David Tashjian is the Senior Vice President of Comcast’s Xfinity Communities national business unit, where he leads strategy, transformation, and performance for one of the company’s fastest-evolving growth segments. He has spent more than 20 years at Comcast and over three decades in telecommunications.
David started his career in restaurants, bars, and retail management before moving into telecom in the mid-1990s. He took on his first leadership role at 19 and has worked with multifamily properties throughout his telecom career.
In this episode, John sits down with David Tashjian of Comcast’s Xfinity Communities to break down how apartment owners should approach connectivity and technology. David explains why deployment and service delivery decide the resident experience, how the Connected Building retrofit upgrades older properties using existing wiring, and how national owners are turning technology into higher rents and technology fees. He also shares where multifamily proptech is heading and why a fragmented market is ready for a single partner at scale.
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Key Takeaways
- Talk to every stakeholder, from owners to residents, before making technology decisions
- Use resident feedback and competitor comparisons to spot when an upgrade is due
- Consider retrofits that reuse existing wiring before committing to a full fiber rebuild
- Judge providers on deployment, service delivery, and long-term stability as well as price
- Tie technology upgrades to rent premiums or technology fees to capture a return
- Treat connectivity as the foundation for access control, cameras, and other proptech
Topics
From Restaurants to Telecom
- David grew up around his father’s restaurants and bars, then moved into retail management
- A blind ad in the mid-1990s led him to a satellite company and into telecom
- He is approaching 21 years at Comcast
Serving Every Stakeholder
- David’s customers include owners, developers, consultants, attorneys, property managers, maintenance teams, and residents
- A strong resident product fails without the right deployment strategy and on-site buy-in
What Owners Want Today
- Ease of use and ease of deployment top the list
- Xfinity Communities is a new business unit with dedicated leadership over multifamily sales, deployment, and product development
- David sees the service experience as the main differentiator
The 186 Steps Behind a Deployment
- A new-build managed Wi-Fi fiber deployment involves 186 steps across Comcast and the property
- Many connectivity complaints trace back to deployment or bandwidth issues
- Every property Comcast serves gets its own full engineering design
Connected Building and Legacy Properties
- Connected Building is a post-build retrofit that uses most of a building’s existing wiring
- David says it costs pennies on the dollar compared to a fiber retrofit, with no walls torn apart
- It includes proactive network monitoring, real-time data, and proactive fixes
- Property-wide Wi-Fi can also support smart devices, security, access control, and cameras
Signs It Is Time to Upgrade
- Resident complaints, such as trouble working from home or dropped connections
- Occupancy that lags nearby properties
- Competing new builds charging more in rent or amenity fees
The ROI of a Technology Upgrade
- Residents will pay for what they want, through higher rents or a technology fee
- Many national accounts are upgrading portfolio-wide, timed with contract renewals
- Some have built dedicated revenue-generating technology teams
Proptech and the Future of Multifamily
- David describes multifamily proptech as fragmented, much like single-family home automation
- Xfinity Communities is running three to four beta deployments toward an integrated, white-label experience
- Residents increasingly expect keyless entry, garage access, and entry cameras
- Scale lets one provider serve owners with properties spread across multiple states
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Round of Insights
Failure that set David up for success: Believing he had leadership figured out after early success. By his mid-30s he was not seeking enough help from others. Learning to slow down, accept feedback, and bring in diverse perspectives produced far better results.
Digital or mobile resource: Manager Tools and Blinkist.
Book recommendation: The Truth About Leadership by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, for its ten truths of leadership, including that leadership is an affair of the heart.
Daily habit: Color-coding his calendar by his top priorities for the year, setting up each week in advance, and rebalancing when any color takes up too much or too little time.
#1 insight for leveraging technology at your apartment community: Talk to your residents about what they need, then find a partner who can deliver it.
Favorite restaurant in Philadelphia, PA: Vetri Cucina, plus Dalessandro’s for a cheesesteak and John’s Roast Pork for a roast pork sandwich.
Next Steps
- Learn more about Xfinity Communities here: xfinitycommunities.com
- Connect with David on LinkedIn
- Ask your residents what they need from connectivity and technology
- Compare your rents, amenity fees, and technology offering with nearby competitors
- Evaluate retrofit options that reuse existing wiring
- Review whether an upgrade can support higher rents or a technology fee
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