By Max Gajdel, STAN AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming an essential tool across industries globally, including in community association management. However, despite its growing presence, there remains a gap between the awareness of AI and its actual usage. As of 2024, over 58% of U.S. adults are aware of AI technologies like ChatGPT, but only 23% have used them, according to surveys from Pew Research Center and Mailbutler (Pew Research Center, Mailbutler).
This gap was further highlighted at the CAI 2023 CEO-MC retreat last September, where only 10% of the over 200 management company executives in attendance reported having ever used AI tools in their work. This discrepancy signals the need for more effective AI adoption, especially within the community management space.
Importantly, this also creates missed opportunities for efficiency and effectiveness within the industry. Bridging this gap is not just about understanding AI’s existence but also recognizing its potential to transform daily operations, and it is crucial for AI to be fully integrated and leveraged in community association management, where it can help create more connected communities.
- Communication with Homeowners:
- Meeting Minutes:
- Emergency Preparedness Tool:
- Sales Assistant:
- Writing Assistant:
- Owner Portal Assistance:
- Online Reviews and Reputation Management:
- Voice Assistants and Live Virtual Avatars:
- Budgeting:
- Workflow Automation:
AI’s most effective application today comes in the form of automating communication with homeowners and residents, ranging from managing daily inquiries to scheduling bookings and work orders. This not only reduces the workload on community association managers (CAMs), but also improves response times and resident satisfaction.
Board meetings are another important point of discussion. A community or HOA’s governing documents often dictate that board meetings consist of two parts—open sessions and executive sessions. Homeowners in most states have a legal right to attend open sessions, but most boards make the mistake of not inviting them, making board meeting minutes a vital necessity.
However, transcribing and summarizing board meetings is traditionally a time-consuming and error-prone process. AI can now transcribe discussions in real-time and create accurate summaries that can be quickly distributed to all relevant parties. This automation not only saves time but also ensures that records are accurate and readily available.
In times of emergencies, such as during the recent Hurricane Beryl, AI becomes a crucial asset in maintaining clear and effective communication. Custom-built AI assistants can automate the sending of alerts, coordinate evacuation efforts, and provide residents with real-time updates, ensuring their safety through these unforeseen events. Moreover, AI can be set up to handle emergency-specific tasks, such as building tailored AI assistants connected to weather monitoring sites, providing residents with critical information and guidance when it is needed most.
AI can even act as a sales assistant for community management companies, and become a tool that can sell prospective board members on choosing you, and directly help generate more management contracts. AI can custom-build an experience that can align your company’s services to the needs of a board member who might be on the lookout for new management.
In this instance, AI analyzes the behavior of website visitors in real-time, determining their likely intent based on their interactions with the site. It can guide them through a personalized journey—whether it’s directing a homeowner to a portal for accessing important documents, or showcasing available services to board members. It can then ask relevant questions to gather information, qualify the lead, and even schedule a follow-up meeting or call with a human representative.
With the content that community managers often have to generate on a weekly basis, AI can also serve as an invaluable writing assistant, especially when it comes to generating personalized communications tailored to specific needs. By being trained on a community’s governing documents, AI can create customized community notices, draft responses to homeowner emails, and craft outbound text blasts for specific situations.
Whether it's a reminder about upcoming board meetings, emergency alerts, or general announcements, AI can always ensure that the tone, language, and content are consistent with the community’s standards and legal requirements.
AI can also enhance the owner portal experience by offering a personalized web chat feature for homeowners that provides real-time assistance. Even when owners face difficulties logging in, they can still access answers to community-specific questions directly through the portal. This AI-driven chat support ensures that owners receive the help they need without the hassle of navigating through login issues, making the portal more user-friendly and accessible.
By streamlining communication within the portal, AI helps to resolve common queries quickly and efficiently, improving overall user satisfaction.
Within the community management space, managing online reputation is paramount to driving growth. From handling Google reviews to responding appropriately to comments on social media pages, a community management company’s online footprint can heavily influence an HOA’s decision to pick it as their next management firm.
AI can play a crucial role in this by automating many aspects of media and public relations management. For instance, AI can monitor reviews and online chatter in real-time, flagging negative comments for immediate attention and even automatically posting responses that align with the company’s brand voice. Additionally, AI can also assist in drafting press communication, ensuring that it is consistent and aligned with ongoing marketing strategies.
Looking forward, the potential of AI in CAM is even more exciting. AI has now evolved to directly interact with homeowners through voice assistants and live virtual avatars. These AI-driven interfaces offer a more personalized and engaging form of communication, making interactions with residents more human, while offering round-the-clock 24x7 support. Such advancements could radically transform the homeowner experience, making AI an integral part of daily life in community management.
What’s more, AI has the potential to revolutionize the budgeting process in association management. By analyzing historical financial data, predicting future expenses, and generating detailed reports, AI can assist in creating more accurate budgets. This automation saves significant time and improves the precision of financial planning, particularly during budgeting seasons.
Additionally, AI can automate the creation of any workflow for community managers, customized by property or even down to a specific homeowner automation..
For example, you could automate communication for delinquencies to reduce AR across your associations. Using workflow automations, you could simply describe your problem and desired outcome to an AI assistant and it automatically creates a workflow connecting your management software and other apps you use to complete the tasks. Imagine in this case, you directed an AI assistant to pull a list of delinquent accounts every month, put it into a spreadsheet and send out a collections email that includes the ACH form and bank link to encourage payments. The assistant could follow up persistently tracking if the owner made payment and if not, generate a report for your attorney or board highlighting difficult accounts for further action. This could all happen automatically without you lifting a finger!
The future of AI in community management will likely see even more sophisticated and beneficial implementations going forward. The current gap between AI awareness and usage is significant, but it is one that community association managers can bridge easily by embracing the technology. The capabilities of AI extend far beyond what many might realize, offering tools that can enhance efficiency, reduce workloads, and improve the quality of services provided to communities.
By exploring and integrating AI into their operations now, CAMs can take full advantage of its current capabilities and prepare for even greater advancements in the future.
Max Gajdel is the Co-Founder of STAN AI, the largest AI assistant for community association management companies in North America. As former community managers, Max and STAN Co-founder Bogdan Raic founded STAN AI in 2018 and have over 20 years of association management expertise.
