The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated a number of technology trends that were already underway.
“What I was most surprised by was how quickly the industry reacted and moved,” John Helm, founder and partner of RET Ventures, told attendees last week at the virtual Multifamily Executive Conference.
“It accelerated some trends already underway, but I was surprised how quickly it accelerated trends like self-touring. We had some LPs who had already deployed SmartRent and could turn it on right away,” he said. “For the companies that hadn’t deployed that solution, SmartRent was literally shipping hundreds of kits a day. It was amazing how quickly companies reacted, installed the kits, and were able to start self-touring quickly.”
Helm added that he saw it with other companies as well. “To deploy new technology, it can take six to nine months from initial proof of concept to pilot,” he said. “We saw deployment of any tech that touched site staff and made them more productive get rolled out in light speed.”
Jeff Kok, chief innovation officer and chief information officer at Mill Creek Residential, said most surprising to him has been the change around indoor air quality and an increased interest in the science around that.
“COVID-19 has shot it into the spotlight from a couple of different angles–how to prevent it from spreading through the air and how to kill on surfaces,” he said. With resident wellness a priority, he added that key questions arising include, “How much outdoor air circulation are we bringing into the building? And can we put in better filters, or do we need to upgrade systems?”
Helm also is seeing more interest in home automation and touchless access to units as well as customer relationship management (CRM) products.
“I believe it should speed up all these programs since owner and operators are seeing the real operating benefits, and they are making teams more productive,” he said.
The CRM products allow leasing staff to handle prospective residents across properties and maintain one resident record, which helped team members manage their prospect pipeline remotely during the early days of the pandemic. “Our investments that touch those areas are seeing faster deployments and a lot of interest from the broader industry now that they need to start looking at solutions like these.”
Helm noted that buildingwide Wi-Fi is a must, since it’s going to be almost required from a resident perspective with everyone working from home and those residents also needing connectivity in the common areas when they leave their apartments.
When looking at new technology, Kok said he will read what the trends are today versus down the road, legal contracts, and tech specs, as well as look what is coming or already used outside of the industry. “You need to understand what is coming to develop your strategy for the next five years,” he said, adding that Mill Creek tests a lot of different solutions. “The more you can test, fail, and solve, it will get to what’s going to work now and how it integrates to everything else. You can’t just look at one thing in isolation. Future-proofing also starts way back at design; get in as early as possible.”
Helm added that firms don’t necessarily want to be the first in the industry to implement a new technology. “A lot of these technologies our industry has been deploying have been proven in other industries.”
