Maintenance AI

The midnight leak, closed before the team wakes up.

Clara triages, troubleshoots, and dispatches — across every property, every vendor, every hour.

Where it hurts

Vendor bidding is a $30-40K / year tax.

Industry analysis pegs vendor bid-and-dispatch at 10 hours a week per property, 400–520 hours a year, and $30–40K in margin burnt coordinating the three-quote loop. Only ~30% of vendors even respond. Bid variance can run 150%. Clara runs that loop end-to-end.

$30–40K

Margin lost per property per year to bid coordination

10 hrs / wk

Property-manager time on bid-and-dispatch admin

~30%

Of vendors respond to bid requests

150%

Bid variance across the same job

Source: Four and Half — “Why the VendorCompany Bidding Process Is Broken”. Pair with NAA Income/Expense IQ 2024: turnover costs jumped 17.5% YoY on 1M+ units across 109 MSAs.

Canonical scenario

Sarah Martinez · Unit 312 · 11:47 PM.

Step through the thread Clara ran while the team was asleep. Each turn surfaces the operator-visible outcome in the side panel.

Sarah Martinez

Unit 312 · Parkside Residences

Unit 312 · Parkside Residences · Illustrative, product behavior is real

My toilet won't stop running. It's been going for over an hour. I can hear it through the wall and I have work at 6.
11:47 PM
Hi Sarah — Clara here, the AI assistant for Parkside. Sorry, that's the worst right before work. Before anything else: is water rising in the bowl, or is the tank just refilling on loop?
11:47 PM
Tank. Bowl is fine. It just keeps filling and running, filling and running.
11:48 PM
Unit 312 has a Kohler Cimarron two-piece — pulling the manual now. The most common cause here is a worn flapper not sealing. Take the tank lid straight up and tell me: when the tank refills, does the flapper at the bottom settle flat, or does it curl or hang open?
11:48 PM
It's curling at one corner. Definitely not flat anymore.
11:51 PM
Shut the supply valve behind the toilet, 90° clockwise — the cycling stops for the night. I'm booking Mike (our in-house handyman) for 8 AM with a replacement flapper. Work order WO-1042 is open. I'll text when he's 15 minutes out.
11:52 PM
Good morning Sarah — Mike is seven minutes out with the flapper. Anything he should know before he knocks?
7:58 AM

Turn 1 of 7

Caller identified before the first reply

The inbound matches Sarah Martinez — Unit 312 at Parkside, lease active, preferred channel SMS. Mode locks to MAINTENANCE for the thread; leasing tools do not load. STOP / HELP keywords are intercepted deterministically before Clara ever sees the message.

What the operator sees

Thread opens on the Tuesday dashboard with the tenant, unit, and property already resolved. Zero minutes of your night spent on the identification step.

First turn IDs as AI, triages safety first

Clara opens with her name and her role. She checks the emergency shape before anything else — a rising bowl is an overflow risk that needs the shut-off in the next thirty seconds; a cycling tank is urgent but not an emergency. Safety rules are encoded, not discretionary.

What the operator sees

You never worry Clara is posing as a human. She identifies as AI on turn one, every thread.

Triage: urgent, not emergency

Classified URGENT — water waste, sleep disruption — but not EMERGENCY. Emergency paths (gas, active flooding, no heat below 50°F outside, a medical device losing power) escalate to the on-call phone before Clara finishes typing. This one gets a self-serve attempt first.

What the operator sees

You do not get woken up for a cycling tank. You do get woken up for gas, live flooding, or frozen pipes.

Manual cited, brand-and-model accurate

The fixture inventory for Unit 312 is queried — Kohler Cimarron, installed 2022, flapper under standard warranty. The manufacturer manual search returns the three diagnostic steps for a continuously-running tank. Clara cites the manual. She does not improvise from training data.

What the operator sees

No staff tech has to memorize every SKU in fifty units. The right manual loads on the right unit, on the right turn, in under sixty seconds.

Self-serve first, dispatch second

A curled flapper is a replacement part, not a midnight plumber call. Clara walks Sarah through shutting the supply valve behind the toilet — 90° clockwise — so the cycling stops tonight. The dispatch defers to the 8 AM in-house handyman rotation. This is the mechanism behind the self-serve resolution rate.

What the operator sees

When a dispatch happens, it is because self-serve was not enough — not because nobody tried. The full attempt is in the thread.

Work order opened — vendor matched, thread attached

WO-1042 persists with the fixture SKU, the manual citation, Sarah's last replies, Mike's vendor profile, the trade, and the ETA. The record writes back to the PMS of record and to the maintenance calendar. Nothing is a separate ledger; nothing has to be re-typed in the morning.

What the operator sees

WO-1042 is a complete ticket the moment it is created — not a stub to fill in Tuesday. Mike gets the fixture, the unit, the rate, and the ETA in one push.

What Clara already knows

The context behind every reply.

Clara doesn't improvise. Five classes of written knowledge ingested at onboarding — click any row for a live example of how it gets cited on a thread.

Every fridge, dishwasher, disposal, AC unit, water heater, and thermostat — with brand, model number, and install date — tied to the specific unit it lives in.
On a live thread, Clara says
"Your unit has a Whirlpool WRS325SDHZ bottom-freezer installed in 2022 — still under the five-year sealed-system warranty."
How it gets in: Spreadsheet upload at onboarding, or pulled unit-by-unit from your existing property-management records.

Receipts, not guesses

The thread IS the audit log.

