There is little doubt that a comprehensive and smart use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help companies achieve greater growth and higher profitability. However, the difference between companies that reap massive profits from it and those that do not is significant and rests on one crucial factor: complete acceptance and implementation.
A 2026 PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that “nearly three-quarters (74%) of the economic value of AI is captured by just one-fifth (20%) of organisations.” This reveals a clear and widening gap between a small group of AI leaders and the majority of companies that remain in pilot mode. In the field of property management, many players are still stuck in this pilot mode.
They use existing platforms for executing routine tasks such as tracking leases, work orders, and payments. However, they do not use them to achieve true performance – meaning the complex, outcome-driven decisions that advance a portfolio. The difference is not merely theoretical. According to data from the AppFolio Property Management Benchmark Report 2026, property managers extensively using AI predict portfolio growth of 31% in 2026, compared to just 12% for the rest of the industry.
A point has been reached where property managers who use AI not only for daily and weekly functions, but also to steer the growth trajectory of their business, are rapidly losing ground to their competitors. The difference between the pioneers and the laggards lies in a fundamental shift in mindset regarding the nature and goals of business software. Cat Allday, Vice President of Product at AppFolio, explained how some operators are not utilising the full potential of AI. She emphasised that the platform must actively deliver results, not just document them. This, she noted, is the difference between property administration and performance management.
The AppFolio Performance Platform not only documents what is happening in a company's properties but, more importantly, dictates what should happen next to improve results across the entire portfolio. AppFolio was developed with the belief that a performance platform should actively help operators achieve their overarching goals. For example, instead of merely determining whether maintenance requests are correctly logged, AppFolio addresses questions such as resident retention and whether portfolios are managed to increase their value and boost NOI (Net Operating Income).
Operators using AppFolio can react to performance signals before they escalate into problems. This protects NOI, enhances resident value, and fundamentally changes the economics of a portfolio. Ms Allday explained that it is no longer about software usage or task completion rates, but about measuring parameters such as the speed of letting vacant units or the development of renewal rates over time, to derive and share insights. AppFolio helps operators define appropriate goals and regularly track progress towards them. It also suggests actionable measures if progress stagnates.
Over time, as the platform learns more about the operator’s business, AI agents can begin to take these actions to continuously secure progress towards performance goals. The results show the extent to which property managers who do not fully adapt AI could be withholding valuable, measurable, and easily attainable gains from their businesses. An operator using AI for lead nurturing lets vacant units an average of 5.2 days faster and captures approximately 55% more out-of-hours enquiries that previously went unanswered.
According to Ms Allday, this is not just an incremental gain but an expansion of the effective leasing funnel without additional staffing. She added that not only are revenues generated faster, but also revenues that otherwise could not have been generated. In resident retention, AppFolio users report that their renewal rates increased by an average of 20% after implementing AppFolio, in addition to average NOI increases of 2.8%.
The foundation of AppFolio is its AI-native architecture, with intelligence integrated into the platform from the outset, rather than being added later as chatbots or plug-in modules to an existing system. Such an architecture, according to Ms Allday, has a hard ceiling, as it can automate individual tasks but cannot orchestrate across the entire portfolio due to lack of access to all necessary data. AppFolio was developed as cloud-native from the beginning, with intelligence as a fundamental layer that functions across leasing, maintenance, finance, and resident communications within a single, unified platform. This integration enables complete performance optimisation, which Ms Allday defines as a state where every participant in the real estate ecosystem simultaneously creates and receives value.
