Multifamily market trends, the net operating income (NOI) playbook, and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption were the key themes for the first day of the Multifamily Executive Leadership Summit in Vail, Colorado.
Jeff Adler, vice president at Yardi Matrix, kicked off the summit with a big-picture look at the economy and a deep dive into multifamily fundamentals.
“The bottom line is the market’s not bad, but it’s actually very much regionally differentiated depending upon the COVID response to supply,” he told the audience.
2026 and 2027 are shaping up for sluggish rent growth—0.5% to 1% year over year. Rent growth is anticipated to be more normalized for 2028 and 2029. The Midwest and Northeast, including New York, Chicago, the Twin Cities, and Kansas City, Missouri, continue to fare well for rent growth as does San Francisco, which is back to pre-pandemic levels. Sun Belt markets that are still absorbing massive supply are showing slow or negative growth, but Adler noted that most will normalize between 2% to 5% after 2029.
Looking at investment strategies, Adler emphasized the next wave of emerging markets to watch, comparing them to 10 to 15 years ago when there weren’t a lot of institutional investors in Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Nashville, Tennessee.
These markets include Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, Ohio; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky; Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Oklahoma City; and Omaha, Nebraska.
“I am intrigued with some of these new smaller markets that are benefiting from reindustrialization, some AI hubs, and some other emerging technologies,” he said. “I would encourage you to at least spend time looking at them and evaluating how they would fit into your portfolio.”
The NOI Playbook
Executives from Avenue5 Residential, Bozzuto, and Centennial Holdings shared how they are navigating rising operating expenses and improving NOI.
Robin Hanson, executive vice president of operations for Avenue5 Residential, touted centralization as a savings tool. By taking the administrative assistant manager duties off-site, the third-party manager is seeing payroll savings from 8% to 10%.
“In addition to that, we are seeing stronger collections, we are seeing higher renewal rates, and we are seeing better conversions on-site as it relates to the teams being able to focus on the customer in front of them. They don’t have to worry about calling somebody and collecting rent, and that has made an impact on both the revenue side and the expense side,” she noted.
Heather Wallace, managing director of operations, West, for Bozzuto, also shared centralization on the administrative side is having a positive impact. The property manager will collect about four properties in a pod and pull those administrative functions off-site.
“We've been able to realize savings of about $100,000 in payroll, consistently rolling that out across the portfolio where it makes sense,” she added.
Titus Wood, vice president of Centennial Holdings, said 2026 is “our year of other income,” noting that bulk internet rollouts—an important revenue driver in 2025—will continue to generate income this year.
Looking ahead, the leaders weighed in on where the next era of NOI growth will come from.
Hanson noted automation, saying “I think we’re going to see automation take away some of those repetitive tasks and really allow our people to focus on the high-value impact they can have.”
Wood responded with hiring good people. “To me, you could have the perfect playbook, strategies, and systems in place, but if you have the wrong people, you’re going to get in trouble,” he noted.
The AI Frontier
Multifamily owners and operators are embracing AI—from enterprise-level GPT rollouts to resident and prospect communications. While at different stages in the AI process, industry leaders shared key lessons they’ve learned on their journeys. .
“AI is not a singular thing. Before you go out and buy AI, figure out what is your problem or pain point that you’re trying to solve,” said Dixie Anderson, senior vice president, software support, at RPM Living. “Another fallacy is the idea that you can implement AI and walk away from it, and that’s very untrue. It’s not a set and go, it is an engagement with the tool.”
Jeff Krohn, chief operating officer at Avenue5 Residential, and Ian Andrews, senior vice president for Avanti Residential, both stressed the importance of experimenting with today’s tools.
“From an enterprise level, we want to be the leading edge. There’s value in experimentation,” noted Krohn. “Our drive at Avenue5 is to really create the most articulate, authentic staffing that we can, especially focusing on the regional managers and up, with the ability to aggregate data to critically think and to use as an augmentation tool to add to the skills and wisdom they already have. Our focus is on consistent and repetitive training in making sure our people are adopting and using these solutions.”
Andrews added that with every increase in the base models, such as Claude and ChatGPT, the capabilities are helping the firm get further along on the problems it is trying to solve. However, the human component still needs to be there.
“The vast majority of our AI use case today is that it acts as an assistant or thought partner to every person in the organization,” he said. “But we still want to have that human in place to check the work that is being done.”