Proptech spending in multifamily has grown for years, but that growth is no longer guaranteed. As portfolios face tighter margins and site teams manage more properties with fewer people, operators are re-examining which software categories actually earn their renewal. That scrutiny is changing how vendors get evaluated, and how many are being cut.
Across the multifamily sector, operators are tuning out technology vendors. It’s not that the tools fail. Rather, the sales pitch has become disconnected from the problems site teams face every day. The result is a growing gap between what proptech companies build and what operators are willing to pay for.
The Sales Pitch Problem
Chamari De Silva, Director of Marketing at Renew, argues that the proptech category has developed a communication problem. Vendors lead with features, automation counts, and AI capabilities. Operators ask a simpler question: will this make my team’s job easier, and can you prove it?
“There’s a lot of AI fatigue coming in,” Silva says. Her concern is not with AI as a capability, but with how narrowly it is applied. In the renewal and retention space, she observes that many platforms have become sophisticated messaging tools. They automate outreach without identifying which residents actually need it.
Without behavioral understanding of residents ahead of renewals, Silva says, automation “just ends up becoming an extension of resident communications.” The technology looks impressive in a demo but does not change how operators make decisions about individual leases.
Scrutinizing ROI Carefully
Silva says the sales friction she observes reflects how operators now evaluate software investments. With budgets under pressure and site teams already stretched, operators will not absorb the cost and disruption of new platforms unless the return is clear.
“Not really understanding why does my team need this and how is this going to help make our day to day better, our overall portfolio strategy better,” Silva says. That gap in understanding, she says, comes up repeatedly across proptech categories, not just renewals.
Part of the difficulty is that many of the most valuable capabilities in the retention space involve metrics operators have never tracked before. If there is no baseline for measuring how early lease intervention affects renewal rates, quantifying the ROI of a tool designed to enable that intervention becomes nearly impossible. Operators cannot justify the investment without data, but they cannot generate the data without making the investment.
Missing the Real Need
Silva’s critique extends beyond AI fatigue to the broader sales posture of the proptech industry. Vendors too often arrive with a predetermined view of what operators need, she argues, rather than doing the harder work of understanding specific gaps in each operator’s workflow.
“It’s not so much about selling a particular product to who you assume the need is for,” Silva says, “but actually recognizing the gap in their services or whatever it is that they’re needing and how can we help.” She describes the most effective approach as consultative: working with operators to surface problems they may not have articulated, rather than pitching solutions to problems the vendor assumed existed.
The payoff is reaching operators who are not actively shopping for a solution but would immediately recognize its value if shown the gap. “It’s the solution that they’ve always been dreaming of in their heads,” Silva says, “working in it day to day and thinking, I wish I had this.”
Decision Quality Over Speed
Most renewal management happens within a 60- to 90-day window before a lease expires, Silva notes. Within that narrow window, site teams tend to treat every expiring lease the same way, because they lack the information to do otherwise. Identifying renewal likelihood months earlier gives teams time to intervene on at-risk leases, decide whether concessions are necessary, and avoid spending resources on residents who already intend to stay.
That earlier window is what separates decision-support tools from automation, in Silva’s framing. Automation can make outreach faster without changing which leases a team focuses on first. The tools operators are willing to pay for, she argues, are the ones that change which decisions get made, not simply how quickly existing decisions get communicated. For operators evaluating retention technology, that is the more useful test: does the tool change what the team decides, or does it just speed up what they were already going to send.
About the Expert: Chamari De Silva is Director of Marketing at Renew, a multifamily renewal and retention platform focused on helping operators improve lease renewal rates through behavioral intelligence and predictive analytics.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
