How Universal Development & Construction Stays Lean While Scaling with EliseAI

Universal Development & Construction (UDC) has been building and managing multifamily communities across Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina since 1998. As a vertically integrated operator, UDC develops its own communities and manages them in-house under its brand Universal Living. They believe how a property is maintained is just as important as how it’s built, which is why they approach property management with the same high standards that define their construction process. Today, UDC’s portfolio comprises more than 5,000 units.  At the core of their business is a focus on identifying, acquiring, and enhancing real estate in regions with untapped potential, as well as creating distinctive properties through strategic ground-up development. 

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That same approach carries through into how UDC staffs their properties. Rather than following the industry's long-standing general rule of one team member for every 100 units, UDC deliberately runs a lean, tight-knit team. They do so while still protecting their onsite teams' work life balance, with no night shifts or weekend hours required of their staff. This commitment to employee well-being comes with its own challenges.  Being able to maintain staffing levels and still deliver the exceptional service the company has built a reputation on was one of the challenges Acey Stinson, UDC's Senior Director of Operations and Asset Management, set out to solve.

When Stinson joined UDC as Senior Director of Operations and Asset Management, he found a high output operation with few opportunities for improvement. What he did find was a lean organization needing to create workflows to lighten the burden on the high producing team members. He started his tenure at UDC by auditing the basics of their day-to-day workflows, including how many times team members had to manually touch a renewal offer before it was sent to a resident, or the average follow-up cadence a potential renter could expect after an in-person tour. The “back to basics” review surfaced opportunities for standardization and improvement. Also, each UDC community was handling leasing and resident communication differently, and a lack of well-defined SOPs prevented the team from operating at peak efficiency.

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Underneath the minor operational inconsistencies, a larger fundamental challenge emerged: UDC had no CRM. Because of this, they had minimal visibility into what was happening in the leasing pipeline. How were leads coming into the funnel? Were the ILS marketing dollars generating leads, or leases? These were only a few of the questions that needed answering. For a few properties, UDC was paying for a third party call center and scripted chatbot to help with lead nurturing, but without a clear portfolio-wide view of what was happening, the impact was negligible. UDC needed a solution to cultivate greater operational consistency, offer full funnel visibility into their leasing workflows, provide after-hours support, and consolidate their patchwork of point solutions into a more functional and user-friendly platform. Stinson, having previously used EliseAI at another organization, decided to reach out to the EliseAI team to see how they could help support UDC’s goals.

UDC moved quickly to roll out EliseAI after analyzing the potential impact of the tools, deploying LeasingAI, VoiceAI, Delinquency, Maintenance, Renewals, and EliseCRM across their entire portfolio of more than 30 communities in quick succession. Stinson cited EliseAI’s willingness to lean in, support UDC during the pre and post rollout process, and serve as a partner, not just a vendor, as helping the UDC team have the confidence needed to fully commit. The immediate business impact proved that trust was well placed. Across the initial three months of the rollout, EliseAI  generated roughly a 2.4x return on investment for UDC. Operational value is being derived across multiple  sectors of the business, with six products working as one cohesive AI system.  

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LeasingAI is the first interaction where a prospective UDC resident might encounter EliseAI. It handles the prospect’s initial inquiry, qualifies them, books tours, and nurtures the lead through the  application process automatically. This happens across all channels, including email, text, webchat, and voice calls, automating 83% of all routine leasing inquiries across the UDC portfolio. While the UDC team knew turning on EliseAI would allow them to capture more after-hours leads, they were still surprised to find out 44% of their inbound leads come in after the leasing office is closed. This precise visibility allows for more understanding of the modern renters. Knowing when they are reaching out and making decisions has helped UDC make more informed staffing decisions. In fact, 50% of all signed leases during the initial three months of their rollout originating from after-hours inquiries. The speed prospects are now moving through the funnel has never been faster, with a median lead-to-application of 4 days. This now happens without UDC employees having to sacrifice the work-life balance that creates a positive working environment and increases staff retention.

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VoiceAI ensures calls from prospects and residents alike never go unanswered. The phone is answered 100% of the time. Anyone calling at any hour of the day gets an answer, with VoiceAI handling thousands of calls since deployment. Most important is the impact on leasing velocity, with 63% of leases signed having at least one VoiceAI touchpoint, while simultaneously saving hundreds of hours for UDC’s leasing team.

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EliseAI’s Maintenance tool de-escalated 63.8% of after-hours maintenance calls during the first three months of the rollout, walking residents through self-help fixes, like flipping a breaker, to ensure a technician wasn’t erroneously dispatched for a work order that was not needed, or could wait until the morning. At the same time, UDC uses EliseAI’s Maintenance App to ensure work orders are completed faster with auto-assignment, geofenced clock-in/clock-out, and anonymized resident communication. Across UDC’s 30 communities, 68% of work orders are now finished within two days.

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While rent collection wasn’t previously a challenge for UDC, EliseAI’s Delinquency tool is still ensuring not only is more rent being collected, but that the collection is expedited. Today, their collection rate is 99.7%, 10 bps higher than their pre-AI standards, and 90% of rent is collected within five days. This process also relieves the property teams of less enjoyable tasks. The UDC team deployed the Renewals tool to not only automate the renewal journey, but to do so with full context of all other resident communications and needs. 

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Tech consolidation in the EliseCRM platform has not only helped UDC save costs by eliminating the need for expensive point solutions like a standalone call center and website chatbot, but has also unlocked the operational visibility the UDC team sought for years. The absence of a CRM, which started the search for a system in the first place, has been solved with EliseCRM. Stinson and his team can now see exactly where and when leads come in the pipeline, and which marketing dollars are generating interest that actually convert into leases.

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With six EliseAI products running in a cohesive platform, UDC has solved the two key operational challenges Stinson was determined to fix. Firstly, AI is enabling the consistency they were missing: SOPs are applied across every property, regardless of region or staff tenure, information is conveyed in a uniform manner to all prospects and residents, and knowledge doesn’t leave when a team member departs. Secondly, they’ve been able to better support their residents and staff alike, without adding more headcount, significantly improving their operational efficiency without asking anyone to be on call nights or weekends. With this foundation in place, UDC is poised to achieve their goals through the remainder of 2026 and beyond.

UDC is on track to grow past 6,000 units within the next year, with plans to do so while retaining lean, consistent teams, and avoiding an inflated headcount to match the additional units. EliseAI is built to scale with the UDC portfolio, and UDC's early results across LeasingAI, VoiceAI, Maintenance, Delinquency, Renewals, and EliseCRM gives them the confidence to take on more properties. As they develop and operate new communities in Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina, they can stay true to the boutique, tight-knit team philosophy that’s central to how they operate.

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For a team that has always wanted to be the best place to live and work, rather than simply the biggest shop in town, UDC is more closely aligned to their ideal operating model than ever before, and the results speak for themselves.