Father-daughter-duo Frank and Bella Campise are bringing their apartment tour app to thousands of college apartments.
Bella Campise had the idea for the app, Aigentless, which allows prospective tenants to follow self -guided tours of apartments without an agent, while she was searching for an apartment as a student at Northwestern.
The app’s reach is about to expand from its base of 30,000 units to more nearly 70,000 units after signing on student housing firm Cardinal Group as a client. The Denver-based multifamily developer, owner and operator holds a 37,000-unit student housing portfolio with about 100,000 beds.
Working with student-housing providers was a natural step in the company’s progression, Bella Campise said. It wasn’t long after she pitched the concept to her father, managing principal of JAB Real Estate, that she dropped out of school to get the app up and running.
A year later, the company has 20 employees. The startup initially raised $2 million in pre-seed funding and has since added to that haul through a second round of fundraising, though the pair declined to share where current total investment stands.
“The younger consumer is also more used to, not only using an app, but also AI-native interactions,” she said. “We are seeing a lot of utilization of the AI chat function specifically within students, but the product works and converts across different asset classes and geographies.”
The appeal comes from prospective tenants’ ability to book a tour on their own schedule rather than coordinating with an agent and to take in information about the property without the pressure of a hard sell. They receive an access code to a lockbox and can tour the property on their own time, including after work hours, while following a tour on the app.
That still involves a human touch. Prospective tenants have the option to contact agents through the app and work with property managers to secure a lease if they’re interested in moving in.
From the property owner’s perspective, Frank Campise said it allows him to lease up a building more quickly and collect feedback from prospective tenants who are more comfortable sharing unfiltered opinions.
“When it’s just you and the app, you can be more transparent, and we’re going to get more honest feedback,” Frank Campise said. “And that feedback is going to be empirical. It’s not based on [the agent’s] memory.”
Frank Campise’s JAB Real Estate, which he runs with Jim Jann, has been a longstanding player in Chicago real estate.
Last year, the company scored a deal in the buzzy West Loop and paid $34.5 million to Chicago-based Waterton for the 81-unit midrise at 20 North Aberdeen. The price was about $5 million less than the seller paid to purchase it in 2017, according to Cook County records
Amid a tight debt market, JAB has remained a dealmaker in Chicago. In 2023, the company sold a 56-unit Lincoln Park apartment building at 656 West Wrightwood Avenue for $14 million to Bill Silverstein’s firm Beal Properties. A year prior, JAB paid $23 million for a Lincoln Park apartment complex that Campise had his eye on purchasing for two decades.
That same building, the 159-unit Hamden Court Apartments, was one of the first properties the Campises used to test out Aigentless.
“The Aigentless tours did 70 percent of the leasing, and our live agents only did the other 30 percent,” Frank Campise said.
The partnership was a natural continuation of Bella Campise’s interest in the family business, she said. Her first experience with the company was helping her father with a condo deconversion while she was a freshman in high school.
“Frank and I had been doing walks around to look at properties since I was really young,” Bella Campise said. “Obviously, we’re both real estate nerds.”
Editor’s note: this article has been updated to correct Cardinal Group’s total number of student housing units and the number of fundraising rounds Aigentless has undergone.