If you’ve read your email this week, you might have seen a promotion for a multifamily conference suggesting AI adoption is poor and that you can solve this problem by building your own tools in house. With so many new no-code and low-code platforms available, it’s easy to see why that message resonates somewhat with me. Building simple internal tools has never been easier.
But when it comes to something as complex as a voice bot or AI leasing or resident assistant, that do-it-yourself optimism might quickly turn into frustration, wasted investment, or liability.
The Allure of “Build It Yourself”
I get it. The tools available today make it look easy to spin up your solutions. I’m not a traditional coder and I’m personally building solutions for my companies that enhance our ability to serve our customers and understand our business. And in some cases, all you need is something that is easy to build, for example, something that answers pre-set questions or gives basic information.
But once your system needs to interact with your real data, things change fast.
Where DIY Voice Bots Fall Apart: Integrations
Integrations are where most “DIY” projects will fall apart.
A truly useful voice bot for multifamily doesn’t just talk — it needs to know. That means it must integrate with your systems and data sources to handle real-world questions like:
- “What 2 bedroom apartments are available right now?”
- “Will you help me schedule a tour tomorrow afternoon?”
- “What’s my current balance?”
These aren’t static answers pulled from a spreadsheet. They rely on live connections to your property management software and CRM — which both present their own API integration, data modeling, and authentication challenges.
Building and maintaining those integrations isn’t easy. It requires technical expertise, constant monitoring, and ongoing updates to keep up with changing API specifications and new system versions which you don’t always know about until something breaks.
We Know — Because We Built One
At Respage, we’ve already gone through this process. Twice. We built our own multifamily voice three years ago and then built it from the ground up less than a year later. Needless to say, it took a lot of people across multiple disciplines dedicated to this project for many months to get it done. And we’re still making tweaks. The reason? The technology around conversational AI was (and still is) evolving so quickly that we had to keep reinventing parts of the system to improve voice quality and optimize costs. AI services are not free. You’d be surprised how much the costs required to transcribe voice to text, generate a response, and translate it back to voice, not to mention store this data so you can listen to it or analyze it, add up.
This year, it was time to rebuild our website chatbot from scratch. And despite starting with a successful, proven foundation, re-engineering it took many months of work by a full team of developers and product experts. Even with the latest models, it’s not easy to get bots to answer questions without making stuff up sometimes. Not to mention a modern chatbot has to do more than just tell a prospect availability and help them schedule their tour. It needs to know how to cross-sell sister communities, add people to a waitlist, and get back to people as soon as those units are available.
That’s simply the reality. If your product depends on integrations and there are multiple suppliers who have built complex solutions, there probably isn’t ROI in building these systems unless you have enough units to support a multidisciplinary team of product managers, developers and QA.
Why Partnering Beats Building
Unless your company’s core business is software development, it rarely makes sense to divert your resources into building complex AI systems from scratch.
A partner who already understands the multifamily ecosystem — and who’s invested years into integrations, compliance, and user experience — can deliver faster, safer, and more reliable results.
You’ll get the benefit of continuous innovation without bearing the cost (and risk) of maintaining it all yourself.
Why You Should Go to That Conference Anyway
That said, there are wonderful use cases to build your own technology in-house. You can also create a project management system to help your team manage more complex projects, like unit renovations or lease-ups. It’s even relatively easy to build a system that will keep track of the rents your competitors are charging or that will alert you when your website goes down.
AI tools have opened incredible opportunities for multifamily companies to build solutions that let them work smarter and improve the renter experience. But not every new technology initiative should be a DIY project for most companies.
When it comes to building a voice bot that actually delivers — one that connects seamlessly to your data, evolves with the technology, and enhances your leasing and resident experience — it’s best to leave it to the experts who’ve already built it, broken it, and built it again, like Respage.
From the desk of Ellen Thompson, Co-founder and CEO of Respage >> Since its founding, Respage has helped over 10,000 communities attract, engage, and retain residents. Its platform assists properties in generating leads, automating leasing, and managing reputation and social media. Thompson is also the Founder of Results Repeat, a digital marketing agency that has helped hundreds of companies create a digital presence and use SEO and paid marketing to generate more business online.
