Meet Nova, the AI-built system behind Norhart

Norhart used to run on eight software tools that didn’t talk to each other. Today it runs on one: Nova, the AI-built system behind our business. Here’s how it came together and what it means for you.

Nova brings leasing, resident requests, maintenance, the door and camera systems in our buildings, and our accounting together in one place. AI agents wrote it in about a month in 2026, after we’d spent a dozen years trying to build something like it ourselves.

The system we always wanted

For years, the software behind our roughly 400 Forest Lake apartments was split across eight separate tools: property management, leasing software, rent pricing, accounting, expense reports, resident payments and utility billing, our phones, and the building systems for key cards, the front-door call box and in-unit internet. None could see what the others knew.

That left our team as the glue. They copied details from one screen to another, checked a second system before answering a resident, and spent the last days of every month making the books agree. When a repair request lived in one system and a resident’s messages in another, the resident often found the gap before we did.

Mike Kaeding, who leads Norhart, spent about a dozen years trying to fix that with a single system. At first Mike wrote the code alone; by the end, about half a dozen developers worked on it. Its name was Hero. It turned out to be more software than a small team could keep running, so we set Hero aside and went back to standard apartment software.

What changed in 2026

AI got good enough to write serious software. As a test, Mike asked a new AI model to build accounting software for Norhart. Within a couple of hours it had a good first version, and that test became the foundation of Nova.

Then dozens of AI agents, each writing part of the software, worked on Nova at once. The idea was Hero’s. This time, building it didn’t take years.

What residents notice

• Your history in one place. Calls, texts, emails and messages all arrive in one place, next to your lease, payments and work orders. Whoever answers sees your history with us, so you don’t have to repeat yourself.
• Answers that sound like us. We trained Nova’s AI on our own data: years of our own conversations, emails and records. It drafts each reply from our written policies and your history with us, instead of guessing. Every edit our team makes teaches it something, and it’s close to answering on its own.
• Clearer answers when something happens in the building. Key cards, the call box and the security cameras now report to the same system. When someone leaves trash in a hallway or props a door open, staff can ask what happened and have the answer in about two minutes, instead of spending about two hours on video. Only staff cleared to review video can use it, and the cameras run on a private network of their own. We call this part of Nova GroundWatch, and Zuy, our sister company (more on it below), has written up how GroundWatch turns hours of video into a two-minute answer.

What our team notices

Our staff can ask Nova questions in plain English, about leases, work orders, payments or anything else, and get one answer drawn from the whole business. When someone wants the software to work differently, like a search bar or a different report layout, they ask for it inside Nova. It’s usually ready within a few hours, and the person who asked signs off on it.

Norhart now runs on Nova, one system we own, in place of outside software that cost more than $100,000 a year.

How building Nova led to Zuy

Building Nova showed us that our old problem wasn’t unique to apartments. Most businesses run on a stack of tools that don’t share what they know, with people bridging the gaps all day.

So Mike started a second company, Zuy, which builds custom AI software for other businesses. Zuy built Nova, and it’s based here in Forest Lake; Mike leads both companies. Zuy works the way Nova was built: start with one expensive or tedious job, fix it, then connect the next one. Zuy’s case study on how Nova runs Norhart covers the details and what we learned along the way. If you run a business with the same tangle of tools we had, Zuy builds the first custom solution for free.

What stays the same

Norhart is still a family-owned company in Forest Lake. Our own leasing, maintenance and office teams still take care of our Forest Lake apartments and the people who live in them. Nova gives them faster answers and fewer screens to juggle.

If you live with us, you’ll still deal with the same people. Have a question about your apartment? Get in touch with our office.