From a System of Record to a System of Action
by Carole VanSickle Ellis
The concept of property management has been documented as long ago as 3,000 B.C., when Mesopotamian priests employed specialized property overseers to manage the day-to-day operations of agrarian estates while the priests were occupied with “holier” duties.
Then, in the late 1700s, in the wake of the American Industrial Revolution, formal real estate management companies began to form, and, during the Great Depression, the industry crystalized into an early form of what we recognize as property management today.
Throughout history, property management systems have largely operated on the concept that their primary role is to store data and keep accurate records. This was and remains an essential part of the process, but, in the 21st century, there is a great deal more that property managers can and should do, said Noam Grebel, general manager of Research & Development (R&D) at proptech property management company startup DoorLoop.
“Property management software is being reinvented from a system of record into a system of action,” Grebel said. “For decades, the category stored data. The next era is software that does the work, collects the rent, screens the applicant, [and] answers the tenant.”
Founded in 2019, DoorLoop has leveraged the advent of truly proactive artificial intelligence (AI) technology to, in Grebel’s words, become “an agent-led platform [where it is] not agents that help operators do their job, but agents that actually do it for them.”
The key to successfully implementing this groundbreaking concept has been reducing and eliminating friction for the people depending on DoorLoop tools and systems, said Roi Ohal, vice president of engineering at DoorLoop.
“Our engineering delivers at scale, reliably, and without friction,” Ohal explained. He continued, “My role is about building a culture of engineers who care deeply about the customer on the other end of everything they ship. That accountability shows up in code review, in how we handle an incident, and in what we choose to ship next.”
“Built for Anyone Managing Property Worldwide”
If you ask company representatives what DoorLoop does, the answers may span a vast array of property management activities. According to the official DoorLoop website, “DoorLoop is the easiest property management software that helps manage tens of thousands of units in over 100 countries.” It goes on to note DoorLoop is built for “property managers, management companies, owners, landlords, investors, tenants, or anyone managing any property worldwide,” and concludes, “Our goal is to make your life easier so you get more done in less time, increase occupancy and profitability, and decrease turnover and workload.”
DoorLoop’s AI-native operating platform serves property managers and operators across a broad range of property types, including both residential and commercial properties. The all-in-one platform automates the operational work that consumes most of a property manager’s day, Grebel said. Rent collection runs through multiple payment methods, including credit card, debit card, ACH, cash, and check, with automated reminders sent to tenants and real-time tracking of paid and overdue balances. Maintenance requests are assigned and tracked digitally, and vendor payments, property listings, and tenant background and credit checks are all handled within the same connected environment.
DoorLoop’s AI Assistant resolves up to 80% of tenant questions automatically and generates reports and summaries on demand. Users also have access to a team of human property management experts for support, training, onboarding, and data migration assistance.
With DoorLoop, all of these elements work together, Grebel noted. This means systems playing a role in rent collection, for example, are not siloed. The information and data garnered in this area can be leveraged in other areas to not only track asset performance but also make other decisions about investments and protocols.
“The future belongs to operators who have a single, intelligent system that knows their portfolio, not a stack of tools they have to stitch together,” he said. “We are driving toward a fundamental shift from being the property manager’s software to being their operating system: a system where AI agents handle the day-to-day, humans focus on judgement and growth, and the business runs at a scale that simply was not possible before.”
Ohal elaborated. “Early on, property management software was evaluated on whether it could replace a spreadsheet. Today, operators expect the platform to think alongside them, to flag issues before they escalate, to surface insights without being asked, [and] to handle complexity quietly in the background so they can focus on what matters.”
Ohal predicted a “clear divergence in the market” within the next two years between property management platforms that were “built for a pre-AI world” that are attempting to “retrofit intelligence into systems that were not designed for it” and those platforms that were designed, from origination, “to be data-driven and AI-ready.”
“The engineering challenge is not about just keeping up; it is about staying ahead of what operators will expect a year from now. The operators who feel that gap most acutely are not the ones complaining about it. They are the ones quietly switching,” Ohal said. “DoorLoop is very firmly in the [data-driven and AI-ready] camp, and that gap only widens. I expect this to become very visible to anyone shopping for a platform in the next few years,” he concluded.
A Company Created to Fuel & Deliver on Changing Expectations
When DoorLoop’s five co-founders started the company in 2019, they did so in response to a perceived lack of an “easy and affordable software platform available to manage our own rentals, collect rent, and grow our portfolios,” explained Ori Tamuz, one of the co-founders and current CEO of DoorLoop. He continued, “The software we tried was complicated, expensive, and offered very little transparency.” Tamuz also noted many of the platforms available at that time were nearly two decades old, “with old technology and design, so we knew we could do it better, and that is exactly what we did.”
With this type of mission statement and vision for the future of property management, it is not surprising that DoorLoop dove into options for AI deployment in property management from the very start.
“One of the clearest shifts in the industry I have seen since I got started [in this space] is the shift in expectations,” said Grebel, who came onboard at DoorLoop just over four years ago. He observed property managers are running “leaner” teams than they have in the past “against more units and sophisticated tenants.”
The only way this can work, Grebel said, is if software and systems can “absorb the operational load, not just record it. The days of a platform being valuable simply because it is digital are over.”
Grebel continued, “The thing that actually changes the game is AI. It is now mature enough for software to take action on the operator’s behalf, not just surface information. DoorLoop is at the very front edge of this, and that is exactly where we want to be.”
“Modern software engineering in this space is not just about keeping the lights on; it is about building systems that unlock new capabilities for the people running [the systems],” said Ohal. “At DoorLoop, we have built an engineering organization that treats every release as a chance to move the industry forward, not just a ship feature.”
