Hey everyone 👋

We’re Ismail & Elias - co-founders of Brickwise.

TL;DR

Brickwise is building an AI property manager that automates maintenance for landlords and property managers.

Landlords usually get into property as a way to make money. They quickly realise it requires a lot of work, so they hand things over to property managers. On average, 1 property manager is hired for every 120 properties. That’s just the cost of property management.

Brickwise is making it possible to deliver profits and margins that haven’t been possible pre-AI.

Our Launch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDJyMnw8jpE

Ask: Are you a landlord or property manager? Or, do you know landlords or property managers? I’d love to speak to them directly: ismail@brickwiseai.com

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Problem ❌

There are 240,000 property management firms in the US. They spend ~$56bn per year on salaries to manage properties. This reality is true pretty much everywhere in the world. In Europe, 214,000 firms spend ~$35bn on salaries.

How are these salaries financed? On average, an owner has to pay 10% of their monthly rent (before mortgages, taxes, repairs) to property managers.

This represents half the problem (literally). 50% of landlords are so put off by the cost of using a property manager, they choose to manage it themselves.

Unfortunately, this just hasn’t been solvable before. The more properties you have, the more people you need. One person can only answer so many emails or respond to so many calls.

As a team, we’ve been there before, building a small property management firm overseeing 130 properties. We understand the nuances of managing properties, from maintenance issues to evictions.

We also understand why only now technology has made it possible to change this.

Solution ✅

Brickwise will one day automate the entire property lifecycle. We’re starting by making the most labour-intensive part as automated as possible: maintenance.

Part 1 - 24/7 support via call, email and text

Tenants are given a phone number and email that they can contact 24/7 (you can also try it yourself!)

Our AI agent does more than just triage and arrange visits. It actually understands issues and suggests fixes on the spot.

Part 2 - Organising and arranging contractors

Of course, not all issues can be resolved over call or text. Often, someone needs to take a look. This usually involves a series of phone calls between the property manager, the tenant and the contractor. When you’re managing thousands of properties, resolutions take time. Reasons include (but are not limited to):

• Someone’s out of office
• You’ve been assigned a new property manager
• The contractor didn’t pick up their phone (and your property manager forgot to call back)
• It’s a weekend and your issue isn’t urgent
• They’re getting multiple quotes because the repair is expensive

Whatever the reason, everyone is unhappy when things take long. The beauty of AI is its ability to speak to many people at the same time. This means as soon as our agent picks up an issue, it is able to contact dozens of contractors (external or internal) at the same time.

Part 3 - Keeping everyone updated, like “real life read receipts”

Property managers are always kept in the loop with everything the agent is doing, giving them the exact oversight they need. At the same time, tenants are always updated with how things are progressing. These systems are automated, and most importantly scalable. We can manage instant updates for thousands of tenants.

Ask 💬

If you are, or you know any of the following, I’d love to hear from you:

Property Managers
You’re probably managing hundreds or thousands of properties and are figuring out if this AI thing makes any sense for you. Is it as good as it sounds? Does it integrate into my current PMS?

Landlords
You might be a professional landlord, or you might be a software engineer running the family property business on the side. You’d rather not, but there’s no one else that’s able to do it.

You can reach out to us at ismail@brickwiseai.com

Team

Ismail is an ex-Googler and previously the founder of LiveLink, an AI video editing platform that edited 150k videos per month for over 1000 customers. They raised $3m. He also ran his own property business helping oversee 130 properties.

Elias was an early engineer at Dataform (YC W18) who were acquired by Google. At Google he worked in the core team that grew Dataform’s revenue at Google from 0 to $100m in 4 years. He left Google to create Busbysims, a platform for engineers to design systems, before starting Brickwise.

Fun fact: Elias was the only member of the Dataform team who did NOT want to take the acquisition!