Devang Patel, the new technology head for the second-largest apartment owner in the United States, said a digital-first mentality to his company’s business approach doesn't mean artificial intelligence is about to replace humans.
Morgan Properties, based in greater Philadelphia, appointed Patel to the position earlier this month. In the role, he will define and execute a companywide technology strategy that may include greater use of AI chatbots for the firm, Patel told CoStar News.
Patel, a New Jersey native who moved to Philadelphia after school, has a background spanning finance, investments, direct-to-consumer platforms, human resources and retirement services, as well as time at Manulife and Vanguard. His appointment comes a few months after a recent leadership evolution at the firm that included the appointment of new co-CEOs.
CoStar News spoke with Patel about how the multifamily industry is currently using AI, how his firm intends to employ it and what it all means for its employees and tenants. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How might tenants soon use AI?
If you think about today’s consumer, they want information quickly. All of us do, frankly. If you think about the traditional property management construct and operating model in terms of calling, leaving a voicemail and waiting for someone to call, those operating models are gone. Residents expect, and demand, and frankly, it’s up to us to provide them with real-time information to be able to respond to their needs in a very efficient and effective manner and in a channel that they choose.
We’re trying to give a number of different options. Digital is not the only option, but for a large majority of residents, it likely will be. But how do you augment that still with the human touch when things are more personal, and they want to speak to someone and work with someone on something that is very, very personal or specific to them that they need some hand-holding through? As multifamily operators, we need to be cognizant of that dynamic.
A resident doesn’t care how big your portfolio is. They care how fast you fix their heater.
When you think about our scale, every efficiency that we unlock through technology directly translates into a better experience for hundreds of thousands of residents.
Will AI replace human jobs?
Every article you read is "AI is going to replace employees," and my candid view on that is, it’s not. We need to look at AI as a tool and a capability that we employ to make the work we do every single day at Morgan Properties better, faster, safer.
If you ask some organizations, it's certainly driven in a way to say, 'Hey, we’re looking to replace jobs with AI.' I don’t necessarily believe that to be true, at least not right now.
At Morgan Properties, we certainly hold that vision to say AI enables our employees to better support our residents and to better manage our operations and to shift from responding to things and using data to drive insights to using data to drive actions.
Digital first doesn’t mean human less. I think people often mix signals when they think about digital transformation as a proxy to, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut jobs.’ That’s actually not the intended goal.
There’s certainly so much focus on AI right now, and I would say, for many organizations, it’s a buzzword. They feel like they have to do something because everyone’s talking about it.
I think that for organizations that are more successful in how they think about AI, it’s about using it as an embedded organizational capability and deploying it in a very meaningful way, specific to very clear business outcomes.
What tech capabilities will the firm think about investing in?
For a portfolio of our size, second-largest multifamily company in the U.S., scale and growth is a huge part of our organization’s mission. A key part of when I think about digital transformation is are we set up on the right foundations? Do we have the right building blocks in place that allow us to seamlessly integrate 10,000 units? How do we make sure we have got the right foundations in place across our property management system, our HR system, our financial accounting system and do all of those things integrate together so the process of continuing to grow and sell properties is a seamless experience?
I think the second lens, or layer, of that is really about the digital transformation. Things that impact residents. And so, how do we create experiences more frictionless for residents, from everything from when they’re a prospect and they’re going through the process of trying to identify a place called home, all the way through to when they move in and are experiencing issues or things that they need to get sorted out as part of being a resident to when they move out.
How do we make those processes digital and frictionless for the experience, but also augmented with the human touch in those moments that matter?
How would you describe the multifamily industry's use of AI?
From a 15,000-foot-lens industry perspective, the real estate industry as a whole is typically lagging when you think about technology innovation.
Fintechs are looking at the latest technologies and embracing it in a very meaningful way to drive very specific business outcomes. I think now that more organizations are leaning into AI capabilities, it’s a ripe space for the real estate industry to play catch-up. What I mean by that is, there’s two lenses when you think about AI.
First, AI is a capability. So how are we employing the capability internally within our organization? How are we putting the right guardrails and guidelines in place to safely allow employees to interact with ChatGPT or Claude or Microsoft Copilot, and how do we teach them along the way the best ways to use these different tools? And oh, by the way, it’s changing every day. New models come out, and both folks in technology and in the business are learning as these things emerge, and so how do we create a core competency around AI training and development across the organization and expand these tools and how employees are using them across the organization?
The second level is how do we be a bit more specific within specific areas on where we are deploying it and what business outcomes we are looking to drive? A perfect example is, if you think about having 110,000-plus units across Morgan Properties, and all of the data that we have on things like HVAC systems, how do we go from a place where we’re using all of that data and all of that intelligence to not just react when something breaks but predict when things are likely to go wrong so we can bake that into our financial planning schedule?
So that is leveraging AI in a much more meaningful way with a very specific use case, but I think the same examples can be extended when you think about resident experiences, when you think about financial forecasting, when you think about any number of different aspects in the multifamily space.