Missouri Property Manager Provides Efficient and Streamlined Services to Customers

A Bit of Backstory

At Home Real Estate Services was established in 2007, and switched to AppFolio Property Manager in 2009 to streamline their processes and enable them to grow their portfolio. Michelle Gipson, Co-Owner/CFO, knew their team needed new software technology to give them the competitive edge they were looking for. At Home manages more than 1,200 single family and multifamily units in the southwest Missouri.

Interview with Michelle

We reached out to Michelle to learn more about how At Home is streamlining and growing their business with AppFolio Property Manager.

How is AppFolio Property Manager helping you to track your business’s success?

The Financial Diagnostics tool is really fun. It allows me to see where we’ve messed up and where we are doing well. I really enjoy having this view. I use AppFolio’s reports to understand what is happening at each property and to communicate this easily with the owners. The reports give us and the owners a good idea of how the business is performing.

We wouldn't have been able to grow to where we are today without AppFolio Property Manager. We had a different software before switching to AppFolio, and I can see how different it was with the other company versus how streamlined and organized we are now. AppFolio truly provided us the opportunity to grow.

How are you streamlining your maintenance processes in AppFolio?

We used to track maintenance with a notebook and papers. When a work order came in, we would literally print it and place it in a notebook until the job was done. Then we’d remove the paper; the process was archaic. We’ve come a long way now that we have AppFolio’s Maintenance Tech features. We’ve been able to streamline everything we do, and our maintenance team has the opportunity to really cut down on their time spent on paperwork and manual processes.

How has your communication with tenants and owners improved with AppFolio?

I would literally call you guys and throw a fit if you took the text messaging feature away. It is the best feature in my opinion. Before, people would never answer the phone for us when we called but now we can easily text them through AppFolio’s software, and immediately get a response. It is huge, the amount of difference this has made for us. I love the text option.

Is AppFolio Property Manager easy to use?

AppFolio is very easy and streamlined. It allows us the opportunity to provide efficient and streamlined services to our customers. AppFolio gives us the extra time we need to focus and think of new and better ways to run our business. Our goal from the beginning has always been to get better and provide faster service. AppFolio helps us do that.