OPTECH 2025 didn’t feel like another conference; it felt like a turning point.

Not because of the rain or the robots, but because the conversations finally moved past AI hype and into the real work. From agentic AI to fee transparency to personalization that actually works, the industry showed it’s ready for systems that take action, reduce friction, and rebuild trust at scale.

This year’s OPTECH ushered in a new era of community and innovation this year as the Real Estate Technology & Transformation Center (RETTC) hosted the event for the first time. The message was clear: the future of real estate technology should be a force for good, rooted in community, partnership, and momentum, not just hype.

RETTC’s commitment to keeping renters at the center of it all was on full display as Kristy Simonette, SVP of Strategic Services & Chief Information Officer at Camden Property Trust, was named the first-ever chair of RETTC’s new governance structure. It was a fitting signal of who is pushing the multifamily industry forward: sophisticated leaders who led the initial centralization wave, who understand both operations and innovation, and are leading the next iteration of the operating model with agentic AI. 

Across three days, hundreds of industry leaders and forward thinkers packed the expo hall, Futures Lab, and session stages to trade notes on agentic AI, fee transparency, personalization at scale, housing affordability, and more. 

The biggest takeaway? The AI is moving past its hype-cycle days and climbing out of the Gartner technology adoption curve trough of disillusionment Agentic AI workflows are leading where AI provides real value to operators. They’re already showing up in the real-world playbooks, policy conversations, and operating models being used right now.

Here’s a closer look at a few of the sessions that helped define this new era of OPTECH by RETTC.

Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder & chief strategy officer of Airbnb, talks trust, scrappiness, and building for multifamily

From starting with a literal air mattress in his apartment, to a company now valued in the tens of billions, Nathan Blecharczyk, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Airbnb, spoke about how a global marketplace grew out of a simple idea: paying the rent. 

The early days of Airbnb weren’t about sleek tech, they were about scrappiness. Blecharczyk shared how the team started by wanting to afford expensive rent in NYC, renting their spare rooms to conference travelers for cheap. 

What grew from that experiment wasn’t just extra income. It was the realization that if you could remove friction, handle payments, and build enough trust between strangers, you could unlock an entirely new way for people to travel, host, and eventually, add ancillary revenue to multifamily operators and managers.

Over time, they realized a key principle.

“It’s better to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you,” Blecharczyk said. “At first, it’s okay to do things that don’t scale.”

For the Airbnb founders, building early trust with small cohorts of users meant going where customers were, personally helping hosts improve their listings, take better photos, and refine their offerings. The result: more bookings, more word of mouth, and the foundation of a global community. 

Fast forward to today, and Airbnb’s relationship with multifamily has dramatically evolved. What began as a perceived threat has become an opportunity through the Airbnb-friendly apartments program, designed to give renters flexibility and owners a new income stream.

Kristy Simonette, SVP of Strategic Services & Chief Information Officer at Camden Property Trust, and moderator of Blecharczyk’s Q&A session, said Camden has 65 properties currently participating in the Airbnb friendly building program. She said success in the top buildings comes from building trust with early ambassador residents. 

“We call them the mayors of the building,” Simonette said. Camden is a multifamily REIT the No. 16 NMHC Top 50 Owner, and No. 32 NMHC Manager with just under 59,000 units. 

Blecharczyk closed with a reminder that trust isn’t a byproduct of great products; it’s the foundation they’re built on. When you design low-friction, high-trust digital experiences, you don’t just improve the user experience, you unlock new behaviors, new revenue models, and a level of customer loyalty that scales far beyond the technology itself.

The AI honeymoon is over. Agentic AI is the marriage that works

On the FuturesLab stage, Funnel CEO Tyler Christiansen and Ian Andrews, SVP of Innovation and Data Analytics at Avanti, made one thing clear: the industry is moving past the AI honeymoon phase. The novelty has worn off, the fear has faded, and the industry is now focused on something far more practical: agentic AI that actually does the work. 

Early iterations of AI were useful, but passive. Conversation summaries, aggregating data, cross-checking. But with agentic workflows plugged into daily operations, Avanti is seeing efficiency gains across the entire resident journey. 

“We’ve been able to use Funnel to optimize our current workflows,” Andrews said. “AI being able to be the front end leasing agent for us on calls or automating the communication side was a really big win for us to optimize performance.”

“The fact that from a tour scheduling standpoint, AI is never sleeping, communicating back and forth, become much more dependable and you can see that from the results,” Andrews said, noting that Avanti achieved a 29% better show rate for tours scheduled by AI than those scheduled manually by agents. 

