It is amazing to watch how quickly we all have come to use the Internet to ’see what our peers think’. When I go out to dinner I often check reviews on Yelp, when I stay at a hotel I look for reviews on Tripadvisor – I rely on these reviews to help me make my choices! The same applies when you’re evaluating a new software. In our marketing we rely heavily on our case studies and sharing our customers’ real experiences when switching to AppFolio.
We recently profiled an AppFolio customer, Real Estate Management Group, located in Montana. Our case study focused on their experience with AppFolio with integrated ACH rent collection as they converted from using PropertyView’s Peak Property Management software in combination with PayLease to collect rent online from their residents. Sadly the original case study we published contained an error. We incorrectly highlighted a savings of $5K/year in reduced costs when converting from PayLease to AppFolio’s online rent payment. The actual cost savings of the amount paid to PayLease is $2,800/year. When we found out about the error we quickly posted an updated case study.
The case study identified many different areas of cost savings throughout their business:
We are glad to have the chance to update this case study and to apologize to PayLease!
Wow, what a turnout! We had over 65 attendees at the San Diego AppFolio Customer Meet-up. We were all treated to fine dining at The Brigantine in Del Mar and a fabulous presentation from Jason Randall, AppFolio VP Product Development. Finally our summer beach fog and gloom has lifted and it was a bright and sunny day.
What made this event so great? The networking! Property Managers from all over San Diego were seated together and shared best practices with each other in a relaxed and casual environment. More than a few AppFolio customers shared with me that they learned new ways to use AppFolio for their business to be more profitable and save even more time just by sitting together at lunch.
Jason shared with the group about how our clients’ feedback directly impacts the development of AppFolio. We learned that Kendra Morris of Cambridge Management Group, Inc., Cynthia of Chamberlain Property Management, and Jennifer Newton of Walters Home Management submit the most feedback to our team. Even as our company has grown we still have every single employee receive these customer feedback emails.
Other time savings features of AppFolio are widely used among the group, and the “winners” were announced for each of the categories:
Tell us a little about yourself and your family.
I’ve been married to Daalia for five years. We have 2 sons, Laith, who is about to turn 3 years old, and Oliver who was born in April this year. Life is busy!
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in a small town about 40 miles north of London, England. I grew up in the same area, went to a University in the south of England and moved to London after that. My parents now live in Greece and the rest of my family is in Scotland and England.
What brought you to Santa Barbara and when?
My wife bought me here, literally. She’s a US citizen – they wouldn’t have let me in otherwise! Daalia went to UC Santa Barbara and I met her in London while she was working abroad for a few years. We came out to California on vacation in 2004 and figured there could be worse places in the world to live.
What is your favorite activity to do in Santa Barbara?
Its tough not to be a big fan of the beach, my son has such a great time when we go. There is some amazing coastline here so we try to take advantage as much as we can.
What are your hobbies?
Hobbies have kind of taken a back seat in the past 2 years! I used to love playing golf and snowboarding in the winter. Now I build train tracks and Lego towers.
What is the best part of your job at AppFolio?
Getting feedback from clients who are successfully improving their business processes with AppFolio. The feedback doesn’t always have to be sugar coated, change is tough, doesn’t matter who you are. But if the overall direction is positive I have a high level of confidence we’ll have a great long-term partnership.
What are some of the most creative things you’ve seen customers do with AppFolio?
I am always surprised at our customers’ creativity. We have a great customer in San Francisco who is particularly good at making AppFolio work for him. He has devised a tracking system for all the rent control measures required in the city, he keeps meticulous records and uses the ability to attach files to any page of AppFolio to store those records in the relevant places in the database. Government regulations can make life tough for property managers but this customer has found a simple way to roll with them.
What is on your favorite iPod playlist?
Right now I have The Strokes, The Who, Run DMC, Coldplay, David Gray, U2 and Amy Winehouse. It’s a mess. I am sure I’m not cool.
Flip Flops or Shoes?
Flip-flops, I’m a Californian now.
Let’s face it, sometimes the business of property management can be quite hectic so anything you can do in order to create efficiency, while also being as ‘green’ as possible, is most welcome. Below are a few ways AppFolio helps get you there.
