Multifamily Operations AI Vendor Travtus Raises $4M

Travtus Workforce, which bills itself as an “AI technology company focused on multifamily operations,” announced the completion of a $4 million seed funding round led by RET Ventures. No other investors were mentioned in the company’s press release. Travtus expects to use the funding to boost sales and marketing as well as to increase product development.

The company’s first product, called Adam and launched in 2019, “uses machine learning to automate multifamily property management” by monitoring and reviewing communications and service requests from residents and then associating the information with “key property metrics” like renewal rates to better understand how people interact with a property.

It’s only been recently, according to some experts, that the multifamily industry has begun to start seriously considering what artificial intelligence can do for companies. The advent of working from home and consumer desire for contactless interactions in the face of pandemic precautions began to wear skepticism down.

“Unlike other AI-based technologies that focus primarily on streamlining the leasing process, Adam’s applications improve a broad variety of day-to-day management processes including maintenance requests, Wi-Fi issues, and rent payments,” the company says. “Adam also integrates with a property’s existing productivity tools, seamlessly automating task management, CRM, and communication for on-site teams.”

In theory, a broader consideration of resident-landlord interactions could better inform communications and decisions to optimize some outcome, whether knowing how high rent could go or minimizing tenant turnover.

Travtus—which, if replacing the v with a u, means “drawn”—calls Adam a “digital employee,” which seems to play into a common mistaken impression of how AI technology works. It doesn’t think. Instead, in the currently common form of machine learning, it can identify and respond to patterns in data. Someone has to train software on what patters are desired and which are not.

Frequently vendors of specialized software employing machine learning techniques will provide essential training. But the software usually works best by receiving ongoing feedback on choices to improve results over time. Although Travtus says that a “digital employee is an automated team member that is trained to carry out a business process just like any employee, only faster and without mistakes,” that isn’t necessarily the case. It presumes proper training data and processes. If the training data is full of bad decisions, that is what the machine learning system will do.

“A confluence of market forces, including labor shortages, and more recently rising interest rates, have driven a renewed focus on automation for multifamily operators, both to mitigate staffing issues and help existing management teams perform their jobs more effectively,” the company claims. “Travtus offers a machine-learning solution that addresses critical pain points felt by residents and operators alike, optimizing for both resident experience and property-level operating efficiency.”