it? Yes. So a lot of property managers still want to talk to all the prospects because they want to see who they’re putting in homes. They want to trust the people, and I get that.

But it comes at the cost of efficiency. And you still get to talk to prospects. You still have that option through the funnel, and you have no option to be hands off. You still have to run the applications, you still need to vet them. We don’t take that off your plate. We just take the bulk of the work. Best case scenario, one in seven would apply or sign a lease and you’re spending time on the six others. And if you have 20 vacancies, times 20, what I just said, it’s a lot of operational margin that you can save.

So the first step is embrace the change, understand the technology costs money, but saves you a ton of money and time and efficiency. Once you hit that point, then you’re golden.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Excellent. So, Barak, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. We’ve talked about AI before on the show, but it’s been great to hear insights directly from a company that focuses specifically on the property management space for our listeners. We’ll have Barak’s information for you on our podcast page. And Barak, the very best of luck to you and your company.

Barak Shamir:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Charles Buggs:
We enjoyed this so much. Barak, thank you for your time.

Barak Shamir:
Same, same was fun for me.

Yolanda Muchnik:
And folks, hold on one moment for the Good News.

Good News

Charles Buggs:
All right. Thank you guys for joining the Good News. And this week we have five pieces of Good News to share, all from Anonymous, so we’re going to get into it.

The first one reads, the best thing that’s happened to me this year was getting to see a friend who lives across the country for the first time since pre-COVID. Our financial health situations have finally let us get together. That’s big time. I think so many times, especially now, we forget and take for granted that period of time in our recent history that was very hard on a lot of us. And some of us are still having things where we’re kind of opening that flower blossom up to some normalcy that we had before it. So whatever good news you have, especially things like this, please share. We’re so happy to hear that you guys get together. Send us an update as to what you guys got into. We love to share it on the show.

The next one reads, my granddaughter graduated. Big time. Thank you for sharing that. Tis the season everyone’s graduating and I’m sure our timelines are all reflecting as much. Please send us over the updates, let us know who’s graduating, what they majored in. We love to share it on the show.

The next one reads, I got a promotion this year. Kudos big time. Promotions say that you’ve done the job you were assigned well and they think you can do the next one even better. So please let us know when that happens and we love to share it on the show.

The next one reads, it’s been a good year for me so far. I’m excited, I have joined a new company and love working with my new team. I was not originally hired to handle utilities, but I am really enjoying it. Kudos to you and kudos to the new team for getting a good team member who loves being with them every day. Loving who you work with, loving what you do, adapting to things as they change are all keys to success and we love to hear your updates as you continue that success. So let us know.

The last one reads, I’ve been rolling out new online portal systems for our online associations. Many of our owners have reached out to me personally to thank me for assisting them in setting up a profile. It’s a small win, but it’s part of my job that I look forward to now. Hey, when you can fall in love with the process, that’s a big win. And when people take time out of their day to reach out to you personally to thank you for the services you provided, it’s even a bigger win. So please let us know as you progress through that online portal rollout and as things progress, and also let us know how many more kudos you get from the ownership groups.

That’s it for the Good News today. Thank you guys so much for listening. And remember, submit your Good News, anonymously and otherwise, we love them all and we will get to you next week. Thank you so much.