Utilize AppFolio’s Online Tenant Payments (ACH) and encourage all of your residents to participate.
This will not only cut down on the amount of paper checks being used, but it’ll save you so much time during rent week, as you will no longer have to sift through stacks of checks, manually entering them into the system. Online tenant payments with ACH is fast, easy, and free…most of all, it’s green. We’ll even create a marketing package (refrigerator magnets, rack cards and posters) for you, so that you can spread the word to your residents! Check out these examples:
Add Owner Packets to the Owner’s Portal or email them.
This cuts down on the amount of paper you are using to print and mail documents to your owners, since your owners can login to their portal and retrieve their statements and reports and decide which ones they’d like to print, if any.
Use technology as much as you possibly can when it comes to marketing your properties.
With AppFolio, we give you the tools to quickly and easily advertise your vacancies online (Craigslist, the Internet, and your website). The ease of the entire process saves you so much time, while allowing your properties to receive maximum visibility. The bonus is that unless you really need to create print outs, you are saving even more trees!
Bookmark your AppFolio data onto your iPad, iPhone (or other smart device).
This is extremely helpful when you are on the road and need the number for a vendor or tenant. It saves you from having to call into the office, or even, from having to go back to the office to obtain the information you need. Not to mention, you won’t have to lug around papers or even your laptop! From your iPhone: Open Safari > Navigate to your AppFolio > Click the plus sign at the bottom of the window > Select Add to Home Screen. From that point, you’ll see the icon on your iPhone’s desktop for AppFolio.
About Vanessa
Vanessa Green is an active member of our Client Services Team and has been working with property managers for many years. She works out of our Dallas office and loves helping our customers every day. In her free time she is a mom who also enjoys photography, technology, shooting, coffee, and road-trips.
Tell us a little about yourself and your family. I grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. During college I did some traveling and studied abroad in England and New Zealand and finished my education in San Diego. It was there that I met my wife and we’ve now been married for 14 years. We moved back up to Santa Barbara and have 3 daughters, ages 7, 9, and 12.
What do you do for fun?
My wife and I like to do fun outdoor activities with the girls. As a family we like to go to the beach or hike in the mountains. Everyone gets in the water and we all paddle or surf together. Other times we pile in the car and I’m the soccer dad. It’s a lot of fun for us to share in these activities together.
What do you love about Santa Barbara?
Apart from the natural beauty, Santa Barbara is an awesome community. We are fortunate to have strong universities like UCSB and Westmont and great companies here for the size of city we are. It’s evident that the people in Santa Barbara want to be here. The large number of non-profits and charity groups add to the sense of community as well.
What is the best thing about working at AppFolio?
The best thing is knowing that we’re really making a difference in our customers’ business and in their lives. On the customer services side of the company you really feel that and it’s very fulfilling.
What motivates you at work?
We are a fast growing company and it’s ever changing. We are on the forefront of the next generation of business tools and that’s exciting. On the services side, we are offering the best service and differentiating ourselves in this industry. As a growing company, to be able to make that impact is definitely motivating.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Garbage TruckAs a little kid I wanted to be a garbage man because I thought that would be pretty cool. As I grew older, I think my expectations and priorities shifted!
What is on your favorite iPod playlist?
My daughters recently hijacked my iPod and put Justin Bieber on it! Personally, I like a wide range of music that goes the full spectrum. We are also lucky to have great music venues here in Santa Barbara and my favorite place to listen to music is the Santa Barbara Bowl.
A Few More Questions… 1. Coffee or Tea? Coffee 2. PC or MAC? MAC 3. T-shirt or Dress shirt? T-shirt 4. Ski or Snowboard? Snowboard 5. Post-It or Gmail Task List? Post-It 6. Laptop or iPad? Laptop…but I need an iPad too!
What is Universal Search?
On every page of AppFolio Property Manager, you’ll find a small search box in the upper right of the screen – this is Universal Search. This box is a small search engine that you can use to quickly navigate around the application. You can use it just like a normal web search engine: enter a bit of information and it instantly brings back links that match your search terms.
