Toronto recently hosted its very first Yardi Executive Briefing exclusively for multifamily clients. Participants explored the latest innovations in RentCafe and smart home technology. Below, we’ve highlighted the latest and greatest multifamily technology that you’ve got to have. Re-imaging Real Estate through Innovation Seven technologies are changing the future of multifamily housing: Untethered Connectivity: Voice-activated digital assistants handle everything from rent payments, maintenance requests, and adjusting the thermostat in a unit. Renters love the convenience, which adds to a unit’s perceived value. Smart Home Accessibility: Artificial intelligence and wireless connection unite to make smart home technology accessible to renters on the go. Via machine learning, apps within a smart car can determine when users are heading home. They can adjust the thermostat and fulfill other user preferences. Broadband Rules: Broadband connectivity is replacing cable as users complain of high cable prices and obnoxious bundled services. Begin negotiation with local broadband providers to offer services to your renters. Virtual Fitness: Don’t scrap your rarely used fitness center. Instead, give it a makeover by adding virtual fitness services. Renters value the option to have a virtual coach help them through workouts. Sleek + Chic: Renters appreciate smart home technology but don’t want bulky hardware interrupting their interior design. Technology needs to work on demand while blending functionality with interior design. Welcome the Robots: Drones for package delivery are a hot trend in metropolitan areas. If you haven’t already, plan and implement a concierge service to handle package deliveries. While you’re at it, designated parking spots and charging stations for autonomous vehicles may soon be a necessity. Modular Building is Cool Again: Unlike the first wave of prefab buildings in the 1930s, today’s modular homes are durable and highly customizable. Units can easily convert based on current...

NMHC OPTECH 2019 in Dallas was the place to be for multifamily real estate execs seeking strategies to raise their game using technology — especially looking ahead to a likely downturn. In lively peer roundtable discussions and dynamic property and revenue management workshops and sessions, industry insiders dove into the big issues facing multifamily businesses. Compelling strategies emerged for growing revenue, managing all lease types and improving the customer experience using new technology. Read on for our top five takeaways from this year’s event.   Unleash data Gone are the days of making business decisions based on guesswork and backward-looking data aggregated into spreadsheets. Today, new technology automates data collection with advanced analytics to provide a complete picture of a portfolio’s opportunities and future risks. That’s big data, and it’s a big deal. At OPTECH, experts talked about the valuable business intelligence hiding in your company’s data, and how to capture it to improve all operational systems and processes from front office to back office, including revenue management and rental pricing. In the session “Apples to Apples: Getting Clean Consistent Data for Accurate BI” data experts and asset managers discussed evolving corporate best practices in performance data tracking. Starting with clean, reliable data from a single database for one source of truth is essential. Using a system that leverages that data with machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver predictive analytics with recommended actions is keeping leading companies ahead of the curve. And don’t forget about futurecasting. You can get a clear picture of potential future income using reliable operational data. Smart forecasting tools drill down to lease level data and also factor in market conditions and industry dynamics, so you can stay agile and plan for what happens next.   Protect information The...