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AI front desk for property managers
Property management calls, sorted and answered at any hour.
Prospects, residents, owners and vendors all reach the same number. Each one is sorted, answered and routed by the rules you set.
- CallerCan I see the two-bedroom this week?
- Front deskOf course. Wednesday at 5:00 or Friday at 12:30?
- CallerWednesday. Is it pet friendly?
- Front deskCats and small dogs are welcome with a deposit. Done: tour Wednesday at 5:00, and I've texted the address and parking directions.
- ✓ Booked: tour, Wednesday 5:00
Four kinds of caller
Every property manager's line carries four different jobs
Vidhani AI gives a property management company an AI front desk that works the line at night, on weekends and during the day when your team is out in the units. If you are comparing an after hours answering service for property management, the first question is whether it can tell the callers apart. This one does it in the first sentence of the call.
- Prospects. They saw a listing and want rent, availability, pet terms, application steps and a time to see the place.
- Residents. They report a problem, ask about a payment, lose a key or want to know who to call about the garage door.
- Owners. They want to know whether the vacancy has had showings or whether the plumber came on Tuesday.
- Vendors. They confirm access, ask for a unit number or say a job is finished.
Each type gets its own path, its own questions and its own place in the list your team reads next. A burst pipe and a question about trash day can ring in the same minute. They never land in the same pile.
Repair calls
Repair calls ranked by rules you write
You tell us what counts as an emergency, what counts as urgent and what can wait. The front desk applies your wording to each call. The table shows example rules you set. Yours will differ by building, climate and lease.
| Issue | Example rule | What the front desk does |
|---|---|---|
| Water through a ceiling or a burst pipe | Emergency | Rings your on-call contact, then the backup, and logs the unit and the caller's number. |
| Heating or cooling out in extreme weather | Emergency | Same path. It also asks whether anyone in the unit is elderly or has a medical need. |
| Smell of gas or smoke | Emergency | Tells the caller to leave and call the fire department first, then alerts your on-call contact. |
| Locked out | Urgent | Offers the lockout steps you wrote and notifies the on-call contact if the caller is outside at night. |
| Dishwasher, disposal or a running toilet | Routine | Logs it with the unit and a photo by text, and puts it in the morning list. |
| Burned-out hallway bulb | Low | Logs it against the property for the next round. |
For each rule you also set who is rung, in what order and how long to wait before the next person is tried. Those numbers are yours. The front desk follows them as written.
A repair call
What a late-night repair call sounds like
Example call, with made-up names.
- Caller. Hi, this is Alex Sample in 3B. Water is coming through my bathroom ceiling.
- Front desk. I'm sorry. Is the water still running, and can you reach the shutoff under your sink?
- Caller. It's dripping steadily. I turned off my sink valve but it keeps coming.
- Front desk. That sounds like the unit above. I'm sending this to the emergency contact now and I'll text you for a photo. Is 3B the unit, and is this the best number?
- Caller. Yes, 3B, and this is my best number.
- Front desk. Emergency alert sent for the leak in 3B. Your photo request is on its way.
The call is logged with the unit, the symptom, the photo when it arrives and the order in which people were rung. The person on call sees all of it before dialing back.
Leasing calls
Prospects want a time, not a voicemail
Renters may call several listings in a row and tour the first one that answers with a clear time. The front desk answers the questions callers ask in your trade's own words: rent, deposit, lease length, move-in date, parking, pet policy, utilities, laundry, application fee and screening steps. It reads the answers from what you gave it for each property. It offers showing times that are open and books one.
A prospect who is not ready to tour gets the application steps by text. A prospect asking about a unit that is leased gets the next similar opening if you have one. Two rules help here, and both are yours to set: how far ahead a tour can be booked, and which times are self-guided and which need a leasing agent.
Showings are confirmed and reminded by text, and a caller who needs to move one can do so on the same thread. That cuts the empty hour spent waiting at a vacant unit.
Resident questions
Rent day, lockouts and what the office will and will not discuss
Residents call about due dates, late fee policy, how to pay, parking permits, guest rules, move-out notice and quiet hours. General policy comes straight from what you provided. Anything tied to one person's account is a different matter. We set the front desk up to check that the caller matches the record before it says a balance, a ledger line or an unlock code.
A caller who cannot be matched is set to get the general answer and an offer to have the office call back during hours. The office sees the reason in the morning list. See how the setup and the checks behind each answer work.
