Stop Managing Everything Yourself: AI Automation for Real Estate Investors

Kaplana Sharma (00:00)
found that half of my day goes in handling calls. And these days you have great voice AIs that can do that job.

I looked at different platforms for management and none of them are providing that right now. So that is something real estate investors and property managers can either learn themselves if they like technology like I do, or they can have somebody to do it. I believe 80 % of their time that goes into those activities, they can get it back.

If not 80 % at least 50 % I totally believe that they can do that and that’s a lot I think.

Scott Bursey (02:19)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re talking about escaping the daily grind and letting smart tech manage your properties so you can focus on bigger deals. In studio, we are privileged to have Kaplana Sharma of Avaassa Group of Rentals. Get ready to download the blueprint for your business efficiency. This is going to be explosive.

Kaplana , welcome to the show.

Kaplana Sharma (02:48)
Thank you Scott. Thank you for inviting.

Scott Bursey (02:50)
⁓ is just wonderful to have you here. And for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please give us the front row seat and how your cure ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Kaplana Sharma (03:02)
Sure.

So just a little bit about my journey. came from India for medical treatment here. And for a couple of years, I struggled very hard for my treatment and then for the job. I remember I come from IT background. was in technology already before I came here. So I remember first job, was 2000 and I got laid off. No fault of mine, just because company was going out of business. And I realized that

⁓ At that time, it was a rude awakening to realize that if you’re not signing in the front of the check, you’re not in control of your future, of your finances. And at that time, I decided to do something about it. And fortunately, during the treatment, I had ⁓ come across with a family who is my close family now. They were into real estate investments. So I decided to learn during the time of my treatment.

And as soon as I earned my first paycheck, decided to invest. So 26 years down, now we have few properties. We started with the long-term rentals. And then last few years, we have diversified in midterm rental and short-term rentals. And since I come from tech background, even though I retired from IT ⁓ almost 10 years ago, AI brought that tech thing in me a few years ago. And I took…

⁓ I always want to make my systems efficient because ⁓ when I retired, my goal was to have not only financial freedom but time freedom also. But ⁓ when I actually retired from corporate, I found that I got myself another job with all the management and all the investments. I desperately wanted to be out of that. So last few years, I’ve invested heavily besides working in my regular

real estate stuff. have invested in learning about AI. I’ve developed few systems for us

and I’m looking forward to pass on that information to other real estate investors and property managers who are probably struggling or in the same boat as I was a couple of years ago. I hope that summarizes my journey.

Scott Bursey (06:05)
That is such a,

well, that is an incredible path and an incredible journey, Kaplana. You know, what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to use high level IT discipline, let’s call it, with the messy day-to-day operations of property management, creating systems that use AI and automate.

to scale your business and help others. That ability to engineer true hands-off efficiency is the very definition of investor fuel.

Kaplana Sharma (06:38)
Yes, I see that. Thank you.

Scott Bursey (06:40)
And now that we’ve ⁓ got that amazing background, let’s jump right in and look at the tech-driven foundation of your operation. What is your greatest operational strength when implementing automation for scaling property portfolios?

Kaplana Sharma (06:54)
Sure.

So since I have such a heavy background in property management and investment, and also I come from technology background, I’m able to see exactly where ⁓ you do need automation or where you don’t need automation. A lot of times I’m seeing in the market because of the hype AI has or the hype this automation plus AI has, people are just running towards it without understanding what actually needs

to be automated and what doesn’t. lot of times we and even I did that like when I started looking at my business I’m like let’s automate this let’s automate this but then I soon realized with all the knowledge I’ve acquired in last years that not every portion of your business needs to be automated. I mean some things are okay if you are doing something once a year or something you don’t really need to automate that unless it’s like it’s taking a really

really long time, it’s multi-step process or something. But so you have to really see which process is going to give you the highest return on your investment for you to invest your time and resources into doing that application or automation, whatever you want to call it.

