|
Nicholas,
Last week, I wrapped up a busy season of conferences and speaking engagements that allowed me to not only share the work we are doing at the Multifamily Impact Council but also learn from and be inspired by the amazing work that organizations across the industry are doing to improve lives, address climate change and deliver solid returns for their investors. At every meeting and conference, the number of organizations who had downloaded our framework and were working to bolster their impact-driven work was overwhelming.
Already, more than 400 organizations have downloaded the Impact Framework. Ten organizations have formally adopted the framework, and we are working with many more who are in the process of doing so in 2024. If your organization is interested in doing the same or would like to learn more about the organizations that have already adopted the framework, please check out the framework section of our website.
In this month’s newsletter, we hear from one of those Adopters. Vidur Gupta is CEO of Beekin, an artificial intelligence real estate analytics platform for rental housing investors and lenders. In his interview below, Vidur tells us more about Beekin, what he thinks multifamily owners/operators should be thinking about for next year, what Framework adoption looks like for them, and more.
Beekin and other analytics platforms play a vital role in our quest to develop industry standards that increase the flow of impact-driven capital into multifamily housing. Their ability to incorporate our principles and deliver streamlined reporting and analytics tools is critical, and we are so pleased that Vidur and his team are on board with us for the future.
I hope you enjoy his words of wisdom and would encourage you to contact him or me if you have any questions or simply want to learn more.
Thank you all for your support of the work that we are doing. Your input and leadership built the Multifamily Impact Council and our Impact Framework. We exist for the good of the industry, and as we continue to grow, I am beyond thankful that we will be doing it together.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that your Holiday Season will be peaceful and filled with joy.
Thanks for reading,
Bob Simpson
President, Multifamily Impact Council
| |
|
Vidur Gupta is CEO of Beekin, a next-generation AI platform for institutional investors and operators in rental housing.
By leveraging big data and advanced machine learning, Beekin’s patented solutions drive efficiency through better underwriting, better asset management, and measurable social impact across market rate, affordable, and workforce housing.
| |
What is Beekin, and what kind of work do you do? | |
|
Beekin is an AI-powered platform that offers solutions to rental housing investors. By aggregating millions of datapoints from rental listings, public records, and two dozen other sources we build machine-learning powered software to help buy, manage, and finance apartments and single-family homes better.
One of the biggest problems in the residential rental housing market is that owners and managers have almost no way of predicting whether a resident will move out. This may sound like a minor problem, but it costs the industry $50 billion a year – that’s billion with a B. The most obvious source of loss is vacancy loss and economic occupancy. Other costs quickly add up, including turn costs, remarketing costs, and pressure on leasing teams to fill empty units. Not to mention pressure from capital providers and lenders who get nervous.
Residents don't move out in a vacuum. They leave hints, “breadcrumbs,” for months leading up to their departure. Unfortunately, most property companies don’t have the technology to connect the dots and predict whether someone will renew or leave. This creates uncertainty and significant financial consequences. Beekin uses artificial intelligence to solve this problem by analyzing data from multiple sources to flag tenants who may move out. This gives owners and leasing agents enough advance warning to plan for a vacancy and take steps to fill units as quickly as possible, preventing the financial consequences of empty homes.
In addition, we have developed proprietary tools that also use AI to help owners and operators determine the values of properties so they can make educated, data-driven decisions about buying and selling homes and multifamily communities. This is important because there has traditionally been a lot of guesswork in landing on a fair price.
| |
What are some multifamily use cases for Beekin’s platform? | |
|
Our company was built for the rental housing market and is not a general-use system that can be adapted to meet the needs of this industry. That’s one reason so many property companies depend on us: they know Beekin was created from the ground up to address the specific needs of multifamily and single-home property companies.
For affordable and workforce housing operators, there is an opportunity to analyze resident and market data better as interest rates rise and operational excellence becomes vital. By managing these dimensions, multifamily teams can add a level of automation which will directly affect their communities and amplify the impact of their work.
One way companies use our products is by looking at patterns related to paying rent and requesting service. Residents who frequently pay late every month have a far greater likelihood of moving out because of financial considerations. This seems obvious, but we are the first technology platform that looks at payment history to predict whether someone will renew their lease. We also look at work orders, messages sent to management teams, and so on. This has been used successfully by companies like Netflix, Amazon in understanding customer behavior, we are bringing it to rental housing.
| |
What are some things you suggest owners/operators think about for resident services as we head into 2024? | |
|
Residents are smart! Property companies often don’t give them enough credit, but most apartment and single-family home residents are computer-savvy and financially literate. In a competitive market, resident satisfaction continues to be a big opportunity. This is a composite problem which requires rethinking the product (e.g. the community and its amenities) as well as overall service levels, such as time taken to handle a maintenance request.
Secondly, affordability continues to remain poor for millions of Americans. Amidst this backdrop, providing services like career development and relevant property-level amenities (e.g. bundled utilities and fast internet) can improve resident satisfaction and social impact while reducing the pressure on these residents’ already stretched wallets. This is bound to reflect in on-time rental payments, better credit score, and ultimately the long-term health of the rental community.
| |
What role does impact, or ESG, play in your company’s strategy and work? | |
|
ESG investors are often blamed for concessionary returns, but by leveraging empirical analysis and innovative AI, investors can measure and quantify their impact and create outsized financial returns for their LPs. It is possible to do good and not compromise returns – attainable housing is validation of this hypothesis.
ESG is central to our mission as an analytics company focused on rental housing. We have proven that by keeping residents for longer through positive externalities, we can not only maximize our social impact maximized, but lower portfolio costs to optimize fiscal impact.
By analyzing millions of lease events, we can learn which factors change lease renewals, then group and benchmark these factors to UN SDGs and MIC impact metrics.
| |
Beekin is an early adopter of the Multifamily Impact Framework™. Why did your company decide to adopt the Framework? | |
|
We’ve been impressed with the Multifamily Impact Council’s approach to developing standards for environmental, social, and governance metrics in the multifamily sector. As an ethical AI company, we want to deliver new efficiencies for operators and ensure our technologies help improve conditions for renters.
Adopting the Multifamily Impact Framework™ not only strengthens our ability to develop innovative, human-centric models, but also allows us work more closely with like-minded businesses and individuals to advocate for the responsible use of AI on a societal level.
| |
What does Framework adoption look like for Beekin? | |
|
The Framework maps so directly to our day-one values. Over the past few years of our R&D, we had reverse-engineered several metrics of the Framework through our product PRESI. So, when we met with Bob and the team, we were incredibly happy to see an expansive measurement and acceptance of our platform through a body like the MIC and the development of the industry at large.
Transparency, measurement, and reporting of consistent standards are vital to the evolution of any industry. The FASB has done this for GAAP, creating a standardized way to report finances. The Multifamily Impact Framework™ is the first real step in making that the industry standard and to create an ethical scaffold for everyone to use, in the same way for ESG in attainable housing. We are excited about what the future brings to this space.
| |
Industry News and Updates | | | | |
