Published on August 29th, 2025
By Matthew Baird

For years, centralization has been the go-to operational strategy for real estate leaders looking to drive efficiency at scale. It’s delivered clear benefits, including reduced costs, leaner teams, and standardized processes. But for today’s market, that’s no longer enough.

Efficiency is no longer the endgame; performance is.

Agentic operations are the evolution of centralization — the strategic layer that makes real performance possible.

The Strategic Shift: From Efficiency to Outcomes

Forward-thinking real estate management firms don’t just focus on doing more with less — they deliver consistent, measurable value to residents, investors, and teams.

Centralization alone isn’t designed for that. It’s designed for control, cost reduction, and standardization. And while it often succeeds on those fronts, it also tends to stop short of enabling real performance outcomes. Even after centralization, teams often face the same challenges: overwhelming task volume, delayed follow-ups, fragmented systems, and reactive workflows — only now repackaged inside a more streamlined structure.

The deeper issue is this: centralization reinforces a mindset of operational efficiency. It focuses on doing more with less, reducing headcount, and optimizing output. But even if it eliminated inefficiencies entirely, it still wouldn’t position property managers to deliver greater value.

Residents want a better living experience. Investors expect stronger returns. Businesses need a platform for long-term growth. None of that can be delivered by centralization alone. It requires a shift from managing processes to enabling outcomes, which is where agentic operations excel.

What Are Agentic Operations?

Agentic operations are the next leap beyond centralized operations. Powered by AI agents, these systems are self-directed and outcome-oriented. Rather than requiring step-by-step instructions, AI agents operate within predefined parameters to break down goals, plan sequences of steps, and execute them — all in the service of optimizing performance.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

An AI leasing agent can qualify leads, schedule tours — spacing drive time between properties — and manage follow-ups without human intervention.
Agentic maintenance workflows can auto-triage requests, schedule vendors, and resolve issues faster.
AI-powered resident communication tools handle renewals and respond to everyday questions about rent and payments, lease terms, policies, and more

With agentic operations, AI agents handle routine yet complex workflows from anywhere, working with your teams — not just for them — so your employees can focus on what they do best: building relationships with residents and owners.

Why Centralization Alone Hits a Ceiling

What many operators have discovered is that centralization without intelligent support simply reshuffles the same pain points. A centralized leasing team still struggles with volume. Field agents stretched across properties still juggle too many channels. Instead of eliminating inefficiencies, centralization often just relocates them.

The centralization ceiling is the point where consolidating operations can no longer drive better performance. Centralization improves efficiency, but it doesn’t inherently create value. Without intelligent systems that can absorb routine tasks and adapt in real time, even centralized teams remain reactive. The result? You streamline processes but still fall short of delivering the outcomes that truly drive growth.

Agentic operations break through that ceiling by removing dependency on constant human input and enabling real-time, performance-driven action across your operation.

The Impact of Agentic AI in the Real World

With keeping occupancy levels high the number one concern for real estate leaders today, the timing couldn’t be better for a tool like AppFolio Realm-X Performers — AI-powered agents designed to fully manage core workflows so teams can focus on building thriving communities.

With the Realm-X Leasing Performer, the leasing doesn’t just run on autopilot — it acts. From engaging prospects and managing details to scheduling showings and surfacing insights in real time, it drives the process forward without waiting on human prompts. The Realm-X Maintenance Performer automatically diagnoses and prioritizes maintenance requests, creates work orders, and logs summaries, ensuring residents receive fast, consistent service.

“Agentic operations free property managers from the constant pull of task lists,” says Daniel Waas, VP of Product Marketing at AppFolio. “With Realm-X Performers handling the heavy lifting, your team can spend more time with real people — not checklists.”

The results speak for themselves: operators are saving around 10 hours per week and achieving a 73% higher lead-to-showing conversion rate by using a Realm-X Performer.

From Tasks to Value: What You Need to Ask Yourself

The name of the game is no longer about managing more with less. It’s about rebuilding operations for value creation — and agentic operations are the foundation for that shift.

To ready your business for the shift to agentic, start by asking:

Are we simply coordinating tasks or enabling action?
Have we actually removed friction or just moved it?
Is our centralization strategy designed for cost-cutting or for unlocking performance?

The organizations that outperform will not be the ones that centralize the fastest. They’ll be the ones that pair centralization with agentic, designing their operations around outcomes, not just inputs.

The Future of Operational Strategy Is Agentic

Agentic operations don’t replace centralized models — they elevate them. They turn efficiency into effectiveness, process into performance, and teams into force multipliers. And they do it without adding headcount or increasing complexity.

Real performance isn’t about doing the same work faster. It’s about creating the space and support for your people to focus on what really matters while intelligent systems handle everything else. That’s the new strategic advantage, and the future of real estate is being built around it. Learn more about this future here.

Key Takeaways

Centralization is no longer enough: While centralization improves efficiency and reduces costs, it falls short of driving true performance and delivering measurable value in today’s real estate market.
Agentic operations are the evolution of centralization: Powered by AI agents, these systems are self-directed and outcome-oriented, planning and executing steps to optimize performance.
Agentic AI enables real outcomes: AI agents can manage complex workflows such as lead qualification, tour scheduling, maintenance requests, and resident communication, freeing human teams to focus on relationship building.
Break through the centralization ceiling: Agentic operations remove dependency on constant human input, allowing for real-time, performance-driven action and breaking through the limitations of efficiency-focused centralization.
Shift from tasks to value: The strategic focus should move from simply managing tasks to creating value, with agentic operations serving as the foundation for this shift by enabling action and unlocking performance.

Matt Baird is the Chief Technology Officer for AppFolio, where he is responsible for advancing the company’s platform-first product vision. With a career focused on building data platforms for digital transformation, Matt joined AppFolio in 2022 as Senior Vice President of Engineering. An accomplished thought leader, Matt holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Statistics from Queens University and has multiple patents in big data, analytics, and AI.