Jess Beck of Alfred: 5 Questions

Alfred is a national residential property management and technology platform co-founded by Jess Beck. Based in New York, Alfred manages 50,000 units nationally.

“We have a fundamental thesis on the evolution of management and operations, and we believe it’s the combination of technology, data, resident experience and an operating platform, all under one company and one umbrella,” Beck said. “That will allow better performance for an asset and a better resident experience, which also, by the way, leads to better performance for an asset.”

Commercial Observer caught up with Beck to talk more about multifamily property management and using artificial intelligence.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: What does a multifamily owner get by hiring you to handle property management?

Jess Beck: We are very much a one-stop shop. You come to us as a multifamily owner primarily because you are looking for an innovative model to drive performance for your asset.

We will deliver for you all the technology, resident experience, property management in one integrated approach. We’ll underwrite it and we’ll apply the right systems and the right people.

I know AI is in vogue. 
AI is also core to how we operate, but at the end of the day, we are looking to drive a higher top line for an owner and a more efficient bottom line, and we do that through a combination of technology and resident experience in a different operating model.

A couple of phases of property management came before us. There was PM 1.0, which was pretty local, pretty relationship driven; great for local operations, but as capital entered the market and there was a demand for scale, that model broke. PM 2.0 was really about professionalization and standards, and you get some really great companies that come out of that era.

I think we’re at the beginning of PM 3.0, and that’s where the industry is headed, and that’s basically about the integration of operations, data, tech and resident experience in one system. That allows us to do things that are more precise and more asset specific and more residence specific than general. We’re ending one chapter and opening another, and it’s a very exciting time.

If I’m a tenant in a property you manage, what differences would I see?

Alfred began as a consumer company. We were arguably the first company to build a resident app, a consumer app at scale, and what we did was we integrated all of the consumer services that you would need originally into a resident app. You can have whatever services you need, whether that’s a dog walker, a home cleaner, or insurance. We really design it as a consumer experience and a consumer application. If you move into one of our buildings, it’s going to feel more like a hospitality program.

The team on site is more aligned with how we would think about hospitality, and your digital experience lives within our ecosystem, and you can have all the benefits of local stores, one-stop shopping for your property. Over time, we get to know you, and we can kind of predict what you’re going to need.

What’s been the biggest surprise for you as you’ve built out this company?

The deeper that we got into it, the more that we learned that the operator side has the same challenges as the consumer side. So the original prompt from the consumer perspective was there were 50,000 different apps, none of them integrated with each other, none of them talked. So you were giving your data to 20 different places and didn’t have a great experience.

The same is true on the operating side, right? Property management teams use 20 different systems. It’s completely different if the systems talk to each other. So in order to really solve an experience problem, we’ve applied that perspective on both sides.

How are you using AI?

We use AI both on the resident side and on the operator side. From a resident experience perspective, you can talk to us 24/7. AI will be available and humans will be available. We’re not a shop where we believe AI is the removal of people. 

We really believe it’s complementary and amplifies the best of what both systems can do and what people can do. From a resident experience, it’s integrated into that. You can talk to us at any time if you live in one of our properties. And then we also just follow resident trends and preferences so that we can tailor your experience in a way that feels really good to you uniquely.

Think about a Spotify playlist, basically. We want to create a Spotify playlist for you and your life in our building. That’s how we think about it on the resident side.

And then on the operator side, this is probably where we’ve actually invested the most.
We’ve seen a lot of tools for residents or both residents and operators, but nothing specifically for operators. We’ve built operator AI for our operators, so that they can easily operate across multiple property management systems, get answers to questions, do little workflows, just to give them some added tools and capabilities. So we’re trying to equip our teams with AI for multifamily operations, and do it in a way that works in a PMS-agnostic environment.

I’m trying to envision what my Spotify list would look like as a tenant. I know my music list is going to have both Notorious BIG and Jimi Hendrix. What would my Alfred version have?

We’ve learned that you really like Biggie and Jimi Hendrix, and the next time that we do a music event in our property or in our community of properties, we’re going to automatically RSVP you. Maybe there are some cool local musicians that are playing locally, and we’re going to suggest them to you if you want to go. 

Maybe you want your home cleaned twice a week. We’ll set that up for you or prompt you for that.

Maybe you like to go work out and listen to Biggie, so we’ll just book the Peloton for you every Monday at 2 o’clock. 

It’s like, who are you, and what is your lifestyle? And then, how do we help you? 

You might have a dog. Maybe his name is Biggie. Now we know that. We’re going to make sure that you know that there’s a pet wash station and your dog is walked and you get pretty treats on your dog’s birthday. We’re really trying to create a great experience for you that feels like home.

Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.