theCUBEd Awards | Cat Allday, AppFolio

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Cat Allday

Vice President of Product

AppFolio

play_circle_outline Digitizing America's 50 Million Rental Units: How AppFolio Streamlines Accounting, Maintenance, Marketing and Leasing

play_circle_outline 24/7 Agentic AI: Automating Leasing, Resident Support, and Repetitive Operations

play_circle_outline Performers: Deep Vertical Agents Streamline Maintenance, Resident Workflows, and Leasing — Fill Vacancies Five Days Faster

play_circle_outline Three-Layer Architecture: Integrating Records, Actions and Growth with Historical Data, SOPs and Rules to Maximize Stakeholder Value

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Cat Allday, AppFolio

Cat Allday

Vice President of Product AppFolio

Cat Allday of AppFolio, vice president of product, participates in an interview produced by theCUBE Research at the 2026 Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards. Allday outlines how agentic artificial intelligence, AI, transforms property management operations and product strategy.

Allday presents AppFolio's Performers, unified data architecture and a three-layer model of system of record, system of action and system of growth. They describe how these elements support leasing efficiencies, improve resident communication and address integration challenges while in... Read more

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What is AppFolio, what problems does it aim to solve for property managers, owners, and residents, and what are the main trends affecting the rental property management industry in 2026? add

How can property managers use agentic AI to handle routine communications, run operations 24/7, and support after‑hours leasing and resident inquiries? add

What is your Performer agent offering, what everyday use cases does it support, and how are customers adapting to working with this agent technology? add

How is your platform organized into a system of record, a system of action, and a system of growth, and how do those layers work together to codify property managers' SOPs, enable agentic AI decision-making, and deliver value to stakeholders (property managers, residents, owners/investors, and vendors)? add

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Cat Allday, AppFolio

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Gemma Allen

>> Welcome back to theCUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. Every year, theCUBE runs theCUBE Tech Innovation Awards. We talk to the builders, breakers, and innovators of industry. And joining me now is one of our award winners, Cat Allday, VP of product at AppFolio. Welcome, Cat.

>> Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Gemma Allen

>> So, Cat, what an interesting company at a very interesting time. In some respects, in terms of what AppFolio does and the industry you're in, it is an industry that seems ripe for digitalization, right? I think I read there's 50 million rental units in the US alone. Talk to me a little bit about the company, what problems you aim to solve for your clients and customers, and what's happening broadly at this moment in 2026?

>> Yeah. So, AppFolio, we serve the rental property management business, so companies that are managing residential houses, as well as multifamily apartment buildings. And we do everything from support with accounting to their maintenance business, marketing and leasing, and then just the resident communication, as well as owner communication and investor communication. So, we touch a lot of different aspects of the rental property management business. And what's happening in the space right now is really interesting. Property managers are trying to figure out how to apply AI into their practices. And when you think about property management, it's a very relationship-heavy business. And so, when you think about AI and technology, that's secondary to what these folks typically think about. Instead, they're trying to find new owners that they can manage their properties. They're also trying to find residents to come into their communities. And technology is an enabler, but it's oftentimes an afterthought. But many of these more ambitious property managers are trying to find how to use AI to streamline their operations, as well as drive growth.

Gemma Allen

>> It's also an industry that, again, perceptionally anyway, from what I understand, runs on like text messages, spreadsheets, phone conversations. So, there's a lot of repetitive tasks that probably have been ripe for digital era for quite a while. AI has, I guess, presented somewhat of a gear shift from the opportunity perspective. Talk to me about what that actually looks like. Is this specific agents, specific technology apps that are now suddenly available to mass users, renters, buyers? How is it actually coming to life real time?

>> Yeah. So, you think about agentic AI, we're seeing property managers who are adopting agents that can help with communication. So, taking that frontline, the same questions are being asked all the time, either by prospects or residents, these agents are able to handle many of those conversations and then hand it off to a staff member when it needs a human touch. And they're able to now run their operations twenty four seven without having to have somebody staffed, answering the phone in the middle of the night for emergencies and things like that. And on the leasing and the rental side, when you think about people who are looking for a new place to live, they're oftentimes doing that after hours. So, they have their normal day job and then they go apartment hunting in the evening and they might have questions about availability or the property, and an agentic agent helping answer some of those things at nine o'clock at night is really something that's really helping these businesses, one, get back to that lead right away, but also extend out their team and become an extension of their workforce.

Gemma Allen

>> So, I know one aspect of your technology stack and offering that really drew the attention of the judges was this performer agent offering that you guys have developed. Talk to me a little bit about that in terms of its very everyday use cases and also how customers are adjusting to life working with an agent technology in the space.

