In this video, Peter Lohmann provides a prop‑tech market update aimed at property managers. He begins by noting Elise AI’s recent $300 million Series B raise at a $3.7 billion valuation, which is roughly half of AppFolio’s public market cap. He expresses skepticism about whether an AI‑first leasing platform should command such a valuation, while outlining the investor thesis that the company can extend its AI‑driven leasing engine into broader property‑management functions such as accounting and maintenance. Lohmann then shifts to Boom, which raised $15 million in a Series A and launched Boom CRM, a leasing and listing platform that also offers tenant‑screening, showings, and rent‑credit reporting. He praises Boom’s CEO Rob, notes the head‑to‑head competition with RentEngine, and discloses that his own firm, RL Property Management, uses both RentEngine and Boom services. The video ends with congratulations to Boom’s team and a promise to keep watching these developments.
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Let's talk about some prop tech news relevant for property managers. First, Elise AI just raised $300 million at a $3.7 billion valuation. By the way, that is half of Appfolio's market cap. The idea that an AI-powered leasing system, and I guess they've added a bunch of other stuff on now, is worth half of what Appfolio is valued at by the public markets is wild to me. I don't know if that's right. I don't know if Appfolio is undervalued or overvalued, but it seems to me that Elise AI has a long way to go in my mind before they should be worth half of what AppFolio's worth. So that's kind of crazy to me, but nevertheless, that's where it's being valued. I think the thesis of some of the investors in companies like Elyse AI is that they've built an AI-native or AI-first prop tech solution and shown success in leasing, which is obviously an important part of property management. And they seem to think that they can backfill the other property management software functionality Onto the platform they've already built. So I guess the thinking is, well, well, they can build out the accounting and they can build out some of the maintenance workflows and they can figure all that out 'cause they did the hard part, which is the AI stuff. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what some investors have told me and curious to kind of see how that plays out. But we will keep an eye on that. Boom, which does tenant screening and they're also moving into showings and rental listings, they just raised $15 million as part of a Series A and launched Boom CRM, which is the leasing and listing platform that I just mentioned. So I know Rob over there, the CEO of Boom, great guy. I'm excited about what they're doing. It's been interesting to watch Boom and RentEngine kind of navigate and position themselves. Now they're basically competing head to head. I'm a big fan of RentEngine. We're RentEngine customers here at RL Property Management, but I like Boom. We use their rent credit reporting for tenants at my company as well. So we're actually a customer of both of those companies, but congrats to Rob and the team at Boom for their successful raise.