Scott Bursey (08:13)
Thank you for highlighting that, Kaplana Now let’s shift gears a little bit. When integrating AI into a traditional property management business, what is the biggest resistance point you consistently encounter from operators?

Kaplana Sharma (08:27)
Well, ⁓ generally most of like what I have experienced is that

Most of the operators, whether we are real estate investors or let’s put it in other words, like any small business owners or any business owner, mostly we are good at what we are good at, like ⁓ our business, our behavior. We are very, very, that is something we have grown from a lot of times from the start to where we are. know, we think we know everything about it. We are the best at it. So let technology do it.

lot of times we don’t trust it.

We don’t think we are scary about like, what if it messes up? What is going to do? Especially like when we are dealing with even today, like accounting and finances, I may not want to give it straight away to any AI to do it, right? Even myself.

So, and that is somebody who is technologically very worse. But if you put somebody else who has,

who is not in touch with technology that much, they are going to be very resistant about it because they don’t believe it that an AI, could be that you don’t need a human to answer your phone calls these days. So that belief part that mindset shift part, have to see it that.

that this can work. So that is, ⁓ I think, the challenge which we as operators can face.

Scott Bursey (10:35)
actually seeing the tangible because it’s so amazing. That was a surgical breakdown. Wow. Thank you for that. What is the biggest untapped opportunity in AI for smaller growing property management firms right now that the big institutional players haven’t fully leveraged yet, Kaplana?

Kaplana Sharma (10:53)
Yeah, so as I was sharing with you earlier that for last couple of years, I have invested a lot of my time in testing a lot of different platforms for managing our business. So I see that I just discovered three months ago that ⁓ like I when I was dissecting about my time, what processes take too much of my time where I could use that time for something else.

found that half of my day goes in handling calls. And these days you have great voice AIs that can do that job.

I looked at different platforms for management and none of them are providing that right now. So that is something real estate investors and property managers can either learn themselves if they like technology like I do, or they can have somebody to do it. I believe 80 % of their time that goes into those activities, they can get it back.

If not 80 % at least 50 % I totally believe that they can do that and that’s a lot I think.

Scott Bursey (12:10)
It really is. If I’m hearing you correctly, finding those early adapter advantages is where pros can gain serious momentum and jump ahead of the curve.

Kaplana Sharma (12:19)
Right.

Scott Bursey (12:22)
What is the greatest ⁓ tech threat to automated property management systems that ⁓ you feel through your lens that operators must watch out for like in the next year or so?

Kaplana Sharma (12:35)
Good night.

So like what I have seen Scott is that after my lot of experimentation with AI, spent a lot of time after working on my daily operations with AI. And I have found that even though it is very, very intelligent, that’s why we call artificial intelligence, it has almost got a human intelligence right now, but it is still not 100 % accurate in lot of different things.

⁓ The threat we have is that one challenge which we just discussed is that people are not able to hand it off what they work to AI. That is one side of people. ⁓

side of business owners and then there’s another one who are like who could be willing to just give it all like handed all and hand all of it over to AI I was not able to say the whole sentence correct but what I was saying is that you should not trust AI 100 % right now you should have human in the loop

You should always check ⁓ what AI has told you, what AI has done, just to make sure, especially your numbers, your finances, ⁓ those kind of things. You should not 100 % trust AI right now. You should always have some tests and checks and stuff. Sorry.

Scott Bursey (14:40)
So that’s staying ahead of the, yes, ⁓

it’s risky. So you have to stay ahead of the risk curve and ⁓ check for accuracy if I’m hearing you correctly.

Kaplana Sharma (14:48)
It is.

Yes, that’s correct. ⁓

Scott Bursey (14:55)
Now, Kaplana, if

a real estate investor wants to automate their rental portfolio, what is the first administrative task they should implement using AI to create immediate leverage?

