What Your Leasing AI Is Allowed to Answer by Itself

Suppose a prospect texts your building after the office closes and asks about keeping a service animal. During a pilot, I’d follow that request from the assistant’s first reply through to the staff member who handles it. I’d want to see what the prospect receives, where the request waits, and how the office records its response.

I’m not a lawyer. Review the wording and response deadlines with your fair housing attorney. The checks below are a way to see whether the software and staff can carry out the process you agree on. I’ve written separately about the booking problems and unfinished texts I encountered while apartment hunting.

Before the assistant replies

For the service-animal request, I’d have the assistant acknowledge it using approved wording and explain who will follow up and when. It shouldn’t answer by quoting the pet FAQ or decide whether the prospect qualifies for an accommodation.

Work through the nearby cases with counsel too. A ground-floor preference alone doesn’t establish a disability-related request. A request to install a grab bar may involve a modification rather than an exception to a policy. The assistant needs a route to someone who can make those distinctions. California explains accommodations and modifications in its housing FAQ.

Some questions can be answered from an approved policy. Income, credit, and background-check criteria should come from the current policy, with exceptions sent to a person. For voucher questions, have counsel approve the reply and application instructions. California protects source of income, including Section 8 housing vouchers, as described in the Civil Rights Department’s guidance. Check the applicable rules for properties elsewhere.

In the office the next morning

Now follow the service-animal request into the staff member’s queue. Can they read the full exchange, see that the prospect is waiting, and contact them? Have them respond as they would during normal work and record the outcome. This is where I’d try an absence as well: if that employee is away, who gets the request?

Have counsel review how quickly requests need attention, including urgent ones. The assistant’s promised follow-up time needs to match the staffing you’ve arranged. Give someone responsibility for finding overdue requests.

If the prospect writes in Spanish, the person receiving the request needs a way to continue in Spanish. Test the approved reply and the staff follow-up together.

An agent may prefer to continue the conversation on a personal phone. Before the pilot, ask staff where those messages are saved and how they become part of the prospect’s record. If lead ownership or commission credit gives agents a reason to work outside the shared system, resolve that with them before adding another channel.

The requests that never reach that queue

Someone also needs to sample conversations the assistant didn’t flag. A request may be phrased differently from the examples used to configure it. Keep those examples for future tests, and repeat them when the vendor changes the replies or routing.

I’d include a question such as, “Anything on a quieter floor? We have a toddler.” Does mentioning a child change which units the assistant offers, beyond the preference the prospect expressed? That answer might never trigger a handoff. Have your attorney review the replies for assumptions about where families belong. California identifies families with children as a protected group in its housing guidance.

When you need the conversation again

Once the staff member has finished handling the test request, try exporting it. Look for the prospect’s question, the assistant’s reply, timestamps, and the staff follow-up. Keep the policy that applied at the time available alongside the record. If part of the exchange is missing, find out whether it was lost or is stored somewhere else.

The export is worth trying before signing because you may need those records after changing vendors. Agree with counsel on retention, access, and legal-hold requirements. Get the vendor’s obligations after the contract ends, including retrieval costs, into the agreement.

Have your attorney check who would defend a claim involving the assistant’s reply and what costs the contract covers. That means reading the defense obligations, indemnity, content disclaimers, and liability cap together.

At the end of this test, you should be able to open the record and see what happened to the service-animal request, including who answered it. If you have to piece it together from separate inboxes and phones, the office still has work to do before relying on the overnight coverage.