Affordable housing operators work the expense side of the statement because their income is capped, while market rate teams fight for every tenant on the income side. Michael Behot has run both books. As VP of Asset Management at RPM Development Group in Montclair, New Jersey, he moved from institutional market rate work at Heritage Capital Group and Castle Lanterra into regulated affordable housing, so he can say where AI already earns its keep in accounting and billing, where it fails on compliance, and why the local data that never got built by hand in 2012 is now within reach.

Chapters:

00:00 Two sides of the same business

01:00 From DC development to affordable housing in New Jersey

02:44 What an asset manager does all day

04:36 Moving from good to excellent at the job

05:18 Why equilibrium matters more in affordable housing

06:35 What each side gets wrong about the other

08:41 RPM's in-house model and its tradeoffs

10:34 Specialized knowledge of subsidy programs

11:17 Old buildings given a second life

13:20 LIHTC versus Section 8, explained

16:40 What separates a building that runs well from one that doesn't

17:56 Finding and keeping great site staff

18:33 What RPM has tried with AI so far

21:21 The gap between AI ideas and implementation

22:42 Will AI widen the gap between big and small firms

24:00 Why AI usage clusters in leasing and resident communications

26:42 The compliance problem AI has to get perfect

28:34 The data side and building a property income database

34:08 What would actually unlock more affordable housing

36:53 AI, faster approvals, and cutting red tape

40:17 Reaching residents and one-off affordable units

41:00 Rapid fire: strange buildings and career advice

You can follow Michael Behot here:

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/michael-behot-6aa28017

Learn more about RPM Development Group:

Website - https://rpmdev.com