Kaplana Sharma (15:08)
So ⁓ depends on what is their workflow Scott, what is that they are doing on a day to day basis? Are they just real estate investors or are they doing property management also along with that? So in our case, let’s say we are not just investors, have property managers as well and we have different types of properties like long term, we do long term rental management, we do short term rental management and then mid term rental management.

we have to look at what are the processes which we are spending a lot of time in, which could be if they could get delegated or automated, we are going to have highest return on our investment. And I would say that is up to the investor, up to the business owner to figure out those activities, because I can tell you, because your business may be different. So I cannot just say, just automate this process. I have to look at your process and see that

which one and you can do it yourself as an investor or business owner you can look at your processes yourself and see where most of my time is going or where ⁓ I can get the highest return on investment of this process somebody else could do then I would get highest return on investment so those are the processes one should look into automation and the application

Scott Bursey (16:31)
That’s awesome advice. know, leveraging tech to remove low leverage tasks is the quickest path to scaling your time.

Kaplana Sharma (16:39)
And I forgot to mention there is another thing there is one thing called automation and there is one thing called AI application Sometimes we think they are the same but they are not the same automation is where you do when you have a Step-by-step process where you don’t have to think too much like

Let me see if I can give an example. ⁓ Let’s say the house gets rehabbed, then the next step is to list it. It’s always that step. So that can be automated. You don’t need AI application there. Because it’s step one, step two, it’s always the same.

But then there are other processes, for example, where I’m doing, let’s say, leave screening, where I’m talking to the leaves who have called to rent the house. And there, let’s say I’m talking about different aspects of their life, ⁓ how much they have, how much they earn, how much was their credit score, and all those kind of things. And then as a human being, where I’m determining from the way they are responding,

the different questions and determining whether that’s a good fit for me or not and that’s where the intelligence is coming so AI has the power to learn just like we do so those are the processes you can easily offer AI-Fi if that makes sense

Scott Bursey (18:04)
it makes perfect sense and that was just an excellent breakdown. Thank you so much for that. And you’ve really provided the fuel thus far, but we can’t let you leave yet. What’s some additional advice that you can leave with our pros today regarding AI?

Kaplana Sharma (18:19)
Uh-huh.

Additional advice, think don’t, so I give you example, my mom, my godmother, ⁓ she few years ago when iPhone and ⁓ these phones came out, she was like, I’m good with a flip phone. I don’t need a iPhone. It was so hard for me to get her to start using iPhone and now she loves it. She takes the pictures with her, she feels so happy sending the pictures to me right away when the rehab is going on or done.

or when she does some kind of furnishing to the house and she’s like look I did this and she sends it to me and she feels so good about it like having the iPhone. So same way I feel like the AI is the same thing and it is going to be part of her life, it already is.

So earlier, the faster we can adapt, the better we will be with our businesses. right now, you think of any business which does not have a, which maybe it’s in a retail, but if you don’t have a website, if you don’t have a…

I think website is a good example right now. You won’t have a bigger business. So same thing with AI if you don’t learn or you don’t have somebody in your staff to do it for you, you may be risking yourself to be left behind. Just like all these technologies, they become mainstream and people who are not able to adapt to them, are not there. The businesses are not there.

That’s one thing I would like to say. Don’t be too, I said, don’t give it all to it, but don’t be afraid of it either.

Scott Bursey (20:03)
Absolutely. Pros don’t be scared to use AI.

Kaplana Sharma (20:07)
Yes, this test is not doing too much harm. Just use it.

Scott Bursey (20:12)
Absolutely. And Kaplana, this has been an incredible masterclass in next level property management. You brought the fuel of true tech driven efficiency today. If our listeners want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Kaplana Sharma (20:28)
Well, I am starting this school community. I’ll be happy to share the link with you guys and they can always find me on Instagram. Also, I’m starting my footprint there also. So I will be happy to give those links and they can find them.

Scott Bursey (20:43)
Thank you for being on the Real Estate Pros podcast today, Kaplana.

Kaplana Sharma (20:47)
Thank you for inviting me. appreciate the opportunity.

Scott Bursey (20:50)
It’s been a sincere pleasure. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be fueling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Kaplana, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.