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What’s the key to making artificial intelligence an asset for property management? Incorporate it incrementally and maintain the human side of the business. Making AI work optimally for real estate organizations was the focus of a recent webinar sponsored by McKinsey that described how agentic AI, which performs business operations with minimal human oversight, can reshape real estate’s operating model.
When used optimally, AI can resolve the repetitive intake of work orders, manual schedule coordination and slow responses that frustrate building occupants and other stakeholders. That’s according to Alex Wolkomir, a partner at McKinsey.
AI now driving action forward
AI has progressed beyond describing and analyzing data and into the agentic era, which encompasses moving beyond a predetermined set of pathways or rules to intelligently driving action forward. In this stage, an AI-enabled operating system will leverage “shared workflows, data and controls, not isolated tools that create sprawl across the company,” Wolkomir said.
Many organizations, he added, become mired in AI “pilot program purgatory” characterized by ill-defined tools, workflow ownership, systems integration and learning loops. The work may get “shinier” in such cases, Wolkomir noted, but what should matter is capturing gains by focusing on domains. These are defined as connected workflows like facilities maintenance, leasing and renewals, asset management and construction, which generate such gains as new leases signed, work hours saved or equipment breaks avoided.
Build trust with human connection
And even while remedying “messy” handoffs and high-volume tasks with visible performance consequences, AI systems should be designed so human moments “don’t get lost in a world of automation,” Wolkomir said.
Even as AI increasingly helps drive workflows, human thoughts and judgments remain essential in key areas such as tradeoffs, escalations, negotiations, decisions involving substantial amounts of money and relationships that sustain trust and brand credibility.
The most successful AI adopters, Wolkomir noted, are those that “do not use AI to remove people, but to return human time to moments that build trust and value” among customers, building occupants, investors and other stakeholders.
“If every tenant interaction, every leasing conversation or other experience feels generic, flat and undifferentiated, that’s not progress, it’s automation without distinction,” Wolkomir said.
AI implementation building blocks
Tips for a successful AI business implementation, outlined in the webinar by Wolkomir and his McKinsey colleague Ankit Kapoor, include:
- Focus each AI implementation on a domain that’s big enough to matter but small enough to change and operate. Identify one or two target metrics such as lead to lease, lead to tour or maintenance response times and the repetitive steps that comprise the domain.
- Build a system of truth that AI can operate from by connecting fragmented data sources from across assets, vendors and operations into a 360-degree view. “Many AI efforts fail because they sit outside core systems and data flows,” Kapoor said.
- Install guardrails to ensure traceability, auditability and verification that the business is performing as intended.
- Identify outcomes that can prove the operating model works, such as faster maintenance resolution or fewer complaints.
Success comes when people, processes and technology combine to form a smoothly operating workflow, Kapoor noted. And the trust that governs the operating system becomes a product in its own right. As Wolkomir said, “the AI model is not what knocks on the door and fixes something at 6 a.m., the operating model does that. So the issue isn’t whether AI is clever, it’s whether workflows were designed to allow AI to do the work.”
The real magic, he added, “is getting value without losing the threads of what makes you special.”
See how Virtuoso, Yardi’s AI offering, delivers seamless collaboration, smarter decision-making and greater efficiency across an entire real estate portfolio.
