Propmodo Technology

Greetings,

For years, office utilization has been treated as the definitive measure of whether commercial space is working. But one new approach to workplace measurement suggests that counting people may be missing the more important question: what are they actually able to accomplish once they get there? New research points toward measuring work modes, collaboration, wellbeing, and experience rather than simply tracking occupancy.

AI is raising a similar question for property management. The industry has spent decades building reliable processes around people, systems of record, and institutional knowledge. But AI is forcing property managers to rethink how those workflows are designed, with automation requiring operators to map processes in far greater detail than they ever needed to when people were filling in the gaps themselves.

Taken together, the two stories point to a broader shift in commercial real estate technology: the systems that matter increasingly won't just measure what happened or record what people did. They'll need to understand the work itself. One story looks at how buildings can capture better information about how people use space; the other examines how that same principle is being applied to the processes that operate the properties themselves.

Let’s go!

🤺 Algorithmic resistance
A federal court in the Southern District of New York granted RealPage a preliminary injunction pausing enforcement of the state's algorithmic rent-pricing prohibition while the case is heard, agreeing with the company's argument that its pricing recommendations constitute protected commercial speech under the First Amendment. New York's law, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in October 2025 and effective December 2025, amended the state's antitrust statute to prohibit the use of software or algorithmic devices to facilitate coordination among residential landlords on rent-setting. The court also denied the state's motion to dismiss, keeping RealPage's lawsuit alive as the broader legal fight over algorithmic pricing in multifamily housing continues to play out across multiple states and cities.

🚪 Homeward bond
Homeward has closed a $120 million Series D equity round. The Austin-based company offers three products built around removing financing friction from the home buying and selling process, including a buy-before-you-sell bridge product, a cash offer with upside participation, and a cash-backed offer that converts to a traditional mortgage after closing. Since founding, Homeward has partnered with more than 25,000 agents and facilitated over $4 billion in residential transactions across the 48 contiguous states.

❄️ Heat pump it up
Heat pump shipments reached near-record highs in July, representing close to half of all HVAC units shipped, continuing six consecutive months of year-over-year cooling shipment growth even as federal tax credits for heat pump water heaters expired at the end of 2025. The long-term trajectory remains upward, with heat pump shipments up roughly 77% since July 2016 and electric water heaters outselling gas units by around 52,000 units in July. State-level building codes and all-electric mandates in markets like New York are expected to keep demand growing despite the loss of federal incentives and continued strong gas furnace shipments.

Propmodo Technology is edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

📧 Forward it to a friend and suggest they check it out.

🔗 Share a link to this post on social media.

🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Share your feedback and tips at [email protected] or connect with us on X through @propmodo.

✅ Not subscribed yet? Sign up for this newsletter here.

📣 Want to share your marketing message with over 50,000 commercial real estate professionals? Email [email protected] to learn how to sponsor this newsletter.

📫️ Please add our newsletter email, [email protected], to your contacts to make sure you don’t miss any updates.