Greystone

AI and Digital Transformation, Greystone

Greystone is a leading national commercial real estate finance company, founded in 1988. It offers a wide range of financing solutions for multifamily housing, healthcare facilities, and commercial real estate. As a direct agency lender with strong ties to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD, Greystone also provides CMBS, bridge, and preferred equity loans. With over 1,100 employees in 35+ offices, it originates $16-20 billion in loans annually and manages a $90 billion loan servicing portfolio. Recognized for excellence and innovation, Greystone is a top lender in the commercial FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac sectors.

 

Supernova Award Category: 
AI and Augmented Humanity
The Problem: 

In real estate, especially for multifamily properties, the lease audit process is critical but labor-intensive. This process involves validating rent roll entries against actual lease agreements to ensure accuracy and compliance. Rent rolls summarize rental income and lease terms for each unit and must be cross-checked with signed leases to verify tenant names, lease start and end dates, rent amounts, and any concessions or amendments. Given the complexity and volume of data, this manual process is prone to human error, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. 

 

The Solution: 

To address these challenges, we utilized LLMs on top of OCRs to ensure near-perfect OCR, automatically extracting and validating information. This approach automates the lease audit process, reducing errors and enhancing operational efficiency. Moreover, the solution was seamlessly integrated into the existing user workflow to ensure minimal disruption. Users continued to collect files as they did before but could kickstart the AI engine from Teams, just like they would assign the task to a human intern. 

 

The Results: 

The implementation AI technology for the lease audit process yielded significant improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and workflow. The automated solution achieved near-perfect OCR, drastically reducing errors associated with manual data entry and verification, ensuring tenant names, lease dates, rent amounts, and other critical details were consistently accurate across rent rolls and lease agreements. By automating the extraction and validation of lease information, analysts and underwriters were freed up to perform higher value tasks.

Metrics: 

The integration of AI technology into the lease audit process produced remarkable results, significantly enhancing efficiency and accuracy. The highlights of the implementation include:

  1. 85% Reduction in Manual Data Reconciliation Time: The automated solution drastically reduced the time spent on manual data reconciliation by 85%..
  2. Improved Consistency and Accuracy of Due Diligence Data: By leveraging advanced AI and machine learning technologies, the solution ensured a high level of consistency and accuracy in due diligence data. This improvement minimized discrepancies between rent rolls and lease agreements, reducing the risk of financial inaccuracies, compliance issues, and tenant disputes.
The Technology: 
  1. Amazon Textract
  2. Azure OpenAI
  3. Teams BOT
Disruptive Factor: 

A staggering 70% of data in commercial real estate (CRE) is unstructured, making it difficult to extract and utilize valuable insights through conventional methods. Using AI for lease audit was the incremental path to the inflection point, marking a transformative step in modernizing the real estate industry.  By seamlessly integrating advanced AI technology, this solution challenges and surpasses the limitations of earlier methods, delivering superior accuracy and efficiency.?

 

Shining Moment: 

The suggestion for this solution came from business practitioners, not the IT staff. This highlights a critical success: the IT team helped the business understand & leverage AI by adopting a consultative approach. The project was driven by a dedicated team consisting of Mordecai Rosenberg, the exec sponsor, Florence Morgan and Leigh Peevy whose combined expertise in technology and business processes was instrumental in bridging the gap between AI capabilities and business applications.

About Greystone

Founded in 1988, Greystone is a private commercial real estate finance and investment company with unmatched experience in debt, equity, investment sales and loan servicing solutions. The firm is the #1* overall HUD multifamily and healthcare lender by firm commitments, and a top 10 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multifamily real estate lender.