Real estate tech is undergoing a quiet revolution — and Tricon Residential is at the forefront, offering prospective residents the opportunity to self-tour potential homes. At this year’s Appian World 2025 in Denver, the Canada-based housing rental company, which owns around 70,000 detached single family homes, shared how it is reshaping the rental journey through […]
Real estate tech is undergoing a quiet revolution — and Tricon Residential is at the forefront, offering prospective residents the opportunity to self-tour potential homes.
At this year’s Appian World 2025 in Denver, the Canada-based housing rental company, which owns around 70,000 detached single family homes, shared how it is reshaping the rental journey through a combination of AI, low-code development, and voice technology.
“We talked to residents about where the pain points were,” said Gregg Knutson, SVP at Tricon Residential, during a session on AI-driven innovation. From there, a specially assigned innovation team within the firm moved into proofs of concept testing in small markets before rolling out more broadly.
“In the beginning we didn’t tend to involve our production people but we learned early on you need your production teams involved from the beginning — not just the business unit,” he added.
Tricon’s strategy centres on simplifying and enhancing the rental experience using technology partners including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Appian, and systems integrator Bits In Glass.
Together, the companies have built tools that automate everything from property tours to resident support using conversational AI and data-driven workflows.
Digital assistant
One of main innovations involves integrating Amazon’s Alexa into Tricon’s rental units regardless of whether they have an internet connection.
Tricon used this method during the pandemic as a way of showing tenants around a property when physical viewings were restricted. The property firm then decided to revisit this and look at other ways it could use and add to this experience.
In one pilot project, Alexa was used to greet prospective tenants during self-guided tours, offering information about the home, nearby schools, parks, shopping centres, and even recommending restaurants.
“Our whole idea was: if they have any questions about the property, Alexa can answer,” said Knutson. “It elevated the prospect experience.”
Celia Wanderley, CIO at Bits In Glass adds: “The prospect might also want info that taps into external feeds, some interesting questions about ‘if I move here and I work at ‘x’ address what’s going to be my commute time on public transportation?’
“This way we’re learning so much about the prospects that, even if this is not the right property, at the end of this viewing we could offer other properties and further viewings.
“These are the kind of things we would not have found out unless we had carried out a proof of concept as a stage in the lifecycle of this innovation,” she adds.
Knutson recalls some of the tweaks the team made at this stage: “Some of the language was a little bit too flowery, too embellished and so we experimented with the prompts to make the properties sound more realistic and human. Those are the kinds of changes you can make on the fly.”
Wanderley added that AWS digital landlords can also speak in different languages, making it a more inclusive experience for more tenants. “That’s the power of Gen AI and LLMs.”
According to Knutson, Tricon always pays its partners for PoC work, even if they offer it up for free.
“Because it might be a great technology or a great use case but it doesn’t work for us. We don’t want to feel obligated to go with the tech. That’s very important for us with how we run innovation and how we partner with various vendors out there. We want to be transparent,” he added.
Alexa 2.0
But the technology doesn’t stop at viewings. Tricon is now testing “Alexa 2.0” to continue engagement post-move-in. Tenants can receive voice-activated reminders to pay rent or change air filters, and Alexa can answer questions about property rules — even unusual ones.
“For policies on pets, people might ask: ‘Can I bring a shark?’ And the system can interpret policy gaps like that. The AI flags it if there’s no guidance in our documents,” Knutson says.
Tricon trials Alexa-as-landlord
The new iteration of the ‘voice only landlord’ is a combination of AWS’s Bedrock AI foundation and Appian’s low-code platform. Tricon and Bits In Glass have built what they describe as “agentic workflows” — where AI agents interpret spoken or typed input and trigger complex business processes automatically.
“In one case, a resident simply talks through their onboarding — and the AI listens, transcribes, extracts the key information, and confirms it back to them in seconds,” said Wanderley.
“The system handles it all, while keeping a full record of the interaction.”
This voice-activated interface reduces the need for tenants to type or interact with screens, which the company sees as a growing preference: People don’t want to be fumbling with their phones during a viewing or a move.
No more realtors?
To be clear Tricon is not getting rid of its agents. On the firm’s website it still states that prospects can self-tour a rental home at their convenience or schedule a personalised tour with a leasing agent.
But the implications of the digital landlord are significant. If the technology continues to prove successful, Tricon envisions a future where the role of the digital landlord expands further.
“When we rolled out self-tours in 2020, people could already see homes anytime they wanted,” Knutson said. “Now, with LLMs and voice automation, the entire rental journey — from viewing to lease signing to support — can be automated.”
This shift also brings challenges. Privacy and data security remain top priorities. Tricon has avoided using personally identifiable information (PII) in its PoCs and invested heavily in data governance.
“AI governance starts with data governance,” said Wanderley. “You need partners who understand that this data cannot be open to the public. And the importance of the quality of the data has not gone away. ”
Innovation unit
Tricon’s innovation team operates as a distinct unit within the company, allowing it to focus and iterate quickly. Of the 30 PoCs they’ve launched, 27 have gone into production — a success rate made possible, it claims, by embedding business users early and focusing on operational outcomes from the start.
“I’ve been at Tricon for nine years and for first five years I was responsible for the enterprise systems and infrastructure – I’d built a lot of relationships with the business people [internally, at Tricon] so it’s a natural conversation for me to approach them and relate to them in terms of the business processes and collaboration.
“You do that collaboration and you really get buy-in from the business users,” adds Knutson.
As AI continues to democratise customer experience, Tricon sees other uses in terms of voice activation for its employees, such as those tasked with buying new homes for the business.
“When people are scoping properties they don’t want to be tapping on their phones. We used to dictate property inspections manually,” says Knutson. “Now the can just walk through a home, inspect it and speak. The app formats everything and scopes it to Tricon’s standards.”
Whether tenants will universally embrace Alexa as their landlord remains to be seen – a digital voice reminding tenants about rental payments may rattle some. But Tricon’s experiment suggests that the role of traditional letting agents may be one that becomes disrupted in this latest wave of AI innovation.
