Multifamily has a channel addiction
Those of us in multifamily have trained ourselves to believe that if lead volume dips, the answer is always the same. Buy more impressions. Upgrade the ILS package. Crank paid search. Pump paid social. Chase the next attribution model like it is going to save the quarter.
Here is the uncomfortable truth.
When everyone is forced to buy the premium package to compete, premium becomes the minimum. It stops being an advantage and turns into rent you pay for the privilege of staying in the game.
That is why I strongly believe the next real competitive layer is not another channel. It is resident experience. The AI era is about to make that painfully obvious.
The shift is already happening, most teams are just looking in the wrong direction
In the old model, awareness plus frequency plus follow up created leases. In the current model, the discovery journey is splintered across ILS pages, Google business profiles, social platforms, and reviews that get screenshot and shared in group chats.
In the next model, AI becomes the front door.
People will ask their phone, their car, their browser, their assistant, what is the best place to live near my work with a real community and good management. They will not open ten tabs. They will not study floor plan galleries like it is a research project. They will get an answer.
That answer will be synthesized from signals. Reviews. Resident sentiment. Service responsiveness. Consistency. Social proof. Community energy. The stories residents tell when your leasing office is not watching.
So if your current strategy is built on buying the loudest megaphone, you are going to hate what happens when the AI summarizes you as fine.
Why resident experience becomes the growth engine in an AI first world
AI does not fall in love with your amenity list. It learns patterns from what people say and do.
If your property delivers generic experiences, the internet will describe it with generic language, and AI will repeat that language at scale.
If your property consistently creates moments residents want to talk about, the internet fills with specific stories, specific praise, and specific trust signals. AI will pick up those patterns and recommend you with confidence.
Resident experience is not a feel good initiative. It is a long term demand strategy that compounds.
Retention lifts. Referrals increase. Negative review volume drops. Your cost to lease falls because you are no longer paying to overcome distrust.
FAQ
Why are ILS upgrades losing their advantage?
When every operator buys the premium tier to stay visible, premium becomes the baseline. Differentiation shifts away from channel spend and toward what residents actually experience and share.
What does AI change for multifamily marketing?
AI compresses discovery into recommendations. Those recommendations are shaped by third party signals like reviews, sentiment, responsiveness, and consistency, not a polished amenity list.
What is the quickest resident experience win?
Service recovery. Fast acknowledgement, clear timelines, and a follow up after resolution can turn frustration into trust, and trust improves renewal odds and review outcomes.