Why “using tech” is no longer an advantage in property management - by Yotam Cohen

For years, property management firms have made a show of their digital tools such as tenant portals, accounting apps, communication dashboards. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: using tech doesn’t make a company tech-driven. And in today’s AI-native era, the difference isn’t just semantic. It’s existential.

Legacy property management firms love to boast about their “digital transformation,” but in reality, most are just layering apps on top of outdated systems. It’s lipstick on a decades-old interface. The core processes remain manual, the mindset remains analog. The result? More logins, more confusion, and more inefficiency masked as innovation. Even where some tech is present, it’s usually superficial: flashy dashboards with no real intelligence underneath.

As artificial intelligence reshapes industry after industry, the property management world finds itself at a crossroads. This is an industry with enormous data flows: rent rolls, maintenance logs, energy usage, communication trails, vendor performance. And yet most of that data is siloed or underutilized. AI, done right, thrives on this kind of information. But it can’t just be plugged in. It needs to be embedded, structurally and strategically, into the operating system of a business.

Hence, there’s a massive difference between using technology and being built on technology.

In many industries, companies that are truly tech-native; those built from the ground up around data architecture, automation logic, and user-centric design-are positioned to scale AI in ways that feel seamless to the end user and transformative to operations. They’re not reacting to change; they’re anticipating it. They’re not bolting AI on, they’re growing into it.

In property management, this means things like predictive maintenance instead of reactive service tickets. Intelligent workflows that assign tasks based on urgency, technician availability, and historical resolution times. Proactive outreach to residents before a problem escalates. Instant insights into operational risk, insurance exposure, or Local Law compliance. All derived from real-time building data, not retrospective spreadsheets.

And perhaps the biggest shift is what this means for user experience. When a company is tech-first, when intelligence is embedded at the core; residents, board members, and staff experience a level of service that simply can’t be matched. Fewer delays. Fewer mistakes. More transparency. In short: unparalleled service.

And this isn’t just an internal advantage. Board members and unit owners will feel the impact too. When operations run smoother, problems get resolved faster, and communication is proactive rather than reactive, the entire building experience improves.

Yet in this industry, there’s a common refrain: “This is the way we’ve been doing things for years.” That mindset is the real anchor. Meanwhile, many legacy firms are still stuck in the past: relying on emailed PDFs, fragmented systems, and manual handoffs that make true progress impossible.

So when a company says they “use technology,” the real question is: was the whole system built with technology in mind, or is it just the latest plugin? Did they actually rethink how the work gets done, or just rebrand the same old process?

The future of property management will be driven by those who rethink the category itself. Those who recognize that in a world shaped by AI, having an app is not innovation. It’s the bare minimum. What matters now is how deeply intelligence is wired into the operation, how easily it scales, and how clearly it improves the lives of the people managing and living in the buildings we call home.

“Using tech” is no longer an advantage. The winners will be the ones who never needed the tools in the first place because they built the system right from the start using technology. Boards and residents should know the difference—and start demanding more.

Yotam Cohen is the co-founder and CEO of Daisy, New York, N.Y.