For example, if you enter “555″ into the search box, it might show you links to a tenant whose phone number happened to be “555-1234″, or a property with address “555 Main st.”, or a work order with reference number “5554″. The search system even knows about the relationships in your data. So, for example, you can search for a property by entering the name of its owner, or vice-versa.
Why It’s Great
Being able to access information quickly is important to AppFolio users. On average, it takes only four seconds for our users to find what they are looking for using universal search. As every property manager knows, less time spent searching for the right data translates into money saved. And since AppFolio customers use search thousands of times a day, that saved money can add up!
How It Works
Search is just a small box on the AppFolio page, but it’s a large part of our infrastructure and is driven by sophisticated technology. Each time you type a letter into a search box, your web browser talks to AppFolio’s servers and asks it to search through your data for items that match those characters. We work hard to make sure our servers respond quickly enough to give search its interactive feel.
To do this, we use indexes provided by our search engine. An index works exactly like it sounds: just as a person searching for information in a book would never look at each page, our servers don’t look through all your data each time you search. Whenever you add data to AppFolio, it updates a big index that keeps track of all references to various terms. As you enter search terms our servers locate the corresponding entry in that big index and instantly find all occurrences of the term.
Where It’s Heading
We’re always looking for ways to improve AppFolio, and search is no exception. Our engineers are researching new ways to predict what data you’re looking for and present it quickly. If we’re successful, you’ll be able to type fewer characters to find what you’re looking for. Saving a few seconds may not sound like much, but for a feature that AppFolio customers use thousands of times a day, we hope it will add up to significant time savings and result in a product that is faster and easier to use.
About Andrew:
Andrew Mutz is a Senior Software Engineer at AppFolio. He is currently working on ways to improve both the result relevancy and the performance of AppFolio’s search infrastructure. In the past he has worked on a variety of projects at AppFolio, most recently online tenant payments. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Is your company more or less efficient than your peers?
You might expect that in an industry with so many associations and educational forums that there are best practices that would lead to common time metrics on simple every day procedures.
You would be wrong.
Not all property management companies are created equal, nor do they run at the same levels of efficiency. I recently surveyed property managers on common operational tasks to find out how long they spend each month on operational tasks, collecting rent for example. Some companies have employed tactics that make them up to twice as efficient as others, while providing a higher level of service to their owners and residents.
Time is money.
So why don’t property managers treat their time like they treat their money? Ask a property manager if they audit their books and do they know where their money goes each month and the answer is, “Yes.” Ask them if they audit their time and the time of their employees to find out where the biggest time expenses are in their business and the answer is, “No, it’s too hard.”
So what? Property managers will often do a task themselves rather than pay for someone else to do it, because it “saves” them money. What they fail to quantify is the time expense, and the cost to their business. The amount of time property managers spend actually growing their business is often quite small – typically less than 5% of a companies’ resources are focused on growth and yet it’s almost always the #1 goal.
So, the next time you see your employee or find yourself doing any of the following, ask yourself if it’s an efficient use of time:
Entering rent manually
Folding and stuffing owner statements in envelopes
Faxing a work order
Answering questions about an owner statement that is hard to understand
Answering the 10th inquiry about a vacancy on the phone with the same answer
Once you are aware of these activities you can look for opportunities to avoid them.
As we add time-saving features to AppFolio Property Manager each month, we continue to find new chances to help our customers spend less time on these tasks so they have more time to find new business – it is so exciting!
Albert Oaten has conducted over 50 property management workshops and seminars around the country, inspiring debate and discussion on tactical ways to save property management companies time so they can focus on growing their business.
I recently had the pleasure of being the guest speaker at AppFolio’s very first meetup in Portland Oregon. We held it at the beautiful Portland City Grill right in the heart of downtown. It was a fabulous event with almost 80 of our current customers (and some soon to be customers ) attending.
We had 3 main goals for this meetup:
1. Bring our customers together and show how much we appreciate them with a fun lunch where they could ask me, other ‘AppFolians’, and other customers questions about the product. Everyone shared ideas and best practices and we all learned from each other.
