Last week, RealPage shook up the property management world by telling customers it paused new integrations with EliseAI while it reviewed concerns about the firm’s conduct and obligations under the RealPage Exchange agreement.

RealPage entered into an agreement a few years ago that allowed EliseAI to integrate with specific APIs for “specific, agreed-upon use cases,” according to the letter to customers shared with Multifamily Dive. However, RealPage claims the company is operating beyond that agreement's scope.

Specifically, according to RealPage President and CEO Dirk Wakeham, EliseAI has breached the agreement through its launch of Apollo. The technology is “a single AI agent capable of performing any task in the Elise platform,” according to a Sept. 3 press release. 

Wakeham told Multifamily Dive that “EliseAI never submitted Apollo for review, and we can’t assess what we haven’t seen. We also have reports of them actively trying to work around our controls and outside our agreement.”

In response to those reports and to end the pause, Wakeham said EliseAI needs to tell RealPage what it's doing to ensure the integration is “safe and secure and governed and has the right performance monitoring.” 

EliseAI, used by over 700 property management companies, offers an artificial intelligence system that powers every stage of the residential journey, including prospect management, guided tours and maintenance, according to the company’s website.

A representative of EliseAI did not respond to Multifamily Dive’s multiple requests for comment by publication time. Thesis Driven first reported the letter, which, technology consultant Josh Siddon, told Multifamily Dive, has created headaches for operators. 

“An agent operating across a system of record creates legitimate questions about permissions, audit trails, and liability,” said Siddon. “Operators want those questions answered too. But they should be part of the conversation before a notice like this goes out.”

Yet, RealPage says it is vetting EliseAI just as it would any provider connecting to its system.

A ‘serious problem’ for operators

In the letter to customers, RealPage emphasized that existing EliseAI integrations would not be affected and there would be no change to current data flows. “We've not cut anything off,” Wakeham told Multifamily Dive.

However, no new EliseAI activations will go live during the pause, even if operators want to add a new property or an application they don’t currently use. According to Wakeham, there will be a pause on new properties "until we have an understanding" of how EliseAI is integrating

Siddon told Multifamily Dive that operators should have a say in the dispute. “The resident, lease, and ledger data in the PMS [property management system] belongs to them [operators], and they should decide which tools can access it, how it is accessed, and when it is accessed,” he told Multifamily Dive via email.

RealPage’s CEO emphasized that the company isn’t holding customer data “hostage” or restricting it. He also said he spoke with operators, including the chief technology officer at the firm’s largest client, before deciding.

“It is the customer's data,” Wakeham said. “We've always said that the customers can get their own data and do whatever the heck they want with it. It's this sort of real-time integration and the third-party access to that data that we believe we've got a responsibility to help the customers sort of navigate.”

Siddon said the timing of RealPage’s decision was still unfortunate. “A pause on new activations may sound minor, but it’s a serious problem when you’re midway through a portfolio rollout during budget season,” he said. “Some communities are live, others are stuck, and no one knows when the pause will end.”

The exchange agreement

EliseAI isn’t the only company integrating with RealPage’s system. The Richardson, Texas-based firm vets and certifies third-party applications before they connect, according to the notice. 

Partners “test in a sandbox before they touch live data, and their agreements define exactly what they can access and how they use it,” RealPage said in the notice. “That keeps your systems stable and secure for every customer.”

RealPage’s integration framework helps customers keep their data secure and prevents it from ending up on the dark web or being used to train AI models, according to Wakeham.

“These systems store highly sensitive information,” Wakeham said. “You've got paycheck stubs and Social Security numbers and credit reports. We have to protect our customers from this data breach and data infiltration.”

The agreement with EliseAI has been in place for “three or four years — ever since they got started with their chatbot,” Wakeham said. In 2024, RealPage had some concerns with EliseAI but was “able to work through those issues with some revisions to the agreement,” he said.

In the letter, RealPage said it is committed to an open ecosystem, even though many of the roughly 800 applications, including EliseAI’s, compete with its own product. 

“We're not trying to box Elise out,” Wakeham said. 

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