When I first started my role as Director of Marketing in this industry, I learned we were in the middle of a pilot testing a chatbot. Like most chatbots from 2010-2023, it sucked. For many reasons including not user friendly, not conversational, too wordy, not engaging etc., Sure, the report the bot company sends would show 10,000 hours saved which equaled $500,000 or something ridiculous and overstated. But reading through the conversations, and from my own experience as a savvy web navigator, I knew these things were not conversion-driven machines as much as they were tools that maybe marginally impacted user-behavior in a positive way, but more likely than not diluted the user experience and made the website feel cheap.

Fast-forward to 2025 and chatbots are better known as AI leasing tools, of which every company in the space seemingly has a solution. A few I can name off the top of my head.

• EliseAI

• Funnel

• Zuma

• ChatIQ

• ApartmentList (forget the name)

• And many more.

Before I go into my experience with ChatIQ and Zuma, I want to zoom out and think about the broader impacts of this technology and how it will shape property management teams and philosophies.

Human vs. AI Leasing?

AI is a powerful technology, this is obvious. Because it's so powerful, many people want to AI every system to the fullest extent possible. Contrast that with the property management fundamentalists that are still skeptical of internet advertising and don't trust the robots to do anything in their business.

This is the spectrum that exists in regards to leasing. Some management companies will seek to automate every interaction with both prospects and renters as possible. Other management companies will continue to do things the old school way.

As with most things, the answer on which is right depends; on your company's leasing culture/responsiveness, company size, market, etc.,

Tech-heavy markets like San Francisco or New York may be totally fine without a human being guiding them every step of the way. Throw in a dozen other major cities in that list if you want, but that leaves out a ton of people who are not so tech savvy that they want their biggest purchase every month to be orchestrated by a robot.

In cases where there isn't a lot of accountability for leasing, AI may be a really helpful tool for booking tours and responding quickly to prospects.

For me, the answer is right in the middle which feels like a copout, but here's why--getting to the prospect first often determines if you win or not. The goal should be to book a tour first, whether that be in-person, video or self-guided. An AI that can respond quickly and answer your one or two dealbreaker questions is probably most effective at doing that.

But an AI is not going to close the sale. It's not going to push to the next step in a way that is as effective as a leasing agent doing it on-site and even after the tour. Great service is even more appreciated in today's age so if your teams are trained well then you want them out there on the front-lines closing deals and getting people moved-in.

AI Leasing Pilot

Yardi ChatIQ Review

We tested ChatIQ across a half-dozen or so properties for the first six months of 2025 for free.

Quickly I realized I wasn't sure what it was doing or how it was performing. That was the first red flag. While they had vanity metrics on the main dashboard showing things like hours or dollars saved, it was hard for me to follow where the chats were taking place or what metric ChatIQ was actually pushing forward.

Once I found conversations, I was immediately confused with the order of messages. You know in GMail when you're on a long thread and it shows all the previous messages on your current email if you scroll down more? That's what ChatIQ was showing so it was difficult to show what time and how people were engaging with our bot.

Even when I took the time to follow these conversations, I did not find them to be particularly beneficial to our perspective renters.

I was mostly hands-off on the pilot because the product was so hard to understand and we had time to evaluate it (I should have kept a better pulse on it), but once I grasped the ineffectiveness of ChatIQ I wanted to pull the plug. I began to poke holes in the product to our vendor and asked them to prove to me that the product was working. Their answer? More vanity metrics.

Here's where I draw the line with nearly any product we use--if I can't understand or quickly audit how it's performing, it's not performing. Ultimately, we need a general framework to how we audit and evaluate performance and we don't often have days to dive into every detail. I may only have an hour or two a week to see if it's doing what it should be doing. If it takes more time than that, I can't use your product.

As I brought up these concerns with the Yardi team, I could not get good answers nor the urgency I needed from them in order to reward them with such a large contract. It was an easy decision for us to dump them and try something else.

Zuma Review

As a fan of business, I respect the hustle of Shiv, Zuma's Founder, who didn't just build an AI startup, but made podcasting top executives in the industry his primary marketing strategy. This was a brilliant move as it was also accompanied by the Zuma road show which gave booking meetings with an elevated sense of urgency. The high-quality production also makes it feel bigger than it is (no shade, just the truth).

We ended our pilot with ChatIQ and after a product demo with Zuma, we decided to go forward with a pilot. Why? The primary reason was their focus on SMS. ChatIQ was messaging almost solely email and from my time in ecommerce, the best way to maximize open and click-thru rates is SMS. While I don't think SMS is always the best channel, it is certainly supreme to email and that thesis gave me confidence that at the very least we'd see much better results and engagement.

Kicking off the pilot took a few weeks, but we got it officially launched last Monday.

At the end of the day, I logged into Zuma and started reviewing their dashboard. While we only piloted five properties, it only took me a few minutes to review the conversations for every single lead. I created a Google doc, shared it with our Zuma rep, and commented on every conversation where I had a question or concern.

My Zuma rep and I setup a call for Friday and she commented on every single note I made.

While we need more data to determine the success of the pilot, ultimately, this is what you want a product and pilot to look like.

• It's easy to review conversations

• Metrics are clear and quantifiable

• Conversations are good--not great.

There is still some improvements that can be made to the AI, but ultimately it's doing the job we want it to do - respond after hours, book tours, and answer common questions.

I'll continue to update as I get more info because I think this is a space in which there isn't a ton of data or transparency into which one of these AI's perform best.

If you want to learn about and get more insights into how to elevate your marketing career, department, or portfolio, be sure to check out my Multifamily Marketing Mastery Course.