It’s been a strange week in multifamily technology. A few days ago, a strange article appeared in Thesis Driven, a publication I have contributed to on several occasions over the years. The article made public a previously private contractual dispute between two prominent suppliers: Funnel and EliseAI.
I am an admirer of both companies and am proud to count them among my clients. Each has an important mission, and readers familiar with my work will recall research I conducted with Funnel on centralization, and more recently with EliseAI on automation. Both are essential topics for the multifamily industry.
I frequently collaborate with technology companies on content projects. But I avoid writing about the companies, as it seldom adds to the industry’s understanding of technology. However, the exchange that has unfolded over the past few days is weird and high-profile enough to merit some commentary.
The Beef
In short, the article describes Funnel presenting Elise with a revised integration agreement in late 2025, which Elise has thus far refused to sign. The article took the unusual step of publishing the contractual language and providing details of the negotiation between the companies. The language ties continued access to Funnel’s CRM to a commitment not to replicate certain specific types of functionality.
Funnel’s stated rationale is that running parallel systems creates confusion for on-site teams and introduces operational and data risk. Elise’s stated position is that such decisions should rest with customers and that the restriction effectively forces Elise to disable a core part of its application.
While there is some merit to both positions, it is not at all clear why a private contractual disagreement of this nature needed to be published.
Glass Houses
The story moved from the unseemly to the satirical as Dirk Wakeham, who recently returned to RealPage as its new CEO, took to LinkedIn with a Kumbaya-style call for harmony on integrations and data governance. The post avoided the meat of the Funnel–Elise dispute, framing it instead as a broader industry lesson, urging cooperation and clearer governance as AI adoption accelerates.
One feels the message would have landed differently had it come from almost any other corner of the industry. Wakeham inherits from his predecessor a company with a wretched reputation for strategically blocking competitor functionality from its platform (which, in case it isn’t obvious, is the real issue with Funnel & Elise).
I’ve seen firsthand how unpopular RealPage’s policy of deciding which applications its customers may use has been, having heard the conversation play out in numerous executive technology sessions with its clients.
Missing the Point
The Thesis Driven article goes on to frame the tension between EliseAI and Funnel as a proxy for the future of multifamily operations, specifically, for how much humans will matter as AI adoption accelerates. In doing so, it falls into a familiar venture-capital narrative.
That narrative casts AI primarily as a substitute for human labor, with success measured by how far technology can displace people (see this week’s comments from Palantir’s Alex Karp at Davos to understand the inspo). It frames the future as a binary choice: software that supports human leasing teams, or AI that largely replaces them.
That misses a critical point in multifamily technology. The evidence of recent work on sentiment analysis with RETTC and ResiDesk, on automation with EliseAI, and in the research for the forthcoming 20for20 Annual Survey, shows that the reality is different. Most multifamily executives are not approaching AI as a headcount-reduction exercise; they see it as a way to change how we operate real estate.
That distinction is a big deal. Sometimes automation leads to headcount reduction, but it is clearly not the common denominator motivating successful projects at this point.
The Real Domain for Competition
Funnel and EliseAI represent two distinct responses to real needs in the industry. Despite years of discussion about centralization and staffing, little has changed about leasing staffing models. Even with self-guided tours and centralized support, most operators still need some on-site leasing staff, which, for most operators, means keeping their leasing teams.
For most companies, centralization has improved sales effectiveness and enabled better conversion of demand across portfolios. As long as leasing involves selling to people, we will need people involved in the sales process. Funnel has established its position as the best provider of CRM technology supporting centralized leasing organizations.
Elise represents a different paradigm. It has built its business on running an ever-increasing scope of automated conversations across not just leasing, but increasingly resident interactions. The content of those conversations constitutes a new form of data that enables us to understand residents far better than we ever have before. As AI becomes more agentic, that presents the opportunity for the software to start telling us what to do, rather than the other way around.
That distinction goes to the heart of how AI may change multifamily operations. The most interesting question is not what our headcount should be, but how new forms of information can reshape how real estate is run. That remains the most consequential technology conversation in the industry. And—SPOILER ALERT—it will feature prominently in the forthcoming edition of the 20for20 Annual Survey.
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