Tool That Helps Leasing Agents Vet Tenants Faster

[Solomon Nguyen]

Hello, Everyone.

I hope everything is well! I wanted to obtain your feedback on a startup that my co-founder and I are working on. I am a real estate agent in Rhode Island and the leasing manager for a 350-unit portfolio. I frequently put my listings on Zillow and Facebook, where I get a ton of messages. I find myself constantly on the phone answering inquiries like, "Do you accept pets?" and "Is there parking?" despite the fact that the information is clearly stated in the advertisement. I find this time-consuming after replying to 30-50 leads per day, gathering their information to pre-qualify them for a showing, and working with all of the leads to plan the best time to show the units. I kept reminding myself that I needed to work smarter, not harder.

With the advancement of AI, I thought a cool way to solve this issue would be to build an AI that can take in the information that I provide it about a specific unit, and when people inquire about the unit, either to ask a question or to schedule a showing, the AI would be able to provide them with answers to their questions as well as ask them for simple information to qualify the lead, such as, "what is your monthly household income?" and "where does your credit roughly stand?". "If so, what is their breed and weight?" From there, if the information they supply matches the landlord's requirements, they can schedule a showing depending on the time range set by the landlord and/or showing agent for that apartment.

The AI's primary function would be to answer simple questions and vet tenants, allowing the landlord/agent to save time during the process. Then, after the showings are planned, the landlord/agent may truly close the deal during the showing, as this is where the sale usually occurs. Another crucial aspect for this is that after a showing is planned, the AI will offer the user with a description of the person they will see and the time it was scheduled for. This would allow the landlord/agent to understand who they are talking to. We also wanted to solve the pain point for tenants who inquire on a unit and never receive a response from agent or landlords either because they are to busy or are burnt out from answering too many messages.

We also wanted to use this technology in real estate sales and purchases, where listing agents could upload the sales disclosure for an AI to read and provide information to buyers when they inquire about the house, as well as allow the selling agent to potentially double-end the transaction. This is a feature for the future, but given the current state of affairs, where buyers may now be required to pay for buyer agents, we might see this option becoming more appealing to people as they are able to contact the agent directly after asking questions about the property and possibly not needing to pay for an agent.

Overall, we are still in our early development stage and are looking for some beta users for our leasing platform and are hoping for some feed back and suggestions. What better place to do it than here at BiggerPockets! 

Thank you for your time!

-Solomon Nguyen