This wasn’t a vendor pitch. It wasn’t a highlight reel. It was a reality check.
At the recent AIM Conference, REBA CRO Tim McInerney sat down with Passco Companies’ SVP of Strategic Technology and Innovation Chris Rodriguez and Mill Creek’s Integrations and Innovations Director Samantha Chalmers to unpack the hard truth in the session “PropTech Fails: Someone had to say it.”
PropTech doesn’t fail because of bad intentions. It fails because expectations, evaluation and execution are fundamentally misaligned. The session wasn’t a critique of innovation itself. It served as a cathartic release of missteps the industry takes in how it assesses, buys and deploys technology.
What emerged wasn’t cynicism. It was clarity.
Managed Expectations
Rodriguez set the tone early by naming the gap everyone has felt but few articulate: the distance between expectation and reality. In demos, everything works. The workflows are seamless, the integrations look effortless and the outcomes feel almost guaranteed.
Then deployment begins. Somehow promised functionalities are now missing. Teams are experiencing unexpected friction and dependencies no one accounted for.
That’s the moment operators find themselves with expectations not met by reality. They’re forced to explain to internal stakeholders why the promised transformation looks more like disruption.
For Chalmers, that gap isn’t just inconvenient, it can be profound. She shared that when new technology is deployed, it’s not just about buying software. It’s about building credibility and relationships with that supplier. It’s about creating excitement around a new process and solution. When a technology vision is sold internally, teams are asked to change how they work. And when the supplier doesn’t match the urgency or responsiveness required, it’s the operator who absorbs the consequences.
“Trust doesn’t erode slowly in those moments. It drops off quickly,” said Chalmers. “And rebuilding it is far harder than winning it in the first place.”
The problem according to Rodriguez is the way sales and deployment are set up, often behaving like two entirely different organizations. The energy and attentiveness that define the sales process frequently dissipate once the contract is signed.
“But for the customer, the experience is continuous,” he said. “The moment the deal closes is precisely when the stakes increase.”
Product is Not Greater Than its Process
The industry has been overvaluing product and undervaluing everything required to make that product work in the real world.
Chalmers believes that product, process and implementation are inseparable.
“A strong product can still fail if the process around it is unclear or the implementation is rushed,” she said. “If your teams are repeatedly asking the same questions or struggling to adopt the system, it’s easy to blame training. In reality, that often signals something more fundamental. Truly intuitive products don’t require constant retraining.”
Technology should reduce friction naturally. Which is why user experience matters far more than many suppliers still assume.
“Software, no matter how sophisticated, is still just a tool,” said Rodriguez. “Without investing in the people expected to use it, even the best technology will underperform. The difference is that training can’t be treated as a one-time event tied to go-live. It has to extend well beyond deployment, evolving alongside the product and the people using it.”
Ongoing engagement, even something as simple as revisiting teams months later through in-person sessions, can reveal both adoption and insight in ways initial training never could.
Pilots Aren’t Optional
When the conversation shifted to implementations and pilots, Chalmers didn’t hesitate. They aren’t optional, they’re essential.
She argues that while case studies might prove that a solution works somewhere, they say very little about how it will function within the complexity of a specific organization. Every company brings its own systems, workflows and constraints. A pilot creates space to test not just the product, but the fit, she shared.
McInerney added an important layer to that idea: pilots only work when they’re structured.
“Without clear timelines, defined success criteria and shared accountability, they risk becoming extended demos rather than meaningful evaluations,” he said. “In fact, introducing a financial component like a paid pilot, can reinforce commitment on both sides.”
He believes it signals that this is not theoretical exploration but a real step toward partnership.
Amid all the discussion of systems and strategy, the conversation kept returning to the people most affected by these decisions. Onsite teams are the ones navigating new tools while managing resident expectations that continue to rise. They are already operating under pressure, and every additional point of friction compounds that strain. When PropTech fails it doesn’t fail in a vacuum, it shows up in delayed responses, frustrated residents and burned-out teams.
Chalmers spoke candidly about acting as an advocate for those teams, often pushing suppliers harder precisely because her teams can’t absorb inefficiency. Rodriguez echoed that sentiment from another angle, acknowledging that when implementations create short-term pain, operators feel it personally.
“There’s an implicit responsibility that comes with introducing change, and when that change makes work harder instead of easier, even temporarily, it matters,” he said.
Responsiveness Must Match Speed of Innovation
Panelists were clear about what will separate the suppliers who succeed from those who fall behind. Responsiveness will be the main stakes over features and functionality. The ability to listen, adapt and iterate quickly is becoming the defining characteristic of strong partners. As the pace of change accelerates, operators are paying closer attention to which suppliers can keep up, not just in theory but in practice.
If the industry wants better outcomes from PropTech, it has to get better at evaluation. That doesn’t mean slowing down innovation. It means approaching it with more discipline, more transparency and a clearer understanding of what success actually requires.
The cost of getting it wrong is no longer just a missed opportunity. It’s lost time, strained teams and eroded trust. And as this session made clear, that’s a price the industry can’t keep paying.
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