Ivy Lane is an active employee for the national corporate housing provider, Bozzuto. Lane helps schedule tours, answers questions from prospective residents, and will reply to messages at all hours of the day.
Lane never takes a day off because, unlike most of Bozzuto’s staff, this agent is not human. Ivy Lane is a chatbot.
Named after the address of Bozzuto’s corporate headquarters in Greenbelt, MD (6406 Ivy Ln.), Ivy Lane—the chatbot—has never been never publicly acknowledged by the company. Despite this, Ivy Lane has an email address at every one of the dozens of Bozzuto properties in the Washington metro area; each with some numeral at the end to differentiate them.
An AI leasing agent that tells tenants the price of units is tricky in a place like Washington where software company RealPage uses its algorithms to set prices that can change daily. Bozzuto is one of the companies listed in an ongoing lawsuit against RealPage filed by Washington attorney general Brian Schwalb alleging that these housing providers acted as a “cartel” to price-gouge residents.
AI is also known for getting facts wrong, also known as hallucinations. If a chatbot tells someone the wrong price of a unit, who is at fault? The law does not have a clear answer.
A Reddit post shows a potential scam text originating from one of Ivy Lane’s verified email accounts. When contacted, the property had no knowledge of this post Source: Reddit | u/Mundane-Silver-8287
Joel Cohn, legislative director at the Washington Office of the Tenant Advocate (OTA), doesn’t think AI gives housing providers plausible deniability.
“I’m not sure new legislation is needed because misinformation provided by a landlord to tenants is generally sanctionable anyway,” Cohn said over email. “Having been AI-generated is no defense.”
The rental market is another area where consumer protection laws may not be properly equipped for agentic AI. In 2022, a Canadian airline had to honor the price offered by a chatbot to a customer, sparking the first high-profile lawsuit of its kind.
Emails from Ivy Lane include the disclaimer “please note, rent prices are subject to change.” Cohn isn’t sure that it will legally cover Bozzuto when those algorithmic rents can change daily.
“While I don’t think it’s [the disclaimer] is per se inaccurate, it is certainly incomplete and potentially misleading,” Cohn said. “At minimum—regardless of rent control status—a rent increase notice of at least 60 days is required before a rent increase can take effect, something an algorithm can’t lawfully change.”
In Bozzuto’s case, these price changes would be for a newly-signed lease. Put simply, if a person sees one price, but didn’t sign a lease that day, then checked it again and the price was higher, they couldn’t expect the previous price to be honored.
The prices listed for a one-bedroom unit at Bozzuto’s Union Place were actually cheaper when the chatbot was asked than compared to the property website on multiple occasions throughout March 2026.
When asked via email “whose price would be honored: the property website or the Ivy Lane chatbot?” Bozzuto did not respond.
It is also worth noting that Bozzuto does not explicitly state that Ivy Lane is an AI chatbot in any of its messaging. The privacy statement linked in the excerpt from Ivy Lane’s email goes to EliseAI, whose website describes the company as an AI-powered housing and healthcare service.
Replies may be human and/or AI generated. Emails are collected and recorded by a third party. Bozzuto Management
The “third party” mentioned in the above disclaimer is EliseAI. The company’s website says that 86.7% of the conversations through its products are “fully AI-automated, requiring no human intervention.”
The company markets its products for customer service, scheduling tours, handling maintenance requests and more. By automating responses, the company’s goal is to free up property staff to work on “strategic, high-impact tasks.” Studies have shown that consumers prefer to interact with human employees for their customer service needs.
Renters may be forced to interact with AI chatbots as they search for housing as providers continue to implement the technology. In 2024, co-founder and CEO Minna Song told VentureBeat that EliseAI is "used by 70% of the top 50 rental housing operators and owners in the country."
Bozzuto is listed as one of EliseAI’s showcase customers. Credit: EliseAI
In 2025, Reuters reported that EliseAI secured $250 million in funding to expand into the healthcare space.
Setting Precedent
The Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University cowrote the Tenant Survival Guide in 2013. The document is intended to work as a primer on tenants’ rights, how to form a tenants’ organization, and address tenant-landlord grievances.
Agentic AI wasn’t a concept at that time, so the document has no mention of how, in a hypothetical future, tenants would be protected if their landlord’s chatbot gave overcharged them. When asked about updating their information for today’s digital environment, Harrison Institute representatives did not respond by press time.
The OTA is currently drafting an updated version of its Tenant Bill of Rights, mostly to include changes from the 2025 RENTAL Act. It remains to be seen if or how AI leasing agents will be incorporated into the bill.
EliseAI’s “About Us” page states that the company wants to “Own the outcome.” When asked how that relates to accountability if their products relay inaccurate information, a representative did not respond by press time.