Avanti residential

Andrews attributed the rise in show rates to a frictionless scheduling process that empowers the prospect to drive their own experience. 

Christiansen noted how these low-friction workflows reveal bigger operational opportunities. 

“Avanti uses Funnel’s application process, one of the data points we’ve been seeing in a 10k unit portfolio… you would be shocked at just how many times there would be a mid-lease change event,” Christiansen said. 

Mid-lease requests, like adding pets or updating addenda, are exactly the kind of repetitive tasks that agentic AI can complete instantly. Though, that doesn’t mean removing humans from the loop. These workflows can be configured to automatically hand off the completed task to a team member for final review or sign-off, or run fully on their own if that’s what the operator prefers. 

The power isn’t just the AI, but the low friction handoff, and the ability for operators to decide exactly how agentic AI fits their goals and comfort levels.

“As you go through the entire leasing cycle, you realize what parts are taking longer than expected. We can look at where we can create automation and reduce that friction, plug in AI, and completely automate repeatable tasks to expedite the process,” Andrews said. [It makes it] that much of a better experience so our teams can focus on the pieces that matter, building that rapport.”

By adding automation through the leasing process, Avanti has automated 40% of communications, including 62% of leads that inbounded after hours. Their leasing team members are no longer coming into an overwhelming queue of tasks each morning since the AI works around the clock. 

Avanti residential

Christiansen noted that a common conversation at this year’s OPTECH is about what comes after AI handles the call. 

“One of the pain points I’m hearing from operators this week is, I have embraced AI, it’s really helping and handling 50% of my calls—but then, I heard this today from an operator: AI rolls it over and 70% of the calls go unanswered,” Christiansen said. 

Avanti has managed to avoid that problem by focusing on building rapport with prospects and residents. 

“We created a whole resident services team which is a centralized department with us so they can reach out with that personalized connection to each other residents,” Andrews said. “And AI is what really makes that possible because today we just don’t have the bandwidth or the payroll to create that relationship without it, and we are really able to elevate that experience for our prospects and residents by utilizing the extra time savings that we have from AI.”

“You’re not going to get the benefits of AI without centralization,” Christiansen said. We as an industry are highly fragmented, to have AI taking care of 40% of your communications, but having all of that information siloed at the property level, where do the cost savings come from? It’s nearly impossible. But when you have a centralized team like Avanti does, you automate away 40% of the conversations, it’s very easy to be more efficient and have better [experiences].”

Personalization in the age of AI: Treat people how they want to be treated

It was book club without the wine, but same vibe. The Personalization in the age of AI session brought together four operators obsessed with creating a better renter experience with AI:

By personalizing the customer journey industries across the world have made their buying experiences not only memorable, but one that has customers coming back again and again.

“We expect personalization in almost every interaction—and it’s table stakes for everyone except multifamily for some reason,” Moriello said. As she put it, multifamily creates homes, not retail transactions, which means the opportunity to improve people’s lives through personalization is bigger than most even realize.

This session brainstormed ways for operators to add more personalization into the renter experience using AI tools and workflows. 

“Everyone knows the golden rule—treat others how you want to be treated,” Berka said. “I’m not opposed to it, but for personalization, you have to take it a step further: Treat others how they want to be treated.”

For Greystar, that means engaging with residents and prospects in their preferred communication methods. 

“It’s fine to presume you can call or text someone, but I would much rather us to know because we asked. We have so much information at our fingertips, so we should let that drive the relationship.”

From White’s student housing lens, a phone call from an unknown number is more nightmare than value-add for her residents. 

“Our demographic, their biggest fear isn’t spiders, it’s getting on the phone with someone they don’t know,” White said. “We can see they’re wanting to contact us through text, and only email, and that’s the way we are going to communicate with them—only. It’s a little bit of a learning curve because coming up in [multifamily] it was always about the call, and we are definitely seeing that shift in the student housing space.” 

Another major trend in personalization among session operators was continuity and using AI to ensure residents and prospects don’t have to repeat themselves. Not only does this approach provide a better experience for the renter, but it also saves time for the team if they don’t have to ask the same questions over and over. 

“It’s a baby step of personalization, but it’s so important to be able to say I remember our last interaction and I am going to move the conversation forward, instead of starting over from scratch.”

For Windsor, that means AI transcribing in their CRM every call and creating AI-generated summaries to support their teams’ next communication with the resident or renter. AI also parses these conversations and updates the renter’s guest card in their CRM, making key preferences and information easy to find for teams (both onsite and centralized). 

But it can’t stop at the lease signing. 

