AppFolio is Powering the Future of Real Estate Using Generative AI and Amazon Nova

Since 2019, AppFolio has been investing in AI and machine learning (ML) and applying it in key areas, such as an automated leasing conversation chatbot used with prospective tenants to help collect initial details and provide rental information before transferring them to a human agent. AppFolio recognized the potential of generative AI to do even more. “We saw generative AI as an opportunity to take a big leap forward,” says Teddy Ho, director of product management at AppFolio. “We knew it could enhance our existing use cases and support new ones.”

When considering how to expand the capabilities of AppFolio Realm-X, its portfolio of generative AI solutions, AppFolio leaders zeroed in on improving two critical but time-consuming processes: day-to-day management tasks and routine communications. After all, managing any property, large or small, requires vigilant attention to details as well as regular, fast communication with its residents. Property managers have a myriad of operational tasks that need to be completed quickly and effectively, from arranging for repairs to monitoring occupancy. Similarly, communicating effectively with residents, owners, vendors, and others is an important but often challenging process. Getting the details and tone right in these communications helps foster a positive resident experience. But the scale of these communications can be daunting, since they can include hundreds or thousands of recipients.

The AppFolio team knew that these capabilities needed to be extremely easy to access and use to provide fast and broad-based adoption by its customers. It also knew that interest in (and demand for) new generative AI tools was strong. In fact, its 2025 Property Management Benchmark Report found that more than a third of property managers who responded to the survey were already using AI in some way—with resident communication emerging as the most common use for AI. And more and more property managers were expressing a strong interest in adding new generative AI capabilities to their operations.

To bring new productivity tools to property managers, AppFolio added two important generative AI-powered solutions to Realm-X: Realm-X Messages and Realm-X Assistant. Integrated into the core AppFolio platform and accessed through its intuitive interface, these solutions make it simple for property managers to reduce repetitive, time-consuming processes—and expand visibility into their properties.

Realm-X Messages streamlines routine resident communications by letting property managers tap into the power of generative AI to create effective, personalized communications. Realm-X Messages uses an incoming message’s contents to help guide users to take the right next steps, while its content creation capabilities help users craft effective responses quickly, drawing from personalized details. Communication tasks that used to take hours can be completed in minutes. And every user can feel confident that their communications will be accurate, appropriate, and on brand.

Realm-X Assistant brings new efficiency to the wide range of tasks that fill the days of property managers, from generating custom reports to automating time-consuming tasks that manage vendors, residents, properties, and owners. This powerful, fast AI assistant helps property managers get more done in less time, reducing their operational burden so they can focus on more strategic work.

These new capabilities are powered by Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing FMs, which AppFolio—a longtime AWS customer—uses to create its generative AI solutions. Using Amazon Bedrock, AppFolio can choose from the capabilities of multiple models. AppFolio evaluated the new Amazon Nova foundation models using Amazon Bedrock Evaluations—which lets users use automatic and human evaluations to select FMs for a specific use case—along with its own proprietary evaluation capabilities. “We were using various models on Amazon Bedrock to power our new Realm-X capabilities,” says Ho. “We found that Amazon Nova Pro filled a sweet spot, balancing speed, cost, and performance, essentially giving us a boost in performance with nominal additional cost.”

Amazon Nova Pro models are accessible over the same API and with the same authentication tooling as the other models that AppFolio uses on Amazon Bedrock. This approach makes it simple to evaluate and integrate Amazon Nova into the existing implementation. Plus, the AppFolio team can use built-in security and features of Amazon Bedrock, such as Amazon Bedrock Guardrails—which provides configurable safeguards to help safely build generative AI applications at scale—to keep customer data secure and safe.

With Realm-X, AppFolio customers don’t need to know about FMs and the other technical components of generative AI. They just know that they have new capabilities that make their work easier and their lives better, all through the familiar, intuitive AppFolio interface. “Our customers want to use AI, but they want to minimize the solutions that they have to deal with,” says Ho. “They view AppFolio as a technology collaborator in much the same way that we see AWS as a technology collaborator—a single relationship that delivers a range of innovative solutions.”

Early users of the new Realm-X capabilities quickly recognized the potential of Realm-X Assistant and Realm-X Messages, according to Ho. “Amazon Nova improves access to data and metrics that our users rely on every day,” he says. “How’s my occupancy? What’s the vacancy rate? How do building expenses compare across our portfolio? These are the kind of questions that our customers need to be able to ask.” In the past, finding answers meant collaborating with in-house tech support to create time-consuming custom reports. “Now, with Realm-X Assistant, we’re unleashing the power of property data to put the answers at their fingertips,” says Ho. The response to Realm-X Messages was equally strong, since communication chores can take up as much as half of a property manager’s day. Realm-X Messages transforms resident communication, making it more efficient and effective.

“Our beta testing showed that these capabilities were popular enough with our customers to boost adoption significantly,” says Ho. “That gave us the confidence to release them on a larger scale.” Now available to all AppFolio customers, the new Realm-X capabilities bring additional day-to-day productivity to property managers, freeing up their time to do more strategic, forward-thinking work. What’s more, they also empower property managers to create new communications and gain new insights that were difficult in the past so they can deliver an exceptional resident experience at scale. “We’re giving our users visibility into parts of their business that they never had before,” says Ho. “And we’re empowering them to do more—using generative AI, Realm-X, and Amazon Nova.”