Real Estate Management Group Saves $20K A Year with AppFolio’s Online Rent Payments
Real Estate Management Group focuses on property management with a mixed portfolio of around 1,000 properties in Montana. Michelle McLinden is the General Manager and is also the 2010 President of the Western Montana Chapter of NARPM. With their switch to AppFolio’s property management software they are saving a significant amount of time and money, allowing them to allocate more resources to expand their business.
“AppFolio is really
allowing us to grow the business. I’ve freed up enough time to have one person selling our services full time. Just this week we took on 5 new properties.”
An Easy to Use, Web-based Solution
Prior to using AppFolio, Michelle and her team were using PropertyView’s Peak Property Management Software but they found it complicated and expensive so they started to search for an easy to use, web-based solution. Their evaluation process was thorough – Michelle had previous experience with Yardi and they tested other options like PropertyBoss, Propertyware, and Rent Manager. After looking at AppFolio, “We just all fell in love with it right away,”
says Michelle. “We love the mobility of web-based software. We can access our information from anywhere and we all do!”
says Michelle.
All employees at the Real Estate Management Group are cross-trained so they can answer any question that comes in from residents and owners. With tools like universal search, anyone can pull up information for maintenance, vendors or tenants and at the click of a button, be ready to go. “We really like the AppFolio reports. We used to spend almost 20 hours a month just explaining the reports to our owners – but now our owners don’t complain!”
exclaims Michelle.
The team is also making great reductions in their use of paper, saving both time and money. By going green and using email, Michelle is mailing 400 fewer Owner Statements each month. At a cost of approximately $1 per statement in paper, ink, and postage, that’s $4800 a year. Michelle is also purchasing iPads for the team to access AppFolio from the field and conduct property inspections so they avoid printing reams of inspection documents.
“We love the mobility of web-based software.
We can access our information from anywhere and we all do!”
Integrated Online Rent Payments Will Save $20K Per Year
Real Estate Management Group has been able to save an astonishing $20,800 a year by switching to AppFolio’s integrated online rent payment system. In the past they used PayLease and received an additional annual bill of around $2,800/yr. Now with AppFolio, there are no additional monthly costs – online rent payments are included with the monthly service. “Our tenants really like it,”
says Michelle. “We can get them set up in just a few seconds by sending out an email. We have about 60% of our tenants paying online right now but it is growing quickly because of our switch to AppFolio.”
The team projects they will have 85% of tenants using ACH payments by the end of this year, which will make their business increasingly profitable as it expands into new territories.
With PayLease, Michelle’s accounting team also had to manually enter each rent receipt into their property management software – this was extremely time consuming. Because AppFolio’s software is completely integrated, Real Estate Management’s accounting department now has so much free time that they became the new “accounting / maintenance department.”
Michelle estimates that the team is saving $18,000/year in man-hours that were previously dedicated to these labor-intensive processes.
Saving 2x The Annual Cost of the AppFolio Service
Excellent Customer Service Makes the Difference
Michelle is especially impressed with the responsiveness and availability of the AppFolio services team. “With AppFolio, every time we have an issue or make a suggestion, it’s responded to really quickly. It makes us feel important and that our opinion matters,”
says Michelle. With their previous provider they had to wait on hold just to get in touch with a support representative. Adding to the frustration, support and training were not included in their software package and required additional fees.
New Resource Dedicated to Marketing: 5 New Properties In One Week
“AppFolio is really allowing us to grow the business,”
says Michelle who is thrilled to now have a dedicated staff member who spends 100% of her time on marketing to new and existing owners. “I’ve freed up enough time to have one person selling our services full time. I’ve never been able to have that before! Just this week, we took on 5 new properties,”
explains Michelle. With these tremendous cost savings and new resources dedicated to business expansion, Real Estate Management Group will definitely fulfill their goals and continue to expand their footprint across Montana.