>> Yeah. So, when we think about Performers, we call them our Performers, these are our agentic agents, oftentimes we have built a deep vertical agent. So, we have a performer that helps in the maintenance workflow. We have a performer that supports the leasing workflow and a performer who supports the resident communication workflow. And by having those agents who have deep knowledge in a section of the business, they're able to do a lot of the end-to-end work. So, it's not just answering a question, but actually helping a resident file a maintenance ticket, potentially doing some triage to make sure that the issue is not an emergency, or the agent can help walk the resident through maybe even resolving the issue themselves. I think you can think about a dishwasher, your dishwasher's clogged or your garbage disposal is clogged. It can give some troubleshooting tips to the residents. Maybe they can fix that issue without actually having to open a maintenance request. And so, by building these Performers that are very deep in a particular stack in the operation, they're really able to do so much more than a generic chatbot might be able to do. And what we're seeing is this is allowing these property managers to focus on things that are maybe more meaningful, like building the relationship with the resident or making sure there's a personalized connection versus sitting there answering the same question over and over again. And I think that is where we're already seeing pretty measurable improvements to our customers' businesses. When you think about the leasing side, we have a lead nurturing workflow that a performer participates in. And what we're seeing is five day faster, on average, filling of vacant units by leveraging the leasing performer and these flows that are nurturing the leads. So, that is one thing where we're already seeing pretty significant improvements to people's business.

Gemma Allen

>> So, when we think about vacancy, I mean, it's definitely an interesting part of this opportunity because vacancy means money. It means a loss of revenue, a loss of opportunity, right? But it's no longer necessarily about those with the most units, it's about those who can act on data almost automatically to make sure that there is no vacancy. Talk to me a little about the data side of that, like how it is that you create the opportunity to now have structured data to feed these models, to feed these Performers in a world that has always been somewhat just modulated, I would say, and hindranced by legacy challenges, right?

>> Yeah. I think where we're going to see companies be most successful is by having a unified architecture, and that includes your data. So, if you think about this particular industry, there's been a lot of data fragmentation. Businesses oftentimes have five to 10 to 15 different systems that are managing each of these workflows, and that creates a lot of challenges for AI if the data's scattered everywhere. And so, I think where you're going to see companies be most successful is when they have this unified data architecture where the AI has 360 degree contextual knowledge, has access to all the right data, and the data is structured in a way where you can actually apply agentic technology to it. And I think when you have these disparate systems and you're trying to connect them via APIs or MCPs or other things, every step that you take outside of this unified system, you have data integrity issues, data fidelity becomes less that you really need to make those fast decisions. And so, I believe that what we're seeing is this unification of data so that agentic agents can actually make those decisions and have access to real-time data is going to be really critical in the future.

Gemma Allen

>> And help explain the plug-and-play element of this. You onboard a new client with a huge property portfolio. There's a certain level of integration I'm sure that's needed and a certain level of preemptive structuring that needs to happen within their own environment and their own workflows, right? What does that timeline look like? What are some of the challenges that you see clients and customers come across and how do you help solve for them, especially in this agentic model where, like you said, structured data is everything?

>> Well, we think of our system in three layers. So, first is the system of record, which is very much when you think about bringing a new customer on, it's about how do we get their historical data into the system? How do we set up their operations to work the way they want to? So, a lot of property managers have these big binders of their SOPs, their standard operating procedures, and how do we take that information and codify it into our system, so that the agentic tools know how they want their business to operate? And so, within our system of record, we pull all the data in, all the transactional stuff happens at that layer. And then, we have what we call our system of action. And this is where we would codify some of those business operations processes within our flows tool. And so, this is where you say, "Hey, if this happens, then do this." So, it's very rules-based. And so, there's this deterministic component so agents know, "Hey, this is what I do in these situations." And then, there's also the ability to allow the agents to have a little bit more discretion. And then, we have the third layer, which is our system of growth. And this is really about how we think about providing value to every stakeholder in the ecosystem. So, you've got your property management team, the people who are actually managing the properties. You have your residents who are oftentimes consuming the technology in different ways. And then, you have your owners and investors who also are part of that ecosystem, as well as the vendors, the third-party vendors who are maybe doing works or your plumbers that you're contracting out to. And all of those stakeholders have to participate in this ecosystem. And so, when we think about our systems of record, system of action and system of growth, we also think about how do we drive value for each of those stakeholders in that ecosystem? And so, it's really important for us to make sure that not only the property manager can set their operating procedures up in our system, but that we are serving all those other stakeholders as well.

