Northwestern dropout teams up with father to fix Chicago's apartment hunt

Every North Sider who has ever hunted for an apartment knows the dread of Chicago's rental market: chasing down leasing agents, hunting for hidden lockboxes and getting ghosted by online brokers. Bella Campise, 21, is using her deep Chicago real estate roots to rewrite the rules.

Campise left her studies at Northwestern University's tech incubator, The Garage, to launch Aigentless in late 2024 alongside her father, Frank Campise, co-founder and principal of North Side firm JAB Real Estate. Real estate runs in the family; Bella was making cold calls at age 12 and helped her father with a condo deconversion in Uptown as a high school freshman. "Frank and I had been doing walks around to look at properties since I was really young," she told The Real Deal Chicago. "We're both real estate nerds."

Her own grueling college housing hunts exposed gaps in the market, so she built an AI-driven mobile platform tailored to the quirks of Chicago's vintage buildings. As a Gen Z entrepreneur, Campise designed the app around how her generation actually wants to rent: no small talk with a leasing agent required, just book, unlock, and tour a unit solo, even at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. Its "Leasa" AI assistant answers questions about a unit's features and verifies renter identity in three steps, all while letting prospective tenants apply on the spot from their phone.

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The concept proved itself at the 159-unit Hamden Court Apartments in Lincoln Park, one of the app's first test properties. "The Aigentless tours did 70 percent of the leasing, and our live agents only did the other 30 percent," Frank told The Real Deal Chicago.

That early traction fueled fast growth. In a three-year exclusive partnership announced in November 2025, Denver-based Cardinal Group Companies made Aigentless the sole self-guided tour provider across its 100,000-plus-bed student housing portfolio, one of the largest in the country. As of this summer, Aigentless itself had grown to nearly 200 properties and roughly 40,000 units nationwide, according to Trade Press, with more coming online as the Cardinal rollout continues. To manage that growth, Aigentless brought on industry veteran Jesus Machuca Jr. as head of revenue this June.

Campise has said automating tours frees leasing teams from repetitive questions so they can focus on higher-value work like closing deals and building relationships. "That's not just a feel-good benefit," she said as reported by Multi-Housing News. "It has real financial implications."

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Campise's momentum has also drawn recognition: she was named a Rising Star honoree at Bisnow's Chicago Women Leading Real Estate ceremony just this March, one of 28 women recognized for their impact on the city's commercial real estate industry. Even as national expansion pulls the team toward new markets, Aigentless remains headquartered at 1525 W. Homer St. in Chicago, reflecting the Chicago origins of a nationwide push to change how renters interact with real estate in 2026.

For late-summer apartment hunters, the app offers a glimpse of a more optimistic, practical future—proof of what happens when family real estate wisdom meets next-generation technology.

Renters nationwide can explore platform features on the Aigentless Platform Hub or download the app through the Apple App Store or Google Play.