Ohal said his past work in different software disciplines causes him to bring “a particular bias toward systems that are resilient by design, not by patch.” He continued, “This perspective shapes how we architect everything we build because a platform that operators depend on to run their business has to hold up, not just perform well in a demo.”
Ohal said all of this combines to create a driving force within DoorLoop that prioritizes reliability and trust between the company and its clients and users. “For us, reliability does not show up as a metric on a dashboard,” he said. “It shows up as a daily, lived experience for property managers who can open our platform at 6 a.m. before their first call and trust that everything they need is there.”
Grebel agreed. “There has been a huge shift in UX (user experience) in our industry,” he said. “Tenants and owners now benchmark their property manager against Uber and Robinhood. Consumer-grade polish is not a differentiator anymore; it is the price of admission.”
“Real AI, not ‘AI Dust’”
Beginning in late 2025, DoorLoop began unveiling several AI systems designed to expedite tenant services, improve communications between residents and property managers, and generally “reduce administrative busywork while enhancing service quality – freeing busy property managers to focus on what truly matters, portfolio growth and strategic priorities,” according to a company press release published in January 2026.
For Grebel, the launch of DoorLoop’s AI package “is the proudest moment of my career.” Grebel recalled the process that led up to the launch, beginning with “mapping where property managers lose time” and moving into something he described as “something that sounds simple but is genuinely hard: We aligned all seven of our autonomous R&D squads behind a single goal. For months, every team was building toward the same launch, at the same pace, with the same urgency.”
Grebel observed that DoorLoop “matched competitors who had been building their AI for years, in months,” adding, “The majority of our users did not just sign up; they made it part of their daily work.” He concluded proudly, “We did it with real AI, not with what the industry calls ‘AI Dust,’ where you sprinkle, ‘Hey, ask AI’ on top of old features and call it innovation.”
For Ohal, his proudest professional moment also is directly tied to the launch of DoorLoop’s AI suite of products. “The timeline [for the first AI feature] was three months,” he recalled. “I had to design the system from zero, stand up net-new infrastructure, build the team that would deliver it, and orchestrate backend, frontend, the AI service, all in lockstep, all simultaneously,” Ohal explained. He added, “Tight timelines are easy to talk about, [but] living one with that many moving parts and that many unknowns is something else entirely.”
At the end of the three-month period, Ohal and his team “hit the date,” he said. “The feature became a real milestone for the company, not just because we shipped, but because of what shipping it proved: It validated that we could move at that pace on something genuinely new, with real architectural complexity, without cutting the corners that come back to haunt you later. It is the moment I point to when someone asks what this team is capable of.”
Taking Reliability & Trust Seriously
Despite being an AI-oriented company dedicated to fueling growth and success for property managers through cutting-edge use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, DoorLoop places a distinct and heavy emphasis on the human elements of property management. Unlike many AI developers who emphasize how the technology can replace the human element of business operations, DoorLoop remains largely “human-centric” in its goals for property management. The company seeks to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of human operations so that more brain-power can be dedicated to optimization and growth.
Grebel said one of the major shifts evident in property management expectations in recent years revolves around the idea that user experience (UX) includes not only property managers themselves, but tenants and owners as well.
“The bar to which we hold ourselves is not happy users. It is indispensable users,” he explained. “Our teams behave like builders, not ticket takers.” This means each team within DoorLoop functions autonomously to create net results that work cohesively to the benefit of the user in question. “Each squad owns a customer outcome and a set of KPIs,” Grebel said. “We move fast, and our teams behave like builders, not ticket-takers.”
“A platform that operators depend on to run their business has to hold up, not just perform well in a demo,” Ohal added. “We take reliability and trust very seriously at DoorLoop. For us, reliability does not show up as a metric on a dashboard. Our property managers must be able to trust that everything they need is there for them from the moment they first need it.”
SIDEBAR 1
By the Numbers
5 // DoorLoop was founded by five co-founders in 2019.
3 // DoorLoop has three physical offices: a headquarters in Miami, Florida, a Go-To-Market Hub in New York City, and a Research & Development center in Tel Aviv
1 // DoorLoop ranked #1 for Best Property Management Software on Capterra’s 2026 Shortlist
1 // DoorLoop ranked #1 for customer satisfaction and usability on Software Advice
15 // In 2026 alone, DoorLoop received top honors in 15 different categories from 7 different industry entities
2 // DoorLoop was named one of America’s Best Startup Employers by Forbes for two years in a row (2024 and 2025)
SIDEBAR 2
AI System Suite Removes the “Busywork Blocker” to Growth
In October 2025, DoorLoop debuted its DoorLoop AI Assistant, calling it a “major step forward with intelligent tools for communication, task management, and data analysis.”
Co-founder and CEO Ori Tamuz said at the time, “Our new AI Assistant reflects everything DoorLoop stands for: speed, simplicity, and serious business success. Our customers want to grow their portfolios with confidence, and busywork is often a blocker. This is our answer, and it is just the beginning.”
DoorLoop described the “key features” of its AI Assistant as:
Effortless tenant management
This includes resolving tenant requests “before they hit [the property manager’s desk], crafting instant replies, and spotting recurring issues to keep tenants happier.”
Smarter admin automation
This includes drag-and-drop options for adding expenses, automating statements, scheduling, and reports.
Instant insights
This includes the ability to “see actionable data and trends immediately without searching through spreadsheets or multiple screens.”
AI chat assistant
This includes creating tasks, crafting listing descriptions, finding answers, “and more, with less effort and zero guesswork.”
Learn more about DoorLoop’s AI Assistant and other systems at DoorLoop.com.
