Online resident portals have revolutionized how co-op and condo communities interact with their building staff and management. Monthly fees can be auto-paid, maintenance requests can be made online and tracked in real time, and important building-wide announcements can be sent out with the click of a button. And the changes haven’t stopped there; many management companies are now also using artificial intelligence (AI) to handle everything from work orders to questions about upcoming social events. 

While online platforms, portals, and agents are a huge boon to both managers and building communities, they’re not without their drawbacks. The speed and convenience of an app or chatbot goes only so far; for users to really adopt a tech tool and integrate it into their building functions, it must also be reliable, accurate, and secure.   

The Right Tools for the Job

The online platforms and portals that managers tend to use most are those built to handle recurring needs—and they often use different ones for different tasks. For example, Ajo Kurian, senior vice president of systems and technology for AKAM, a property management firm with operations in New York and Florida, says his firm uses Yardi for financial and operational functions, BuildingLink for property and resident operations, and Monday.com for organizing staff assignments and follow-ups that previously sprawled across multiple spreadsheets, documents, and email chains.

On the community side of the equation, functionality is the name of the game. “Residents judge these systems by a few repeat transactions,” Kurian says. “A payment portal should make it easy to confirm what is owed, and whether a payment has posted. A work-order system should show that a request reached the right person. Boards can test those basic functions before paying for more elaborate features.”

Mark B. Levine, principal of New York property management firm EBMG LLC, says he uses AppFolio to create work orders, manage resident communications, and make reporting easier across his company’s various portfolios. He has also developed ManageYourBuilding, a separate platform intended to work alongside existing accounting software and help oversee building operations. It includes a ‘virtual manager’ that can draw from both municipal real estate information sources and an individual building’s own profile to bring together documents, equipment records, work orders, vendor information, and capital project planning in one place. It can also track compliance dates, including façade, elevator, and gas inspections so the information is easily accessible to both managers and boards. Individual buildings’ information remains separate from that of other client communities, and is instantly available to authorized users, enabling a resident to ask about permitted moving hours, for example, rather than calling or emailing management.

“Unless a company defines the one platform to use for everyone and across the client base, it will be difficult to have mass adoption to a point where it makes sense to use with all clients,” says Levine. “Up until this point, many of our managers were using a variety of different systems—so in a company with 16 managers, there could be 16 different workflows. I solved that problem by rolling out my own tool to my own clients one by one.” 

Of course, a program that works well for management can still fall flat with boards and residents. Levine says his managers have used Slack, Basecamp, and Monday.com, and while some boards have embraced the tech, others are less enthused about learning another system and may prefer to stick with email, shared Google documents, and spreadsheets. If those tools do the job to everyone’s satisfaction, there may be no need to introduce something new just for the sake of newness.  

“The reality of a platform choice is using something that feels organic to those playing with it on a regular basis,” he says. “If a platform or application is difficult to navigate, hard to learn, or otherwise just not an enjoyable experience, it should be a no-go from the start.”

A Tool, Not a Takeover

According to Kurian, AKAM is using ChatGPT within the company’s existing business platforms and introducing AI across the organization in a structured rollout. He notes that the firm is developing uses for AI to prepare board packages, gather and analyze information, manage employee overtime, and streamline administrative processes. The aim is to free employees from repetitive clerical and admin work and give them more time for clients.

That said, he’s quick to note that “AI can help organize information, identify patterns, summarize data, and accelerate certain processes, but our human subject matter experts still need to interpret those insights and determine the appropriate action. Property management is fundamentally a relationship-driven business, and we do not view technology as a substitute for the judgment, experience, and direct engagement our clients and residents expect.”

And marvelous as AI can be for certain tasks, it’s vital to remember that it’s far from foolproof—AI agents and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini often return answers to prompts that are incomplete, contain inaccuracies, or are flat-out wrong. Also important to keep in mind is that if your building’s records or governing documents are outdated or incorrect, using a chatbot to summarize them won’t fix that. Records still need to be maintained, documents still need to be updated, and residents still need a way to reach a real person if an automated answer seems wrong. 