Every classification, every tool call, every outbound line is logged with who, when, and why. Exportable on request when procurement or counsel asks.

Work order WO-1042

What your 7:00 AM Tuesday review looks like

Same work order, same timeline, same citations — reconstructed from nothing, because the conversation IS the record.

Unit312 · Parkside

Duration60 minutes

StatusClosed

PM minutes0

11:42 PMInbound
Inbound SMS received from Sarah Martinez (Unit 312). Opt-out keywords intercepted before AI; consent record verified; thread classified as maintenance.
11:42 PMClara
First turn — identified as AI. Asked two triage questions: power source, water volume.
11:43 PMClara
Triage result: urgent, not an emergency. Appliance inventory matched: Whirlpool WRS325SDHZ, bottom-freezer, install 2022-06-14.
Unit record · appliance SKU · warranty status
11:43 PMClara
Manufacturer manual searched. Query: "water on floor, bottom-freezer". Three self-serve steps returned, cited to the manual section.
Manual citation · PDF page 47
11:45 PMTenant
Tenant confirms: drain pan cracked. Photo requested.
11:45 PMTenant
Photo received. Crack confirmed visually.
photo-204-drain-pan-11-45.jpg
11:46 PMClara
Self-serve rejected (warranty part). Vendor matched on after-hours appliance rotation: Carlos Reyes, Mile High Plumbing. 4.8 on-time over 90 days. $125/hr after-hours rate.
Vendor profile · rate card
11:46 PMSystem
Work order WO-1042 created. Attached: thread transcript, appliance SKU, manual citation, vendor profile, tenant photo, ETA 12:20 AM.
WO-1042 created
11:47 PMSystem
WO-1042 written to your property-management system of record. Calendar hold placed on on-call maintenance calendar. Carlos notified with full context.
System-of-record sync · calendar hold
12:18 AMVendor
Carlos on-site. Two minutes ahead of ETA.
12:41 AMVendor
Drain pan replaced with warranty unit. Defrost line reseated. Vendor-side notes appended to WO-1042.
Resolution notes · warranty claim draft
12:42 AMTenant
Tenant confirms floor dry. Thread-side resolution.
12:42 AMClara
WO-1042 closed. Warranty claim auto-filed against the appliance sealed-system coverage. Follow-up text scheduled for Tuesday 9:30 AM.
Warranty claim filed · follow-up queued
7:00 AM TueProperty manager
You open WO-1042. You read the thread once, confirm the part is reimbursable, and move on with your day.

Velocity

The numbers behind the thread.

Measured across pilot portfolios. Self-serve resolution is the share of tickets Clara closed end-to-end without dispatching a paid vendor.

First-reply time, portfolio median

-94%

Every inbound, every channel, every hour.

Self-serve resolution rate

+41ptsvs. no assistant

Emergency routing, always on

Time to vendor dispatched

-92%vs. phone tag

Vendor coordination

Same ticket, two different mornings.

The phone-tag dispatch loop, beside the one-thread version. Same tenant, same fixture, same vendor roster.

Before14h 33m

After36s

from first text to vendor confirmed, with the thread archived by 8:23 AM

Today — without Clara

11:47 PM text. 2:15 PM next-day callback. Sarah finds out about the ETA at the leasing desk.

After-hours voicemail, morning triage, plumber phone tag.

14h 33mfrom text landed to vendor ETA confirmed

11:47 PM · SunTenant
Sarah texts the on-call number. Running toilet, can't sleep, work at 6.
— After-hours line rolls to voicemail after 10 PM.
11:50 PMSystem
Voicemail: “Please call back during business hours or visit the office.”
Mon 6:02 AMTenant
Sarah leaves for work exhausted. Second voicemail on the way out the door.
— Ticket still unopened. Nobody has been dispatched.
Mon 8:40 AMMaintenance Lead
PM triages the voicemail queue, calls a plumber, leaves a message, calls a second plumber.
— Nine hours after the first text. Three humans, three rounds of phone tag.
Mon 2:15 PMVendor
Plumber finally calls back. ETA tomorrow afternoon. Nobody has told Sarah.
— Tenant finds out by walking into the leasing office on her lunch break.

With Clara

11:47 PM text. 11:47:45 PM triage. 11:52 PM handyman booked. Work order archived by 8:23 AM.

Same tenant, same fixture, same in-house vendor — one thread from first turn to close.

0m 36sfrom text landed to vendor confirmed on the ticket

11:47 PM · SunTenant
Sarah texts the main number. Running toilet, can't sleep, work at 6.
11:47:45 PMClara
Triaged urgent (not emergency). Kohler Cimarron manual pulled. Walking Sarah through the supply-valve shut-off so the cycling stops tonight.
— Triage + self-serve on one turn.
11:52 PMClara
Mike (in-house handyman) booked for 8 AM with a replacement flapper. WO-1042 opened with SKU, unit, vendor, ETA — written back to the PMS.
— Vendor matched by trade, rate, on-time rate.
Mon 7:58 AMClara
Pre-arrival ping: Mike is seven minutes out with the part. Sarah's access notes append to the work order and push to his phone.
— Follow-through without a human coordinator.
Mon 8:23 AMSystem
WO-1042 closed. Flapper replaced, thread archived under Sarah's ledger, invoice attached. Zero PM minutes spent.

Stop coordinating tickets. Start closing them.

Clara runs the maintenance workflow end-to-end — across every channel, every property, every vendor.

See multifamily Talk to the team