Angel Baltimore is the Chief Information Officer of the National Apartment Association, where she leads NAA’s technology strategy across its lobbying, services, and education arms. She came to the role as an association professional rather than an industry insider, and has spent her tenure at NAA listening closely to members and translating their pain points into the organization’s technology roadmap. We sat down with Angel to talk through NAA’s priorities around data, integrations, and AI, the state of Click & Lease, NAA Services’ venture activities, and her advice for vendors selling into the apartment industry.
Angel will be speaking at Blueprint this September in Las Vegas, where she’ll be joining hundreds of multifamily owners, operators, and technology leaders to dig into the issues she addresses below in much greater depth. If you want to continue this conversation in person and meet the operators shaping where the industry goes next, we’d encourage you to join us.
BH: You came into NAA in a technology-oriented role. Tell us about that and what you’re looking to accomplish.
AB: I’m not an industry person or real estate person; I’m an association professional. I’ve been doing associations my entire life. The main challenges I’ve heard from our members are issues with data, integrations, data privacy, information security, and how they can use AI safely.
In my experience with associations, and like many organizations, they have long project lists, IT is understaffed, and there’s limited prioritization. When I started at NAA, my role was to do a lot of listening and put together a plan that was achievable for the organization. That meant prioritizing while also setting up the foundational IT pieces that need to be in place at any organization: a cybersecurity program, training staff not to click on links in emails, putting IT policies in place, and figuring out how to adopt new technologies safely without overwhelming a limited staff.
We’re a mile wide and an inch deep. We have a lot on our plates, and it’s important that we prioritize and phase projects so we can stay innovative and at the forefront of new technology while also addressing the lingering challenges around data management, governance, and systems integrations. Every system in the world is built with the assumption that someone is sitting behind a computer doing data entry all day, and transitioning an organization out of that is a major shift. You don’t necessarily need teams of data entry personnel if you can decentralize that work.
My goal with NAA is to modernize and listen to our members’ needs, because I’m feeling the same pain from an IT leadership perspective. The things we do internally to address those issues end up helping our members in the long run.
BH: Tell us about Click & Lease as an example of how that plays out.
AB: Click & Lease is our flagship software application. It’s a digital lease, an electronic lease that our members pay a subscription for. We’re able to integrate with property management systems, so the lease lives within the PMS. I can sign a lease on my cell phone.
What we offer is full legal review of the leases. We ensure compliance with state and local regulations and make sure each lease addresses each state’s individual needs around fair housing, rent control, fees, and everything else our members are dealing with. One of our recent goals has been to make Click & Lease easier for our members to use. Billing was an area where we’d struggled, so we’ve been working with property management systems on the billing side to automate a lot of that.
BH: How has Click & Lease been received by members?
AB: Our members love Click & Lease. We have a high retention rate. We’re diligent and fast about updating the forms every time a new regulation is passed; we take that responsibility very seriously, and we have dedicated teams managing the content of the lease. Because of that, I think we have the best lease product on the market. Our members, especially those operating across all 50 states, don’t have to take on the burden of updating their leases every time something changes or sending them through legal review. We do all of that.
BH: What else is in the technology pipeline?
AB: We’re looking at what NAA can do around data. We’ve heard loud and clear that members want access to industry data and publicly available data they can use in their own analytics: for investment decisions, for managing their properties, for staying in compliance, and for everything operational that touches leasing an apartment or single-family home. That’s where we’ve been focusing from a product perspective, figuring out what we can do on the data side to put more in our members’ hands.
BH: There’s been a lot of recent debate around how open property management systems should be — particularly around owners being able to access their own data through APIs. Does NAA have a view on that?
AB: I don’t want to speak out of turn on the organization’s behalf, but I can tell you how NAA approaches our own data and our membership data. When we renegotiate contracts, we make sure we have access to our data and that we own our data.
One thing I’ve experienced throughout my career is that a lot of organizations give up the rights to their data in order to have a particular platform or piece of functionality. The contract phase is really where an organization needs to ensure that, when they sign on the dotted line, they can obtain access to all of their data. We all have to abide by the same laws. If someone contacts us or one of our members and asks us to delete their record, we have to be able to do that.
My advice to the industry, drawing on what I’ve seen in associations: your data is your biggest asset. Advocate for it, and advocate for access to it, particularly during the contracting phase.
BH: Tell us about NAA’s venture investing program.
A: NAA is composed of three organizations. We have our not-for-profit, which is a 501(c)(6) and does our lobbying work; that’s our primary organization. We have NAA Services, which is our for-profit arm. And we have a 501(c)(3), which is our education arm.
What we’re trying to do with NAA Services is create an environment to address industry needs and develop products, while also maintaining the existing products that meet our members’ needs today. We’re constantly looking to meet with anyone who’d be willing to partner with us. Ron is our SVP of Business Development, so I don’t want to speak for him, but we’re actively looking for business solutions that can help fix some of the issues plaguing the industry: integrations, single-family homes, fraud, and access to data. The Services arm puts us in a position to be more nimble and react quickly as the market evolves.
BH: I know NAA offers a number of education programs and certifications, please tell me about them.
A: Our education arm is a 501(c)(3), so any contribution is tax-deductible. We offer several credentialing programsfor people in the industry: the CAM (Certified Apartment Manager), the CAPS (Certified Apartment Portfolio Supervisor), the CAMT (for apartment maintenance technicians), and the CALP (for apartment leasing professionals). It’s pretty typical of any association that offers continuing education and credentials.