Gemma Allen

>> So, it's an interesting time from the perspective of agentic AI, especially as we think about the mass-integration opportunity, right? And I'm sure, like with many industries, there is a view that whatever platform owns the majority of a portfolio manager's day-to-day will own the stack, right? People just want seamless, integrated lives. And I'm sure for your industry, like many others, that means maybe bridging into new spaces that perhaps you hadn't thought about three, five years ago, right? It's about constantly growing the wings in new directions as well to make sure that you're capturing that 24-7 business opportunity.

>> Yeah.

Gemma Allen

>> What are your thoughts in terms of some spaces that you guys are leaning into or new events and technology on the roadmap that maybe you hadn't thought about three years ago? How quickly is this agentic world changing, especially as a product manager for you, Cat, changing the expectation in terms of what you need to build 6, 12 months out?

>> Yeah. Well, it's been a really interesting couple of months with things like Claude Code. So, even internally, as we're thinking about how do we build solutions for our customers, we're obviously leaning in and figuring out how does that change our day-to-day jobs as product managers and engineers. And so, our customers are experiencing the same thing. We have a lot of customers who are very interested in, "How do I leverage AI to change the way I work?" And we want to be ahead of them, so that when they're ready to adopt something, we've got a solution for them. So, we need to be about three to six months ahead of our customers in where they're ready to adopt new technologies. And so, when we were thinking about building the agentic agents within our platform that we call Performers, I think we were very focused on these very deep workflows. We also are building out our assistant tool, which is like a copilot, and we're really thinking about how do we leverage this new deep agent technology, so that the agent can be much more robust? And with our current assistant, we're able to do things like actual analysis of the data, so we can provide insights to our customer on how they're actually performing. So, they can ask the assistant like, "Hey, go look at this rent roll report. Tell me why it's changed over the last six months by whatever percentage." And they can do an analysis looking at the data in our system, that historical trend analysis to identify potential root cause problems. And then, they can make recommendations on what they can do to improve that. And so, that's a really exciting advancement that we're able to make because the technology is evolving so fast. Doing that historically would've been a lot of ML development and now just with generative AI, we're able to produce those insights very quickly.

Gemma Allen

>> So, Cat, last question for you. We hear a lot about the impacts of AI on the labor market, right? And in this space where there has been a lot of manual work, I'm sure there's a lot of property managers that have worked all through the weekend, every weekend for many, many years, et cetera. What are you seeing with the mass application of generative AI and now at agentic AI? Do you expect that we're going to have less property managers or do you think we're going to have just far more efficient property managers with far more happy renters and running things far more seamlessly? How are you thinking about this and how is AppFolio thinking about the impacts on the industry?

>> Yeah. So, I think this is obviously a very hot topic right now, like what does AI mean to the job market? And in property management, what we believe is going to happen is that we're going to see a higher ratio of apartments or units under management per property manager. So, there's a statistic today that a property manager can manage between 100 and 150 units, and we want to see that ratio double. So, with technology like this, a property manager might be able to manage 300 units or up to 1,000 units. And what that means is that businesses are going to be able to grow faster than maybe they were able to do before. So, there is a labor shortage in this market as well. Finding staff, keeping staff has been a challenge. And so, I think AI is going to allow these businesses to continue to grow without having to add more headcount. And then, the type of work that property managers will be doing will be more meaningful. So, one of the challenges today is if you sit behind your desk and you're answering questions via email or chat or on the phone, you're not actually out building community and you're not actually connecting with your residents and understanding what their needs are. And so, I think what will happen is the property manager role will be visible out in the field versus just behind their desk. And that is actually going to be, I think, a game-changer because it's going to allow people to actually build these communities. And I think those property managers could also focus on other things like building the business, either trying to attract new owners or thinking about amenities that maybe they weren't able to offer before that now they'll have the bandwidth to do. So there's lots of, I think, real benefits and the work will change. I don't think we should not think that the day-to-day is going to change. But the great thing about property management is there is a physical component that AI is not going to take away. There's still a building, right? There's still things that you will need a human to crank a wrench. Those things don't go away with this technology.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, Cat, as somebody who has been renting here in New York and raising two kids in an apartment for the last 14 years, I certainly welcome the idea of property managers and properties being run more seamlessly, as I'm sure many New Yorkers do. So, I know theCUBE and SiliconANGLE Media Team were so impressed with this company. They looked under the hood and thought there was so much opportunity, so much innovation happening. So, congrats to you and thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.

>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Gemma Allen

>> I'm Gemma Allen at theCUBE Studio here at the New York Stock Exchange. This is part of our Tech Innovation Awards. We talk to some of the builders and breakers and most innovative minds in industry around what they're building and where they're headed. Thanks so much for watching.