Owners and vendors
Owners want updates and vendors want access
Owner calls are logged by property and by owner, with the question asked: showings, repair status, rent collected, a vendor invoice. We set the front desk up to share only what you have said an owner may hear, and only after matching the caller. Anything else goes to the account manager with the question already written down.
Vendor access is set up to check who may receive private entry details before sharing them. A vendor reporting a finished job is logged against the work order so the morning list shows it closed.
Property types
Apartments, single-family homes and short-term rentals
Apartment communities
Many units, one office, a shared emergency line. Calls cluster around the first of the month and after move-ins.
Single-family and scattered sites
Every address has its own owner, its own vendor and its own showing window. The front desk keeps them apart.
Short-term rentals
Guests call about door codes, wifi and a missing towel. Check-in questions and house rules are answered from your sheet, and a guest locked out at night goes to the person on call.
A mixed portfolio runs on one front desk with separate rules per property.
Setup
What you tell us before the first call comes in
Before the first call comes in, you hand over the facts the front desk will rely on. We write them down and read them back.
- Properties. Addresses, unit counts, office hours and where each property's showings happen.
- Policies. Pets, deposits, applications, late fees, guest rules, parking and quiet hours.
- Emergency rules. The classes in the table above, the on-call order and the time to wait between attempts.
- Who may hear what. Which facts a resident, an owner or a vendor is allowed to receive and what must match first.
- Languages. The languages your residents use for calls, messages and showing confirmations.
Before launch, phone it as a resident with a flooded kitchen and as a prospect asking about a unit that has already been leased. Change the wording until both calls go your way. The overnight handoff is covered on the after-hours answering service page.
Limits
What it will not do for a property manager
- It does not approve applications. Screening decisions and lease terms stay with your team. The front desk gathers the facts and the application steps.
- It does not authorize repairs. It logs the request and calls the right person. Spending and vendor choice stay with you.
- It does not give legal advice. A question about eviction notices or a deposit dispute goes to a person with the details taken.
- It checks facts. Facts it cannot confirm go to your team as a call, not as a guess.
Busy weeks
Leasing season, move-out week and storm nights
Call volume is lumpy. Spring and summer fill the tour calendar. The end of a month brings move-out questions. A storm or a cold snap puts a week of repair calls into one evening. Because every call is answered at once, a surge does not push anyone to voicemail, and the ranked list tells you where to start the next morning.
In a normal week, Monday morning you read the weekend list, closed items first. During the week tours land on the calendar and reminders go out. Friday night the on-call phone rings only for what your rules call an emergency.
Cost
What moves the quote for a property manager
Before any quote, the pricing page and the cost guide explain the method. For property management the quote moves with the number of properties with their own rules, the calls a typical month brings, the languages your residents use, and how deep the checks go before an account detail is shared.
To estimate call volume, count the calls your office and on-call phone received over two weeks and double it. That is a worksheet, not a promise. The choosing guide shows how to compare options.
Questions
Questions property managers ask before they switch the phones over
Is this a live answering service?
No. The caller talks to an AI voice, and booking and routing rules run outside the AI. Access rules are set up around your residents and owners. A side-by-side with a staffed service is in the comparison of an AI receptionist and an answering service.
Can a small landlord use it?
Yes. A landlord with a few doors can use one property sheet and a short emergency list. The setup call decides what is needed.
How does it know a real emergency from a routine request?
It applies the classes you wrote, using the words the caller says and the questions it asks. Anything that matches your emergency list is rung through. If the caller is unclear, it asks follow-up questions before it ranks the call.
What happens if nobody on call picks up?
Your rule names the fallback: a backup contact, a retry after a pause you choose, a text to a second number, or all three.
Does it work with my property software?
Yes. It connects to your property tools, schedules showings and records maintenance requests as residents call.
Will it handle residents who speak Spanish?
Yes. Residents speak Spanish and get answers, showing times and repair updates in Spanish.
Can I keep my office number?
Yes. Your office number stays the same, and calls forward to the front desk whenever you want it to answer.
How do I check what it said?
Each call produces a record with the caller type, the unit, what was asked and what was done. Your morning list is built from those records.
Can it text residents?
Yes. It texts photo requests, tour confirmations and reminders on the same number.
Is a realtor line the same thing?
Not quite. Leasing and sales calls for an agent focus on listings and buyers. This page is about managing buildings, residents and owners. A mixed office can run both on separate rules.
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