Heimstaden is changing residential real estate management with AI

The buildings haven’t changed. Everything around them has.

A hundred years ago, managing a residential building meant finding tenants, collecting rent and keeping properties in good condition. Today, these fundamentals remain remarkably similar. What is changing is how that work gets done.

For European residential real estate operator Heimstaden ⁠ (opens in a new window) , this presents an opportunity: what if AI could fundamentally change how thousands of homes are managed?

In June 2025, Heimstaden’s leadership decided to accelerate its bet on AI. After evaluating several platforms, the company chose OpenAI. The goal was twofold; empower employees and rethink the processes at the heart of its business.

The ambition is to move towards increasingly self-operating buildings, where AI can help anticipate needs, coordinate work and support decisions across the property lifecycle. “The purpose of our buildings hasn’t changed.” says Helge Krogsbøl, Co-CEO at Heimstaden. “We provide homes for people. But the way we operate them continues to change as we challenge conventions and adopt new technology.”

“We see AI as one of the biggest opportunities to accelerate that transformation.”

—Helge Krogsbøl, Co-CEO, Heimstaden

Reimagining the business of letting homes

Consider what happens when a property becomes vacant.

Traditionally, getting it back onto the market involves assessing rental value, arranging photography, producing advertisements and responding to market demand. Each stage requires time, coordination and specialist input. And it is an information challenge; understanding what you own, what the competition has, and what the customer wants.

AI is now supporting all the key steps in this process:

- Pricing: Intelligence and recommendations based on tools built in ChatGPT Sites

- Advertising: Image styling and apartment descriptions done by AI

- Review listings: Agent reviews all live ads against Heimstaden’s quality standards

- Feedback: AI generated market feedback helps letting teams take corrective action which makes prices increasingly dynamic

Employees remain responsible for reviewing and approving decisions. But the work surrounding those decisions is changing.

In the Netherlands, the cost of producing a virtually staged property image has fallen from approximately €50 to less than €0.10 which is a reduction of more than 99%. Heimstaden estimates annual savings potential of €130,000 in that market alone.

The significance extends beyond cheaper advertisements. By applying AI across the letting process, Heimstaden is building a more responsive way to bring homes to market.

“Our AI strategy is based on three pillars.” says Nikolaj Brammer, Heimstaden’s Chief Digital Officer, “First, we empower employees through training and access to the right tools. Second, we have a central transformation office and a network of AI champions to drive larger AI initiatives. Third, we strengthen the foundations by making our property management systems and data models ready for AI.”

Letting puts all three pillars into practice: tools and training enable colleagues to create virtually staged images and listings; our central team coordinates improvements across pricing, advertising, ad review and market feedback; and we are making property data accessible to the AI tools that support pricing and listing creation.

“We started by breaking down our most important business processes and asking where AI could create value. Letting is a good example: it’s not about automating one task, but improving how the whole process works.”

—Nikolaj Brammer, Chief Digital Officer, Heimstaden

When domain experts become builders

Some of the most significant changes are happening far from traditional software engineering teams.