For European residential real estate operator Heimstaden, a question arises whether AI could fundamentally change how thousands of homes are managed. In June 2025, Heimstaden’s leadership decided to choose OpenAI after considering various platforms. The company’s goal was to empower employees and rethink the processes at the heart of its business.
The ambition is to move towards increasingly self-operating buildings, where AI can help anticipate needs, coordinate work and support decisions across the property lifecycle. When reimagining the business of letting homes, careful consideration is applied when a property becomes vacant.
“The purpose of our buildings hasn’t changed. We provide homes for people. But the way we operate them continues to change as we challenge conventions and adopt new technology.
“We see AI as one of the biggest opportunities to accelerate that transformation.”
Helge Krogsbøl, Co-CEO, Heimstaden
Traditionally, getting it back onto the market involves assessing rental value, arranging photography, producing advertisements and responding to market demand. Each stage requires time, coordination and specialist input. It presents as an information challenge understanding what you own, what the competition has and what the customer wants.
AI is now supporting all the key steps in this process such as pricing for intelligence and recommendations based on tools built in ChatGPT Sites, advertising for image styling and apartment descriptions done by AI.
It also enables review listings whereby agents review all live ads against Heimstaden’s quality standards alongside providing AI generated market feedback to help letting teams take corrective action which makes prices increasingly dynamic
Overall, employees remain responsible for reviewing and approving decisions, but the work surrounding those decisions is changing. In the Netherlands, the cost of producing a virtually staged property image has fallen from approximately €50 to under €0.10 – which is a reduction of over 99%.
Heimstaden estimates annual savings potential of €130,000 in that market alone. The importance extends beyond cheaper advertisements. By applying AI across the letting process, Heimstaden is building a more responsive way to bring homes to market.
“Our AI strategy is based on three pillars. First, we empower employees through training and access to the right tools.
“Second, we have a central transformation office and a network of AI champions to drive larger AI initiatives. Third, we strengthen the foundations by making our property management systems and data models ready for AI.”
Nikolaj Brammer, Chief Digital Officer, Heimstaden
Letting puts all three pillars into practice – tools and training enable colleagues to create virtually staged images and listings, the central team coordinates improvements across pricing, advertising, ad review and market feedback, and the company is making property data accessible to the AI tools that support pricing and listing creation.
“We started by breaking down our most important business processes and asking where AI could create value. Letting is a good example: it’s not about automating one task but improving how the whole process works.”
Nikolaj Brammer, Chief Digital Officer, Heimstaden
