The Internet Just Flipped - And Property Management Won’t Be the Same
The internet used to be built by people. Now, it’s built by prompts. That’s not a metaphor. It’s the story the data is screaming. 👇🏼
Three years after launch, ChatGPT sits near 800 million users. The commercial internet needed roughly 13 years to reach the same neighborhood. That gap isn’t just an interesting stat, it’s a behavior change on fast-forward. When a technology compresses a decade of adoption into a single lease term, it doesn’t “trend.” It becomes the default.
Now pair that with the second dataset: 👇🏼
Sometime in 2025, the web crossed an invisible line: the majority of what you read online is now machine-generated. That doesn’t mean it’s all spam. It means creation cost went to near-zero, volume went to infinity, and the unit of value shifted from words to trust.
What Changes Next (Fast)
- Speed becomes table stakes. If nearly a billion people can generate research summaries, blog posts, emails, and ads in seconds, speed alone stops being an advantage. Anyone can publish more. Few can prove more.
- Signal-not content-is the scarce resource. When content is abundant, attention flows to whoever reduces uncertainty. For property owners comparing managers, that means: who is actually performing, in my submarket, for properties like mine?
- Distribution rewires around credibility. Google, AI search, marketplaces, every surface is evolving to surface structured trust signals: real performance data, verified identity, consistent service quality, owner satisfaction, and market context. The systems don’t need more words; they need better proof.
What This Means for Property Managers
The next leg of growth won’t come from posting louder, it’ll come from being legibly excellent. Owners (and AI systems acting on their behalf) will ask:
- Do you manage units like mine in this ZIP code?
- How quickly do you lease compared to market?
- How often do you hit price on first listing?
- What do owners and tenants say recently, and at volume?
If you can answer those questions with auditable data, you win. If you can’t, a competitor who can will.
The Trust Layer (Why We’re Building It)
PropertyManagement.com exists for this exact moment. In a world where AI writes more than people, someone has to verify reality:
- TrueMatch™ connects a specific property to the PM most likely to outperform based on hyper-local experience, leasing velocity, pricing accuracy, tenant sentiment, and proximity.
- Verified Profiles surface the data owners actually care about and standardize it so AI search can understand and cite it.
- Rankings & Benchmarks create a common language: not who blogs the most, but who performs the best for this property type, in this market, right now.
Think of it this way: Google organized the web of links. We’re organizing the web of property management performance. In an AI-native internet, that organization becomes a distribution engine. Great operators become discoverable not because they shout, but because they’re provably great.
Bottom Line
The first chart shows how fast the world changed. The second shows what changed. Creation is free. Trust is scarce. The managers who treat trust as a product, and make it machine-readable, will compound for the next decade.
If you’re building toward that future, we’re building with you.
Check out Unfiltered: PropertyManagement.com's Official Podcast
In this episode of Unfiltered, co-hosts Matt Speer and Dylan Scroggins sit down with Josh Winch, President of Focus Property Management, to discuss how his company is redefining what it means to manage real estate. Josh shares his journey from a decade in retail to building one of the fastest-growing property management companies in the Midwest. He breaks down how Focus prioritizes people, processes, and culture to create elite results and why he believes property management should really be called “resident management.”
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A Few of This Week's Verified Property Managers
- TrueDoor Property Management, Huntington Beach, CA, 93.51% TrueMatch™ Score
- Johnson Property Management, LLC, Boise, ID, 91.48% TrueMatch™ Score
- Otter Property Management, Philadelpha, PA, 88.59% TrueMatch™ Score
- Ironclad Property Management, Bristol, CT, 86.32% TrueMatch™ Score
Currently #4 Nationally in PropertyManagement.com's Top 100 Rankings
Guest Post: The Slippery Slope Mentality Around “Seasonality”
By Shea Murray | Director of Property Management, GC Realty & Development, LLC - #11 Ranked Property Manager Nationally
There’s a PM conversation every year during the summer and into the fall around “busy season.”
As someone who has been through several of these cycles now, I can recognize that there are certain activities that naturally spike at different times of year - more leases, more turnovers, etc. And while every market behaves a little differently, the rhythm of the calendar is roughly the same.
However, when we start labeling seasons as “busy” or “slow,” we naturally (even subconsciously sometimes) start lowering or raising expectations around performance. We let the season dictate our confidence and our actions. Because of this, even with the things that we can control (specifically on the sales side!), we tend to become more lax.
Hence begins the “boomerang of life.”
We are softer on our inputs, and those softer inputs lead to lackluster results that boomerang back to us ~90 days later. This piles up work that needs to be made up right around the same time that volume ticks up slightly in the next “busy season.”
Now you have a sort of snowball + busy season effect that reinforces the “busy season” mentality that’s partially to blame for it in the first place!
Of course, there is truth in seasonality. But when teams start believing that results are defined by the season, they stop looking for ways to win in all seasons. We start adjusting KPIs, shifting our urgency, and giving everybody permission to slow down.
The best don’t deny seasonality - they just consciously work on what they can control today. The point is, the activities might change, but the level of productivity (loosely defined) should not, because you reap what you sow, baby - and that boomerang of consequences can be good or bad.
I’ll leave you with this: we had a well-performing sales guy that would close ~35 doors a month.
Fall would roll around, and he’d always defend lackluster numbers by citing a slowdown in lead flow, investor activity, etc. He was very convincing (he was a sales guy!).
We started to look into it and realized his call volume on a monthly basis tended to dip anywhere from 30–50% once September hit. Not surprisingly, the closed deals tended to drop 30–40% starting in September.
(I can hear you all now - “correlation does not equal causation!!!” Yes, I’m with you.)
However, we challenged him to have just a 10% higher call volume starting in the fall, just to see.
The result? 47 units in September. 37 units in October.
The reveal? The sales guy was me.
And it was a lesson learned in not letting seasonality dictate your effort level - reaching out to owners is controllable. So are many of the tasks we handle on a daily basis.
Closing Thoughts
Before you dive back into your day, here’s what’s worth remembering this week:
The world just flipped.
ChatGPT hit 800M users in three years, what took the Internet thirteen. AI now creates more online content than humans, and when creation is free, trust becomes the currency.
The winners won’t be the ones who post the most, but the ones who can prove the most.
And while the world races into an AI future, your consistency still matters most. As Shea Murray said, seasonality is real-but often just a mindset trap. The best operators don’t let the calendar dictate effort. They control what they can, every day, every season.
So this week, keep it simple:
- Verify your story. Make your data visible and credible.
- Control your inputs. Effort compounds just like trust does.
- Play offense. In AI and in business, momentum rewards the ones who move.
The next wave of elite PMs won’t wait for the market-or the algorithm-to tell their story.
They’ll write it, prove it, and own it.