Peter Lohmann breaks down the 2026 Crane AI in Property Management Report, which surveyed hundreds of property managers. 46% use AI regularly, with Claude and ChatGPT leading. Claude users ship three times more workflows than others, and the top uses are leasing communication, data analysis, and maintenance triage. Two-thirds lack any written AI policy.
How sick are you of the AI hype in property management? It's out of control. Everyone's trying to sell you something. Everyone's talking about how they're using ChatGPT and Claude Code and this and that. There's very little actual information about what is working and how property managers are actually using AI today. So I set out to change that. I commissioned a survey with Wolfgang Kroski and Crane, and we heard back from hundreds of property managers and learned all about how they're using AI today in their property management business. We're not talking about vendors here. We're not talking about some influencer on Instagram who's trying to sell you some course about AI. This is real property managers talking about how they're actually using AI in their business today to make more money, free up time, and be more productive. The 2026 Crane AI in Property Management Report is available now for free. You can get it at the link in my bio. If you want to learn more about how property managers are using AI in their property management business, We have tons of charts and graphs and testimonials, comments from real property managers about how they're using it. One of the things we asked about is who is your AI daily driver? Are you using Claude? Are you using ChatGPT? Are you using Perplexity, whatever that is? Are you using Grok? So we got real data on what services people are actually using. And we also asked, what are you paying for? Are you paying for the paid version? If so, how much are you spending a month to use these AI tools? So let me read you some of the highlights because I think this is fascinating. AI adoption is at about 46% in terms of people who are using it regularly in their business. So that's probably less than you think if you listen to all the AI hype on social media. 12% of respondents said they're the only ones using it at their company. In other words, this hasn't spread and become widely adopted with their team. In terms of daily driver, Claude is the clear winner. 46% of respondents are using Claude as their daily driver. ChatGPT was number 2 with 35%. And Interestingly, Claude users are shipping full end-to-end workflows at 3 times the rate of anyone else. So it sounds like Claude users have got a couple things figured out. In terms of what areas property managers are using AI, leasing communication, data analysis, and maintenance triage were the top 3 results here. 2/3 of you are running completely blind, meaning no AI policy whatsoever. Highly encourage you to get a written AI policy implemented in your business as soon as possible. You need to get clear on what is permitted And what is safe for you and your team and usage of AI tools? Can they upload tenant information to ChatGPT? Can they connect Claude Code to your bank? Now, these are some of the things that are really important to figure out. So if you don't already have one, get a written policy. This survey was put out by Crane. Crane is a paid private community for property management business owners that I co-founded with Wolfgang Kroski, who owns a property management business in California. If you want to learn more, you can download the full report and learn more about Crane at joincrane.co.
