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.
With AppFolio’s tenant ACH offering as cheap as it is (it’s free!) and easy to use, many of our customers ask us how they can get even more of their tenants to pay rent online.
Here is a list of 5 ways you can encourage your tenants to pay online:
Make it a policy. Yes, forcing people is not always possible, but sometimes even suggesting it is a policy can work.
Give everyone a $5 Starbucks gift card if they sign up for recurring online rent payments.
Enter every tenant that signs up for online payments into a raffle to get a $50 Walmart gift card.
Put reminder messages on how to sign up for online payments in your office, in e-mails to tenants, on your website, on flyers in their unit, the laundry room, etc. Anywhere that they will see it!
Tell them! Every time you talk to tenant, make sure to mention it.
With these tips hopefully you can motivate most of your tenants to pay rent online and start enjoying all the extra time you will have during rent week.
) attending.
