As property management faces rapid technological disruption, what happens to the businesses that refuse to adapt… or the ones that go all-in on AI and eliminate the human element entirely?

In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Joe Oliveri in Brisbane, Australia to unpack the accelerating AI revolution and what it means for the future of property management. With over 30 years in the industry and 16 years as an international real estate business coach, Joe shares why he believes the next three years will determine which companies survive, and which disappear.

They explore the shift from traditional property manager roles to data-driven client relationship managers, how AI can transform processes like lease renewals, the risks of deepfakes and security threats, and why the winning formula will be a strategic blend of technology and human connection.

You'll Learn

(00:00) Introduction to AI in Property Management

(00:40) The Evolution of Property Management

(01:58) The Impact of AI on Property Management

(05:35) Integrating AI with Human Interaction

(10:30) AI's Role in Tenant Management

(14:17) The Need for Verification in AI

(16:30) The Future of AI in Property Management

(21:44) Consequences of Ignoring AI

(25:43) Finding Balance: AI and Human Roles Growth

Quotables

"If this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant."

"Three years is all we've got to make the changes."

"AI isn't something that they can go back to their office and say, we're going to build this AI. Let the experts do it."

Resources

DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind

Transcript

Jason Hull (00:00)

that companies will need to be able to make to keep up and really frankly, survive. It's recording.

We can time up. Shifts in layout. Let's count. All right. You think it's going to work there or should we hold that? Well, we'll probably have to do this. All right. Cool. No introduction. Well, no. Just do it. I'm saying not the full intro that you normally do the way you read the entire thing. Just do a quick. You're not going to have all that when we're going to send it. OK. Do an intro, but you're not going to do the normal intro. All right.

Put those somewhere. Hang them on your shirt or do something. Okay. That's very Brisbane. Well you have to fit in. When in Brisbane, do like Brisbane. Right, so we are... It wasn't pretty. Okay. Five, four, three, two... If you can see the camera, it can see you.

Can you see the camera? can. You don't... can. Okay. Alright, you ready? Five, four, three, two, one. Alright, so I'm Jason Hull. This is Sarah Hull with DoorGrow and we are Hangout with Joe Oliveri. And we're in Brisbane. Brizzy. Brizzy, yeah. And you can't see but we're overlooking the beautiful city and the river right now.

And what is this, a wine room? Yeah, this is our wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Okay. And so we're going to be chatting today about AI, the future, and how that's going to impact and affect property management. So, Jill, why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and who you are and how you got into property management.

Yeah well that's a long story but I'll make it short. So I've been in the industry for about 30 years now so it makes me feel old when I say that. ⁓ But for the last 16 years I've been a real estate business coach and I've been lucky enough to coach people in Australia and the USA so I get a really good oversight of what's going on in the world. ⁓ But you know my focus for the last 16 years has been

where is this industry going and how can we help businesses to get there and what do need to do? So basically, yeah, for the last 30 years, I've been doing property management and yeah, I think it's exciting where it's heading and through that journey, I met you guys, which is wonderful. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. We've been able to have you out at one of our conference events and have you speak and yeah, it's been delightful.

⁓ I know, I mean, in 30 years, you've seen a lot of changes, but it's speeding up. Like we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. Everything's changing dramatically. And so what are some of the things that you're noticing? And you have a process software called Thrusos, which we use to run our own operational side of our business. ⁓ What are some of the things that you are right now?

thinking are going to happen and you're trying to figure out. Yeah, well, I'm actually concerned about the future for property management in a positive way. If you can kind of like say that. Because what I'm seeing is we are going through rapid change. I remember when I started in the industry 30 years ago, we were just introducing property management software. Everyone was still using spreadsheets and you know.

paper documents and all sorts of things. ⁓ Carbon copy leases, know, that's how far back we go. And there was major pushback on property management software. And the pushback probably took about five years for the industry to completely transition to understanding you had to use software. Well, we don't have the luxury of five years anymore because my belief is it's changing so rapidly.

And it's the consumer expectations that are going to force change that if this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant. So I believe in three years time, we're going to see completely different roles in the way that we do things. in the next, like leading up to that three years,

I believe that in the first year, we're going to see probably about 40 % of businesses starting to struggle and disappear. They're losing managements, clients are going elsewhere because they're expecting AI and seamless processes and interactions and tasking. And then that will speed up. And by the second year, we'll see 80%.

And then we'll only have a small percentages. I know this seems like doomsday, but it's a reality. Only a small percentage of existing businesses that are around today who will be around in three years time. If they do not adopt AI and AI is very broad. So they've got to understand AI, but you know, that's my belief. That's what I'm seeing as well. So yeah, you know, we've got to sit up and take notice.

Yeah. And I think a lot of the things that I've been noticing, some people kind of shift right away and some people are a little bit more reluctant to shift. Yes. And I think the ones that it's almost you need to find the balance. You don't want to go all in and all AI and you don't want to have no AI. You want to kind of find the right balance and that happy medium and really figure out what is the best way to utilize AI.

and have a human component. Because I do not believe it will be able to be all AI. I just, think when it really comes down to it, it is a relationship business. It's a human to human contact business. really when things go wrong, humans want to talk with other humans who understand. They don't want, have you ever been on the phone and you're going, agent, agent, representative, and it's not.

understanding and you're like, just get me to the human. do I, what button do I need to push? What option is it that I the human? And I think that will continue, that will prevail. However, AI is such a powerful tool that I think we just need to figure out what's the most complimentary way that the humans and the AI can interact together to provide an amazing experience so that the tenants are happy and the clients are happy and the property management business is happy.

really be able to figure out what's the best way to do this. And something that you were telling me yesterday, I went, ⁓ she is so smart for doing that. Can you talk a bit about your, ⁓ tell us first about Flusos and what it is and how it works. And then tell me what you were chatting with me about at dinner last night about what you're going in and updating in Flusos because of all of the advancements in AI that are happening.

Yeah, yeah, so you're 100 % right Sarah, you know, there will always be the human element. It's necessary. We're a service business. So people want the customer relationships. They want that person who lets them know, hey, this is all right. You know, we're going well here. But the role of the property manager has changed. There will always be a role for property managers, but not in the way that we see it today.

And that's where we've got to make that transition. But one of the simplest flows to talk about, when I talk about flows, Flusos is workflows on all of the various tasks that we do. To help people understand how AI integrates with the human side of property management is if we look at a tenancy renewal. So when we're doing that renewal, there's so much that AI can do that ...

DGS 327: AI, Survival & Property Management's Future