Custom Voice AI That Speaks to Your Property Management System
The best voice AI for small property managers is a custom system built on a large language model. It integrates directly with your property management software to answer tenant calls automatically.
The build complexity depends on your specific Property Management Software (PMS), such as AppFolio or Buildium, and the number of call types you need to handle. A system for maintenance requests and leasing questions is a standard build. Adding rent payment status or amenity booking requires deeper API integration.
We built a voice system for a property manager with 12 employees managing 250 residential units. They were spending 4 hours a day on routine calls. The system went live in 3 weeks and now handles 60% of inbound calls without human intervention.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most property managers first try a generic Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system from their phone provider. This system can only route calls with a “press 1 for leasing, press 2 for maintenance” menu. It cannot answer a tenant's specific question, so it just forwards the call to a staff member who still has to look up the information manually. The IVR adds a frustrating step without solving the underlying workload problem.
Next, they might try a human-powered answering service. These services work from a static script your team provides. They can take a message, but they cannot access your PMS to check a work order status or see if a unit is available. When a tenant calls at 8 PM, the service emails a message, and your staff spends the next morning listening to voicemails and calling people back, creating a 12-hour delay.
This delay is the core failure. A tenant asking “Has my rent check been processed?” needs a real-time answer, not a promise of a callback. Without a direct connection to the source of truth—your PMS—any phone solution is just a message taker, not a problem solver. It creates frustrated tenants and inefficient staff.
How Does It Work?
We start by connecting to your phone number using the Twilio API. When a call comes in, the audio is transcribed to text in real-time and sent to a custom application we build with Python and FastAPI. This application serves as the brain of the operation, running on AWS Lambda for high availability and low cost.
The core logic uses the Claude API to understand the caller's intent. We engineer specific prompts that guide the model to classify requests into categories like 'maintenance_status', 'lease_inquiry', or 'payment_question'. Once the intent is known, the FastAPI application makes a secure, read-only API call to your PMS using httpx to fetch the relevant data, typically in under 500ms.
With the live data retrieved from your PMS, we make a second call to the Claude API. This time, the prompt instructs it to synthesize a helpful, natural-sounding response. For example, “I see your work order for the leaky sink is open, and a plumber is scheduled for Thursday between 10 AM and 12 PM.” This response is converted back to audio and played for the tenant. The entire process, from the end of the tenant's question to the start of the AI's answer, takes less than 3 seconds.
Every call transcript, intent classification, and final AI response is logged to a Supabase database. This gives you a complete, auditable record of every interaction. For a portfolio of 400 units handling 1,500 calls per month, the total cloud hosting cost on AWS is typically under $75 per month.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Resolve 60% of Calls in 90 Seconds
The system resolves common tenant inquiries instantly, 24/7. Your team is freed from repetitive calls and can focus on high-value work and complex resident issues.
One-Time Build, Not Per-Call Fees
After a single fixed-price build, you only pay for low-cost cloud hosting. This avoids the high, scaling monthly fees of human-powered answering services.
You Own the Code and Call Data
We deliver the complete Python source code to your company's GitHub repository. All call logs and transcripts are stored in your own database, not a third-party platform.
Alerts for New Tenant Problems
Monitoring is configured in CloudWatch to send a Slack alert if more than 5 calls in an hour have an 'unknown' intent. This helps you quickly identify new, recurring issues.
Speaks Directly to AppFolio or Buildium
Direct API integration gives the AI real-time access to work orders, payment status, and unit availability. It works from live data, not a static phone script.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Week 1: Intent Mapping and PMS Access
You provide read-only API access to your Property Management Software and a list of your top 5 most common call types. We deliver a technical plan mapping each call to a data source.
Week 2: Core Logic and Prompt Engineering
We build the core FastAPI application and engineer the Claude API prompts for your specific call types. You receive a text-based demo to validate the AI's responses.
Week 3: Telephony Setup and Deployment
We provision a phone number via Twilio and connect it to the application deployed on AWS Lambda. You receive a live phone number to conduct user acceptance testing.
Weeks 4-6: Live Monitoring and Handoff
The system handles live calls. We monitor performance, tune prompts based on real conversations, and deliver the full source code and a maintenance runbook.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom voice AI system cost?
- The cost depends on two factors: the number of distinct call types (e.g., maintenance, leasing, payments) and the quality of your PMS API documentation. A system handling 3-4 common intents is a standard 3-week build. We provide a fixed-price quote after our initial discovery call, so you know the full cost upfront.
- What happens when the AI doesn't know the answer?
- If the AI cannot confidently understand the caller's request after two attempts, it responds gracefully. It says, 'I can't seem to find that information, let me connect you to a member of our team.' The call is then forwarded to your main office line, and the full call transcript is emailed to your staff for context.
- How is this different than a virtual receptionist service?
- Virtual receptionists are humans following a static script. They cannot access your internal systems like AppFolio in real time to provide specific updates. Our system has a direct API connection to your data, allowing it to answer questions like 'What is the status of my work order?' instantly, 24/7, without human operators.
- Can the system handle callers who speak Spanish?
- Yes. The Claude API is multilingual. We can configure the system to detect the caller's language and respond in either English or Spanish. This is defined during the initial build and typically adds 2-3 days to the project timeline to ensure the Spanish-language prompts and responses are accurate and natural for your tenants.
- How do we update information like office hours?
- We store static information like business hours or emergency contacts in a simple configuration file. You can update this file yourself without needing to change any code. For dynamic information like unit availability or tenant balances, the system pulls it live from your PMS on every single call, so it is always up to date automatically.
- Is it secure to give you access to our Property Management Software?
- Security is the priority. We only require read-only API credentials, so the system can never modify your data. All credentials are encrypted and stored in AWS Secrets Manager, not in the code. You receive the full source code for your own security team to audit, and the system is deployed within your own cloud environment.
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