ATLANTA—Much has been said about the rise and reliance of high-tech bells and whistles in the commercial real estate industry. Cortland Partners is pressing several technology buttons at multifamily properties.

GlobeSt.com turned to Steven DeFrancis, CEO of Cortland Partners to find out more about what his firm is doing in the realm of technology in part three of this exclusive interview. You can still read parts one and two: Addressing an Under-the-Radar Renter Demographic and How Would Rising Homeownership Really Impact Multifamily?

“We're identifying key areas for enhancement in addressing the needs of our three primary stakeholders—our associates, our residents, and our investors—and using technology to be forward-thinking about meeting those needs,” DeFrancis tells GlobeSt.com. He offers one prime example.

Cortland execs recognized the firm was pushing its associates to be more innovative but weren't providing a key platform for them to brainstorm or share their ideas for solving our business challenges. In response, Cortland just launched an innovation and idea sharing platform to give our associates a digital stage for sharing their ideas and identifying new opportunities.

“On the resident front, we've identified smart home features as a desire among many of our residents and are exploring the myriad ways in which we can bring that level of ease and automation to life at our communities,” DeFrancis says. “Most recently, we completed the installation of 12,000 Nest Learning Thermostats across our portfolio, we are in the process of testing out concepts like package delivery auto-notifications with our package storage amenities.”

Cortland is also deeply engaged in the world of Building Information Modeling, virtual renderings, and augmented reality scenarios to provide both its future and current residents a preview of the improvements they can look forward to during our renovation process. That is a forward-thinking move in the industry.

“When it comes to investment management, we're really gearing up to support our future growth and stay ahead of the trends,” DeFrancis says. “A few tech advancements we're deploying include geospatial analytic web applications for strategic investment planning, an extensive, highly scalable ecosystem of investment modelling tools, and the development of bots to aggregate targeted geographic and economic information not readily available on the market.”

Instant Insights /

Cortland Reveals Its High-Tech Multifamily Strategy

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