“Running a Tech Company”

September 2, 2026 by Donald Davidoff

To say that there’s been a lot of tech-driven upheaval in our industry these past few years would be quite the understatement. And as I think about what this upheaval means to executive operators and asset managers, I’m drawn to something I heard an executive say from a conference stage not too many months ago. 

On a CEO panel, this executive made the comment that he entered into the industry with real estate expertise and a keen vision for how multifamily housing companies should operate. Had they told them twenty years ago, he mused, that he would be running a tech company, he’d have thought they were nuts. Yet here he was, in 2026, now essentially “running a tech company.” 

At first, I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s pretty insightful!” as today’s MFH execs are certainly facing technology challenges that couldn’t have been imagined before.  

But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this was a dangerously inaccurate framing…a framing that actually could and would lead to many unnecessary mistakes in decision making on tech strategy, organization, process and tools. 

How is that so inaccurate, you ask? As I thought more deeply about this, it occurred to me that multifamily housing executives today are running tech-enabled companies, not tech companies. That is a distinction with a big difference. 

In the spirit of the AI world, I asked Claude what the difference is between these two, specifically in the context of multifamily housing rental operations and asset management. Here’s what it said, edited (really curated) by me for relevance: 

A tech company sells software/technology as the product. Its core competency is R&D velocity, engineering talent density, and shipping code that customers pay for directly. Revenue comes from the technology itself. Your margins, valuation multiple and competitive moat are all functions of product/engineering execution. 

A tech-enabled company uses technology to run its core business better, but the product it sells to its end customer isn’t the software — it’s the underlying service (in this case, housing). Technology is a lever on operations: NOI, occupancy, staffing efficiency, resident experience. The competitive moat is operational excellence amplified by tech, not the tech itself. 

It went on to point out the key reasons this matters, the two most relevant of which are: 

• Talent and org design — a real tech company hires like one (engineers as core headcount, product orgs). A tech-enabled operator who starts believing he’s “in tech” risks over-investing in internal engineering he doesn’t need, when buying best-in-class vendor tech is cheaper and faster. 

• Strategic focus — the operator’s edge is execution on turnover, retention, revenue management discipline. Confusing “we use good software” with “we are a software company” pulls focus from the actual game he’s playing. 

I would go further, pointing out that what makes an operator great and what makes a technology company great are often orthogonal cultures and skills. 

That doesn’t mean that operators and asset managers shouldn’t hire tech people, but it does mean that they would be wise to focus more on buying technology and partnering with good technology companies than on building their own tech, saving the latter for only times with truly compelling benefits. And apropos of my last blog, the best minds in AI are recommending a “buy and build (and partner)” approach. 

The sooner executives in our industry take this framing to heart, the less they will waste chasing sexy, but insufficient, DIY tech.