2. We are releasing new features and functionality very quickly – just about every month we have an update to the product. We have many great features in AppFolio and we want our customers to use every one of them! I was not surprised to learn that many were already taking advantage of all our features. We had a few customers share with the group how many hours they were saving each week using features such as automated bank reconciliation, owner ACH, and online vacancy postings.
3. Our third goal was show our customers how their feedback shapes our product. We spend a lot of time listening to what our customers want – this is the only way to build an outstanding product!
We have the best customers and we were glad we were able to organize such a great event. We hope to have another one in a city near you soon.
Click here for a short video of the event over on facebook.
We had a great webinar with Daniel Bornstein last Thursday. He shared his perspective on the top 10 property management pitfalls that cost business money and can potentially get them into legal trouble. Daniel is an experienced real estate lawyer and runs his own property management business – we are very fortunate to have his expertise on the webinar!
A video recording of the complete webinar can be viewed below.
There were so many questions we didn’t get to all of them on the call so Daniel was kind enough to answer your questions below.
Q. If the owner fails to give the deposit back to the tenant after move-out due to a repair dispute, they are liable?
A. That is correct
Q. If you provided education regularly, does an employee on-site have a personal liability if they are the procurement error of a liability suit?
A. Education is your best insulation from liability even if there was an employee error.
Q. Do you consider the California Association of Realtor (CAR) forms comprehensive enough?
A. The C.A.R. agreement could be supplemented and there are more comprehensive agreements available.
Q. What amounts of liability insurance do you recommend for the tenant?
A. Tenants should have liability insurance. The 3 factors that should be considered are:
1. Size of the apartment building
2. Amount of rent being paid
3. Quality of the building
Q. When you state that the property manager should be named as beneficiary on insurance, do you mean the property manager personally or the property management company?
A. The property management company.
Q. In our agreement, we have the option of canceling if the property does not meet our “minimum home requirements.” Is that sufficient?
A. As the property manager, you can terminate them if they do not meet the minimum standards that you set for that habitat. For example, if the building is hit by the City or County with violations then you have the right to terminate.
Q. Can an unlicensed person set an appointment and open up a rental unit for a potential tenant to view it? This would be for a house or condo we manage, not an apartment community. He/she would only open the property for them and provide an informational flier to them, prepared by the broker. This is in California.
A. That is OK if the person is simply handling administrative matters. Opening the door to a unit is potentially more problematic, but probably ok.
Q. I know you mentioned never hiring an unlicensed handyman to do work on a heater or some major system, because of the liability involved. What are your thoughts about hiring an unlicensed handyman to do minor repairs (i.e. paint, sink repair, yard work, etc.) that are under $500? I understand there is no “handyman” license in California. I find many companies do this for minor items. Is this foolish in your opinion?
A. It is acceptable, though “drift” occurs often and the handyman starts doing work that requires a permit (and potential licensing).
We’re hosting an AppFolio Meet-Up at the Portland City Grill next Tuesday (7/20) at 11:45 AM. If you’re in the Oregon / Portland area and you’re a property manager, you should join us!
So…what’s an AppFolio Meet-Up?
A) A fun, casual and complimentary lunch for our AppFolio Customers and other Property Managers interested in learning more about AppFolio’s web-based property management software.
B) AppFolio Tips and Tricks Session to help you get the most out the software and learn from our property management experts.
C) A chance to network with your Property Management peers in the Portland Area.
D) All of the Above
I don’t remember the exact trick for multiple choice questions – you should usually pick “C” or always pick “D-All of the Above”? But the answer is: “D – All of the Above”!
Topics We’ll Cover
How Maximize your use of AppFolio Property Manager: Live demonstrations of features you can take advantage of to save time and make more money. Nat Kunes, AppFolio Sr. Product Line Manager, will be our guest speaker.
Learn why property managers are converting to AppFolio Property Manager: Network with your peers and learn from existing customers how AppFolio has helped them and their business. Share and learn new property management best practices.
Learn about upcoming features: Be the first to know about our new features designed to help you grow your business.
If you’re not in the Portland area, don’t worry – we’re planning to visit more cities soon!
UPDATE:
Thanks to everyone who attended. We had a great time and hope you did, too. There is a recap and photos of the event over at this post.
Tell us a little about yourself and your family.
) attending.
