The 2017 Multifamily Executive Conference (MFEC), held Sept. 18–20 at Bellagio in Las Vegas, saw record attendance, with over 780 apartment executives gathered to discuss the state of the multifamily industry.
The theme of the conference was “Multifamily’s 2020 Vision: Planning for What’s Next,” a concept that centers on technological advancements and the opportunities they present to the multifamily industry and its many facets, from operations and development to property management and security. Yet, with the onslaught of new products and their rapid evolution, technology is simultaneously one of the sector’s most difficult to pin down and most critical to plan for.
A panel of experts attempted to shed light on the challenge at the Sept. 18 session “Fast-Moving Technology Elevates the Importance of Future-Proofing.” The panelists discussed how property managers, owners, and developers can find practical ways to stay on top of growing technology trends, manage their implementation, and measure new technology’s impact while remaining flexible enough to accommodate future advancements and plan for tomorrow’s tech space.
AI's Revolutionary Promise
For consultant Donald Davidoff, president of D2 Demand Solutions, artificial intelligence (AI) presents the biggest opportunity for the apartment industry, though the technology is still in its relative infancy in multifamily applications.
“For so many years, I haven’t really seen any technology home runs in our industry,” Davidoff, a panel member, said at the session. “But with AI and its potential to impact pretty much everything we do, it could be to the white-collar workforce what machines were to the manufacturing workforce.”
Davidoff cited AI applications that touch all aspects of multifamily, including smart-home control systems with virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa; ways to optimize e-mail campaigns and customer service with call coaching for agents; smarter search engines; pricing systems that could be amplified with AI algorithms; and robots as concierges, tour guides, or security guards, such as Pepper (a concierge) and the K5 security-patrol robot.
“AI is really intriguing, but it’s in its early-adoption stages. It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves as people get more used to it,” Davidoff said. “These technologies are real, though. [They’re] not somebody’s pipe dream. There are actually technologies out there now that can do these things.”
Solutions for Package Overload
Panelist Greg Vance, project manager at Century West Partners (CWP), and his team have seen a significant change in the way their residents shop, which is almost all online. The age of cyberpurchasing means apartment properties like CWP’s and others are being hit with an onslaught of package deliveries that can be hard to manage.
Properties with an overwhelming number of -deliveries can partner with a package delivery provider such as Package Concierge, Luxer One, Parcel Pending, or the recently announced Amazon Hub to manage their residents’ packages. The providers’ storage lockers make managing deliveries easy in several ways—neither the residents nor the property staff face time restrictions on package pickup; operation costs are often reduced; and property security increases when managers install new cameras to monitor the package-storage systems.
One downside of this technology, Vance noted, is that the lockers can take up a lot of space, increasing the amount of square footage a property may need for other amenities.
Looking to the future, Vance sees food delivery services such as DoorDash, Postmates, and UberEATS having an impact on resident lifestyles.
Security Risks and Future-Proofing
Future-proofing couldn’t be a more pressing concern for Joshua Erosky, director of building technology at UDR and also a panelist at the session. The company has been piloting a high-end smart-home technology package for units in Seattle, where finding hardware and technology systems that won’t quickly become obsolete can be a challenge.
“First, you have to determine what fits your organization best and what works best for your initiative,” Erosky said of installing practical smart-home features that residents care about—and will pay more for—such as smart locks, smart lighting, and smart thermostats. But, overall, he added, installing smart-home technology in units isn’t about the hardware itself.
“You have to put in the right backbone hardware to plan for the future, and you do that by using an open platform where the pieces are essentially agnostic,” Erosky said. “A light switch is going to be a light switch. But if the light switch is going to communicate with multiple systems and work with more than one system—for example, it’s compatible with Z-Wave, Amazon Alexa, or Google—then it’s future-proofed and will work 10 years from now.”
However, introducing smart-home technology and Internet of Things (IOT) platforms into a unit or property management system can come with risks. Panelist Jeffrey Kok, chief information officer at Mill Creek Residential, dove into how technology affects the security of the apartment business.
“The two biggest challenges that we face are, first, how to centralize management of IOT and smart-home technologies in communities themselves,” said Kok, noting that centralizing the management of the systems can provide benefits for property managers in the move-in and move-out phases and increase back-end efficiencies during unit turnover.
“The second is how to properly design said solutions to have the proper security and privacy in place for the resident, as well as protection of liability to the corporation supplying the technology,” he continued.
According to Kok, the physical architecture of the smart-home and IOT technologies, and how they connect to each other, are critical.
“What protocols [the systems] communicate over, as well as how the resident interacts with the technology—for example, if they’re using an app—determine the level of security that’s there,” he said. “Devices need to be hardened, and proper architecture needs to be put in place to allow for segregation of networks, meaning that corporate networks aren’t touching residential networks and that residents themselves have protections and privacy within their own network.”