“As an industry, we are so focused on the acquisition of the customer, but they move in and then we forget about them until renewal,” Moriello said. “That’s where the opportunity lies in retention. Retention is where the ROI lives.” Her vision for Windsor is simple: “Create an amazingly memorable brand based on the personalization and the experience we give them.”

White agreed, noting that operators often focus on the immediate win. As she put it, “the quickest and fastest ROI is the conversion to get a lease, but the deepest ROI is happy residents.”

Berka urged operators not to jump straight to flashy “delight” moments before nailing the basics. “You can’t skip ahead to delighting someone,” he said. “If you get it wrong, it’s cringy. It took you four tries to fix my sink—maybe don’t offer a random flashy perk. Fix the little things first.” 

Multifamily, he reminded the room, is uniquely positioned for this work: “This is the most important purchase that people make. Every other industry kills for the amount of engagement our customers have. If we can just take what we know about the shopping experience and get it into the service process, then you move on to delighting.”

Policy playbook: Fee transparency, AI, state + federal regulations

As operators leaned into agentic AI and real workflow transformation, the conversations naturally shifted to the policies that will shape how this technology can be deployed. 

Innovation only moves as fast as the regulatory frameworks around it, and this year OPTECH made clear that compliance, transparency, and federal guidance are becoming just as critical as the tech itself.

DC and beyond: Fee transparency moves to the front line

If there was one regulatory theme operators couldn’t escape at OPTECH, it was fee transparency.

Jay Harris of Hudson Cook LLP unpacked the rapidly shifting web of multi-state laws and enforcement actions that operators are navigating.

A few key takeaways surfaced:

The bottom line: fee transparency is no longer a side project. It’s a core operational and reputational issue, and any tech stack, including AI and agentic workflows, needs to be designed with compliance, clarity, and documentation in mind.

Federal AI framework + policy recommendations with congressmen Jay Obernolte and Ted Lieu

On the final day of OPTECH, Congressman Jay Obernolte (CA-23) and Congressman Ted Lieu (CA-36) joined the stage… sort of. Appearing as holograms, the two California representatives sat down with Sharon Wilson Géno, President of NMHC, and Kevin Donnelly, Executive Director & Chief Advocacy Officer at RETTC, for a wide-ranging Q&A on AI policy and housing.

The two lawmakers are co-chairs of the Bipartisan House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, which last year released a report containing 60 concrete policy recommendations designed to guide federal oversight without stifling progress.

Lieu emphasized broad political alignment, and focused on only regulating areas where the federal government can actually have a real impact. On housing, he was direct—the country needs far more of it, and AI can help operators streamline processes, improve efficiency, and make it easier for renters to find homes. 

Both congressmen stressed that AI regulation must balance protection with possibility. Lieu described the U.S. approach as empowering existing agencies to regulate AI within their areas of expertise rather than creating a single federal AI regulation, as Europe has done.

“We want people to innovate,” Lieu said, “There are tens of thousands of AI use cases, and we’re not going to regulate all of them. We’re focused on the specific use cases where harm can come about, and regulating those.”

Operators are already battling state-by-state consumer protection regulations that Obernolte described as a growing “quilt” that makes compliance difficult for operators working across state lines. Lieu agreed that the current environment is unsustainable. “It’s stupid to have 17 different states with different privacy laws,” he said, but clarified he would not support a national standard weaker than California’s.

Both emphasized the need for Congress to define guardrails that protect consumers, preserve innovation, and give states clarity on where their authority begins and ends.

The goal is to balance consumer protections, safeguard civil rights, and ensure the U.S. remains a place where housing and innovation can thrive. 

Kara Swisher: Housing affordability and AI

Kara Swisher joined the RETTC stage on Tuesday to give her perspective on the current political intersection of housing, affordability, and innovation, bringing over three decades of experience as one of the most acclaimed tech journalists in the world. 

Stories from the Google garage and treating the then-starving founders of AirBnB to coffee before their billion-dollar valuation, Swisher shared her perspective on the state of housing and how AI can help bridge the gap in affordability, but not without some major roadblocks with billions of dollars to spend. 

“If I were running for president (I’m not),” she joked, “I would say housing affordability should be at the very top of the list of innovation in the United States.”

“Affordability is not a right or left wing issue—it’s a human issue,” she said. 

AI, she noted, can streamline planning, optimize operations, and inform better decisions, but “technology alone isn’t going to solve this.” The real breakthrough, she argued, will come from leaders willing to champion affordability, rethink regulatory frameworks, and push innovation to build more homes people can actually afford.

She closed with a reminder that echoed across OPTECH to keep humanity at the center of innovation. Design AI and operating models that strengthen communities rather than destabilize them, and treat housing not as a commodity but as the foundation for everything else.