The Challenge
In Boston, nearly all units are listed and rented between March and August — creating a “busy season” characterized by a lot of competition for renters, hundreds of inbound leads per day, and countless tours, applications, and leases to track. This year, the leadership team at Sun Property Group realized an AI solution is what their operations team needed to keep up with the demand.
“Our operations team already handle maintenance coordination, resident communication, and leasing-related workflows,” Henry Corroon, real estate associate at SPG, says. “Of our 200 rental doors, at least 25 percent of them turn over every year. Between March and September, when we're in the heat of the leasing season, it's a big pull for our team to be handling scheduling, inquiries, and everything that comes with the leasing process on top of their normal workload. That's why we started to look for an AI solution like ASSIST.”
Mainly, they were looking for a product that would overhaul their manual processes and build accountability into their workflow. Prior to using ASSIST, they filtered their inbound inquiries through a shared email inbox. The manual tracking and response system created additional administrative burden and limited visibility across the team.
The Solution
ApartmentAdvisor ASSIST has an official integration with Rent Manager, SPG’s existing property management software, making implementation easy and intuitive. Working with his dedicated Customer Success Representative at ASSIST, Corroon was able to help fully onboard his team within 2 weeks of adoption.
His team was immediately satisfied by how much easier to manage the tool was compared to their previous process.
“It's really simplifying everyone's life a little bit and helping to streamline things," Corroon says. "We're all liking the system compared to what we had before.”
The Results
Even before beginning their busy season, Corroon has noticed results with ASSIST. Leads are being engaged quicker, leading to more productive screening conversations, tours, and applications.
Instant Response Times
Prior to implementing ASSIST, SPG received all their inquiries in one email inbox that was shared between their operations team. Because leasing is not their team’s only priority, inquiries were reviewed periodically throughout the day alongside other operational responsibilities — leading to response times of at least 2 to 6 hours during business hours. On weekends, a lead could be waiting over 24 hours for a response.
Corroon noticed that when leads did not get emails back from the Sun team quickly, they often disengaged entirely — resulting in a loss of potentially qualified renters from their pipeline.
Now, ASSIST responds to prospects within a minute of an inquiry being submitted. This means they are being engaged when they are most active in their apartment search, directly contributing to faster responses from prospects in return. Corroon estimates that the number of engaged conversations they’ve had with prospects has doubled since implementing ASSIST.
Increased Accountability and Organization
In their busiest time of year, SPG receives hundreds of inquiries across its portfolio each week. When all of these were being funneled into an email inbox, there were no accountability processes in place. Sorting through the inbox was tedious, and it was difficult to track whether an inquiry had been engaged by another team member already.
ASSIST centralizes all their inbound leads in one dashboard that tracks all conversations, tours, documents, and more — baking accountability into their process. All leads are automatically assigned to their team members and tasks are created for their team based on the prospect’s conversation with the ASSIST AI agent. That means: More visibility for leadership, less administrative burden for their team, and more time for their team to focus on leasing tasks that move the needle.
Shorter Sales Cycles
One immediate result that Corroon noticed upon implementation was that tours were being booked faster. ASSIST removes the time-consuming back-and-forth that used to begin all interactions with prospects, and it brings FHA-compliant screening to the forefront of all conversations. Qualified prospects are now quickly invited to schedule a tour based on the assigned team member's availability — and the ASSIST AI is even able to schedule group tours when multiple parties are interested in the same property.
Instead of taking hours (or in some cases, days) to screen a prospect and schedule a tour, SPG now often sees tours booked within 20 minutes of inquiry.
The Future of AI & Automation at SPG
While Corroon has long suspected that AI could help his team’s workload, his experience with ASSIST has solidified his belief in the technology
"There was definitely some hesitation from our team when we first started thinking about using AI, but once we decided that we wanted to move forward with ASSIST, it was clear pretty quickly that it was the right decision," he says. “It’s been good to see AI in action and to see that it actually can work for us."
