Security Properties has introduced an internally developed artificial intelligence platform that reduces the initial financial analysis of a multifamily acquisition from four to five hours of analyst work to less than five minutes.
The Seattle-based real estate investment company said FirstPass has been in active use for several months, screening opportunities in its acquisitions pipeline, including transactions currently under evaluation. The application was trained on underwriting and operating data drawn from the firm’s 57-year investment history.
Since its founding, Security Properties has acquired or developed more than 111,000 residential units across more than 670 assets, at a total cost exceeding $12.9bn.
FirstPass processes rent rolls and financial statements
FirstPass analyses operating documents received during due diligence, including rent rolls and financial statements. A machine learning algorithm classifies the data and enters it directly into Security Properties’ underwriting model.
The application also retrieves current US Treasury rates and adds information specific to each transaction. This includes the transaction date, financing structure, location, pace of rehabilitation work, and rent growth assumptions.
It then produces a forward-looking view of operating performance under different scenarios. Security Properties runs the analysis repeatedly as new information becomes available. The team can therefore update its assumptions throughout underwriting and due diligence.
The company developed FirstPass to speed up the initial review of offering memoranda. This gives its acquisitions team a first view of more opportunities before it commits substantial time and resources to individual deals.
“FirstPass changes the math on how many opportunities we can seriously evaluate,” said Mark Bates, chief investment officer at Security Properties. “We can now run a rigorous first analysis on a deal the moment an offering memorandum hits our desk, before we ever enter due diligence.”
Human review remains part of the underwriting process
Developed completely in-house, FirstPass draws on operating data from the company’s portfolio history, not scraped market averages.
Éamon Finneran, senior director of operations and technology at Security Properties who led the application’s development, said the quality of its analysis depended on the operational information supplied to the model.
“Our analysts and acquisitions team review every result, so what you get is the efficiency of AI paired with the subject matter expertise of a trained human eye,” Finneran said.
Investment decisions remain with the company’s analysts and acquisitions professionals.
In 2025, Security Properties completed eight market-rate acquisitions valued at nearly $700 million. Its institutional equity partners include Fortune 100 insurance companies, private equity funds, and ultra-high-net-worth family offices.