Jay L. Hack, a White Plains attorney with the Law Offices of Jay L. Hack, insists on human review whenever AI is used. “A manager may get a useful starting point for a notice or summary from AI, but should still compare it with the underlying material before sending it out,” he says. “Decisions about a resident’s rights, a disputed bill, or a building’s legal obligations call for the relevant professional’s judgment.”

Doing Board Business Online

Voting tools are another aspect of board operations impacted by tech. Jonathan Gropper is the founder of TrueHOA, a platform for boards that shows residents’ eligibility to vote, and tracks participation and vote weights while keeping individual choices private. Rules and vote share allocations are locked before voting opens, he says, and participants can check to verify that their votes were counted.

Useful as virtual voting and digital tabulation can be, a software feature alone does not establish that a particular community may use it. Boards should have their legal counsel review the proposed procedures against applicable law and their governing documents before adopting electronic voting. “Technology should produce the record—not replace the decision,” Gropper says. “Boards still govern. The platform just makes the count something everyone can check.”

Protecting the Information

Gathering all of this information in one place can be very convenient, true—but it’s also worth asking how much actually belongs there. The advance of digital management and recordkeeping tools has brought with it an increased risk of information theft and fraud. 

To reduce the chances of this, Hack says his approach starts before a board chooses a vendor. “They can’t steal information you don’t collect in the first place,” he notes, “so don’t collect data that you don’t really need.”

Levine notes that his platform does not store birth dates or Social Security numbers, but does hold names, contact information, insurance documents, alteration records, and communications associated with units. Access privileges depend on users’ roles: non-board residents cannot view other residents’ information, for example. Additionally, Levine says his platform does not share users’ data with third-party vendors. He recommends asking any provider whether information is used or sold elsewhere without the user’s express permission.

Boards should ask every tech provider what information is stored and where, who can retrieve it, and whether it is ever shared or sold. Soto notes that a management company’s own practices are only part of the picture when another business holds the data. He prioritizes encryption and retention, and recommends asking any prospective tech partner about backup arrangements, past breaches, employee issues, and insurance covering a breach, both at the vendor and building levels. That responsibility extends to evaluating and monitoring outside technology providers, especially those handling payment information or other confidential records. 

“Protecting client and resident information is an important part of how we manage technology across AKAM,” Kurian adds. “We take a structured approach to cybersecurity, access and data handling, with policies, oversight, employee education and ongoing review built into how systems are selected and used.”

Monitoring should have something concrete behind it. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s Start with Security guidance recommends putting language about security expectations into service provider contracts and checking that providers meet them. Boards can ask management to obtain relevant policies and independent assessment reports, and explain who reviews them and follows up on deficiencies.

Management should also explain how permissions are assigned, whether multifactor authentication adds a check beyond a password, how any breaches will be reported, and what happens to files when a contract ends. Board members need an understandable explanation and a schedule for revisiting it.

Access to sensitive or proprietary information deserves continuing attention as well. Accounts should always be reviewed when employees leave or board membership changes. Before anyone uploads building records to an AI model, the community should establish which tools are approved, whether submitted information is retained, and whether it may be used to train AI. Permission to view a document does not automatically settle whether it should be uploaded elsewhere.

Making It Work

A smaller or self-managed building considering whether to adopt a tech tool, regardless of purpose, should first test the app or platform against the actual work they need it to do. Can a resident submit a repair request, and can the person responsible for doing the repair find it? Can a new board member locate the documents they need to review for a meeting? What measures will be taken to make sure that residents who can’t use an app or online platform for whatever reason aren’t excluded? A sensible rollout gives users a few useful functions to test drive first, with a real person to contact if something goes wrong, or users have questions.

“An equally important part of technology adoption is making sure our teams have the structure, training and guidance they need to use these systems effectively,” Kurian adds. “We take a deliberate approach, rather than simply introducing tools and expecting people to figure them out on their own.”

“Ultimately, the value isn’t simply having more technology,” says Kurian. “It’s about creating a more connected and transparent operating environment.”

Keith Loria is a freelance writer and contributor to CooperatorNews.