Canada’s rental revolution leverages AI 

Innovation jumped by leaps and bounds with the advent of Artificial Intelligence. Technological evolution has experienced a dramatic reset as evidenced by AI being leveraged to revolutionize workflows, industries, and problem-solving. When OpenAI was introduced to the world, disruptors and innovators from around the globe decided to hop on the bandwagon and find creative, more efficient ways to solve problems using this very technology. One such venture decided to use the life-changing capability of AI to potentially improve Canada’s housing crisis.  
 
An AI lead qualifier software for multifamily housing and leasing professionals, QuickCasa helps property managers manage their inbound queries and qualify leads using conversational AI. Creating efficiencies in the renting process to help Canadians get into their dream homes faster, the software chats with leads on various online listing sites including Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, Zumper etc., and qualifies them for the properties that might be best suited for them. “Imagine somebody throwing a hundred apples at you. How many of them would you catch? And how many of those that you caught were the good ones? That’s what leasing agents deal with all the time. With QuickCasa, we solve that problem,” shares Stephen McCabe, CEO of QuickCasa. The software goes beyond custom lead qualification and helps property managers in inventory management, syndication and lead quality tracking. “The property managers boost their rental listings through paid ads on Kijiji, Zumper and Rentals.ca and other platforms. While they do get their inboxes filled with leads, there’s no way of tracking the quality of those leads depending on the source. With QuickCasa, they can get lead quality insights and accordingly plan their marketing expenditure on these platforms,” says McCabe.  
 
The idea first stemmed from the desire to leverage AI to solve an impending challenge at hand. McCabe, along with his two Co-Founders, Pat Wilken and Dayna Voisin, realized that Canada’s housing crisis is not only a demand-supply issue but also alludes to the burden on leasing managers and professionals who tackle innumerable requests and leads on rental properties in an already packed day. This leads to a slower time frame to get Canadians into homes. “Our software does cut down lead time and that’s great, but that’s not all,” adds McCabe. With the amount of data in hand, McCabe believes that QuickCasa has the potential to forecast housing demand in the future to meet the gap between the kind of house in demand and the kind of house that should be built. The software also acknowledges and embraces diversity through their multilingual feature, “We add value by creating equitability, so that anyone in Canada, who is not a native speaker, can also interact in their own language,” says McCabe.  

Creating a platform that is purpose-built for the housing and rental market, this made-in-Canada technology is cleverly engineered. “While we leverage OpenAI right now, we are not completely reliant on it. What’s proprietary is our custom cognitive AI technology and our data storage techniques that make us unique,” says McCabe. QuickCasa’s cognitive awareness element makes conversations with their technology more personable and human-like while their data storage is tailored to handle infinite amounts of information, without confusing the Artificial Intelligence in place. “Our aim, in the future, is to host our own Large Language Model (LLM) as they are becoming much more economical to run these days,” shares McCabe. Another Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that QuickCasa offers is creating a platform that helps businesses achieve their goals. “If a prospective tenant says that they’re interested next year, our technology is smart to cross-sell another product that might be ready next year. It’s dynamic enough to push towards a set business goal, instead of only facilitating personable conversations,” shares McCabe.  

When it comes to the user experience of the platform, on the side of the renters, the software will feel like a leasing specialist answering any queries through email. However, the backend of this software is where the magic happens. Property managers and leasing professionals have access to a dashboard that gives them information about the rental inquiry and the score that AI gives that prospect based on their conversation. When asked how the prospect quality is assessed, McCabe had a very interesting response, “Our cognitive AI keeps evolving with every use. It usually analyzes conversations based on snarky or short responses, lack/low responsiveness rate and picks up on those natural conversation cues to give a score.” That’s not all – the managers can also update their available rental properties and see the channel that the prospect has used to contact them, helping managers plan their marketing efforts better.  

Understanding the need to create efficiencies to fuel the future housing demand, QuickCasa is excited about the potential of this software to create waves in the housing industry. “Right now, we are a lead qualifier, but we want to fill that ‘lead to lease’ journey and expand our breadth through microsites. Our idea is that these microsites will help you get even more data to support buyer profiles and understand the customer funnel. All this aggregated data will also help property managers understand the kind of demand in the market,” says McCabe. Hitting 3,000 units managed just this year, well on their path to scale, McCabe and his team are ready to take QuickCasa to the next level, creating a visionary tool for tomorrow’s housing landscape.