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Multifamily properties bring together several different people, each responsible for a different part of the business. Owners keep an eye on the property’s income, expenses and overall performance, while property managers take care of leasing, residents, maintenance and daily operations.
Vendors provide the materials and services that are needed to keep the property running, and contractors handle renovations, bids, submittals and project schedules. Investors, in turn, need to understand how all of this activity comes together and how the decisions being made every day ultimately affect the property’s financial performance.
Its 2026 roadmap adds an investor management portal, a vendor management portal, an employee locator, reputation management, construction tools, 360-degree property photography, floor plans and digital staging.
Those additions are part of a broader real estate digital transformation strategy. Rather than digitizing each part of property operations separately, Smart Management is extending technology built for multifamily into investor and vendor management, purchasing, cost optimization, construction, maintenance and trade services.
The goal is to create a connected PropTech ecosystem that gives owners, managers, investors, vendors and other teams access to the information they need to manage properties and make more informed decisions.
A Platform Built From 15 Years Inside Multifamily Operations
The people behind Smart Management spent more than 15 years owning, investing in and operating multifamily properties before moving into software development.
Through Legacy Wealth Holdings, the team acquired and repositioned value-add properties across the country, including distressed properties that needed physical and economic renovations. At one point, its portfolio reached more than 6,000 units and currently includes over 3,000.
The team gained firsthand insight into many of the operating problems Smart Management would later be built to address. Improving economic occupancy, for example, required employees to identify and complete tasks that affected leasing and revenue. Property renovations required clear scopes of work, contractor bids, submittals and a reliable way to track progress, costs and ROI.
As the portfolio grew, Legacy Wealth Holdings initially relied on several third-party property management companies. After repeatedly encountering problems with outside providers, the group brought property management in-house to gain more control over how its properties were operated.
Doing so gave the team a closer look at where its work was slowing down, which steps were being missed and where processes could be handled more consistently with technology.
Brian Fast eventually applied his software engineering background to those challenges. Already an investor in several properties with the group, Fast approached the team about developing technology that could help it achieve its operating goals more efficiently.
Fast holds a doctorate in engineering and has worked with companies such as Northrop Grumman and Rockwell Automation. He has been recognized for delivering more than $100 million in financial impact through automation and software engineering. Today, he serves as the CEO of Smart Management and leads the development team.
The rest of the team has experience across property management operations, marketing, sales, finance, engineering, product development, customer support, implementation and business strategy. Members of its engineering and product team have also worked together for more than 15 years across several industries.
Smart Management software was developed in four stages. Early development focused on adding property management capabilities, task management, lifecycle management and automation. The next stage expanded an initial accounting program into a more comprehensive property accounting system.
Later versions added user roles, configurable permissions, e-signatures, mobile tools and built-in communication. More recently, AI has been incorporated into workflows, automation and decision support.
Throughout the process, the company tested the software within its own multifamily portfolio before bringing it to the broader market, allowing the team to refine the platform around challenges it had encountered in the industry.
How Smart Management Software Works in Practice
Traditional property management software is built to store information and handle day-to-day functions like rent collection, maintenance requests and work orders. Smart Management also does those things, but its focus goes a step further: turning information into action.
Using AI workflow automation, companies can build their own operating procedures and business rules directly into the platform. Time- and event-based automations can create tasks, prioritize them and assign them to the right people at the right time. That makes fewer processes dependent on employees remembering every step.
Managers can see what has been completed, what still needs attention and which tasks are falling behind. Because much of property management happens in the field, the platform is designed for mobile use.
On-site employees, regional managers, executives, owners and investors can all work from the same information rather than relying on a mix of texts, emails and phone calls.
Photos, updates, tasks and conversations stay connected to the properties, units and issues they relate to, giving managers better visibility into daily operations. With Smart Management software, they can spend less time tracking down updates and more time solving problems and making decisions.
AI is built into these workflows as well. Smart Management supports voice-driven tasks, property-condition documentation from photos, operational and financial analysis, and recommendations based on the data in the system. Virtual agents handle routine questions from tenants and applicants while routing more complex issues to staff.
Financial operations run on the same platform, including property accounting, live reconciliations, automated alerts, forecasting and tools designed to speed up the month-end close.
Keeping operational and financial information together gives managers a better idea of how individual actions affect the business. A missed leasing task, for example, isn’t just an incomplete item on an employee’s task list. It can affect economic occupancy and ultimately revenue.
The company’s priorities are to help property management teams increase revenue, reduce expenses and get work done faster.
Building a Connected PropTech Ecosystem Beyond Property Management
The way Smart Management brings these parts of property operations together is part of a larger change in how businesses use technology. Around 2011, digital transformation started gaining attention as companies looked beyond simply putting existing tasks onto a computer.
The idea was to use technology to rethink how work gets done, connecting people, processes, information and automation so businesses could make smarter decisions and operate more efficiently. This became part of a broader movement known as Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In manufacturing, it became known as Smart Manufacturing.
Smart Management believes that the same connected model can extend beyond property management. The company is expanding its platform to support more of the work involved in owning and operating multifamily properties, with a short-term goal of being a one-stop shop for property operational needs.
One area of focus is investor management technology. Owners, operators and investors already rely on property and financial data, so the company plans to add an investor portal where they can see information related to the properties they own.
Vendor management is another priority. Outside contractors and service providers have a direct impact on both costs and how quickly work gets done. Over the next 12 months, Smart Management expects to add a vendor portal and tools for strategic purchasing and cost optimization.
Construction management software is another anticipated area of expansion. Planned construction tools will include features such as submittal generation and Gantt charts. These tools will build on existing capabilities for assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, sharing information and connecting project activity to financial results.
The platform will also extend into maintenance and trade services, applying its existing workflow, automation and financial capabilities to those operations.
From Faster Onboarding to Fewer Software Subscriptions
A property operations platform is only valuable if customers can adopt it easily, get the support they need, and see enough value to replace the systems they already use.
Smart Management’s onboarding process is designed to make the transition easier. Instead of manually entering large amounts of property data, customers can upload existing reports, reducing setup time from several days to just a few minutes.
During setup and training, each customer works with a dedicated Customer Success Specialist. Once onboarding is complete, a Customer Service Manager becomes the primary point of contact for ongoing support.
Smart Management also limits the number of customers assigned to each employee, allowing its team to provide more consistent support.
The company estimates that customers can save up to 50% by replacing multiple software subscriptions with its platform while maintaining equivalent or greater functionality.
Over the longer term, Smart Management wants to apply the same operating model to other service-based businesses and eventually reach a point where it can offer the software for free so it can reach more users.
