Tenant fees are dominating property management conversations right now.

Scroll through any industry Facebook group or LinkedIn thread and you’ll see it:

• Heated debates about whether tenant fees are fair.

• Discussions about the federal government’s “junk fees” crackdown.

• Frustration over razor-thin margins and rising costs.

As someone who has been in property management for over two decades—owning, scaling, and successfully selling my own property management company—I’ve seen every side of this debate. Some fees are unnecessary. Others genuinely create value for residents and help property managers deliver better service.

But here’s the truth: the fee fight is a distraction from the bigger issue.

Why the Tenant Fee Debate Is Missing the Point

While our industry is busy arguing over who’s right and who’s wrong about tenant fees, a much bigger shift is happening in the background.

We’re in a new era where:

• Service expectations have quadrupled since the pandemic.

• Government oversight is tightening—both at the state and federal levels.

• Operating costs are climbing while profit margins shrink.

The real question property management company (PMC) owners should be asking isn’t:

“How do I defend my fees?”

It’s:

“If the government took away half my fee revenue tomorrow, how would my business still thrive?”

AI in Property Management: The Margin Protector No One’s Talking About

Here’s where the conversation needs to shift. The problem isn’t just losing fees—it’s losing time.

Too many property management teams are buried under low-value, repetitive work:

• Following up on maintenance requests.

• Answering the same questions from residents.

• Manually tracking KPIs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers an opportunity to change that—without gutting your team or lowering your service standards.

The goal isn’t to replace your people.
The goal is to free them from the repetitive, mundane tasks that drain hours every week and don’t directly grow the business.

Practical Ways AI Can Transform Your Property Management Operations

If you think AI in property management just means “chatbots,” you’re missing its real potential. Here are three high-impact examples:

1. Automated Maintenance Triage
   AI can handle up to 80% of maintenance requests before they even hit your team’s inbox—prioritizing, scheduling, and even providing residents with self-help solutions.

2. AI-Driven Leasing Follow-Up
   AI can respond instantly to rental inquiries, send follow-up emails, and book showings 24/7. No more losing leads because someone couldn’t answer the phone on a Saturday night.

3. Smart KPI Dashboards
   AI can pull data from your systems and flag issues before they become crises—like a sudden drop in occupancy or an increase in maintenance response times.

Every repetitive task you automate adds capacity back into your business. More capacity means better service, stronger margins, and a more scalable company.

Building Your Future-Ready Property Management Company

The property management companies that will still be thriving in 2028 are making strategic moves now. They’re:

• Removing low-value work from their teams’ plates.

• Leveraging AI and automation for efficiency.

• Reinvesting saved time into high-value client and resident relationships.

This is future-proofing in action. And it’s the difference between constantly reacting to industry changes and leading through them.

Final Thoughts

The fee debate will continue—it always has. But smart property management leaders know that the biggest wins won’t come from winning arguments online.

They’ll come from building resilient, profitable, AI-powered operations that can adapt to whatever the government, economy, or market throws their way.

The fee fight is just noise.
The real game is protecting your profit, service quality, and scalability—and the clock is already ticking.