Growing the Business with Security
and Peace of Mind

A Bit of Backstory

Concept Property Management has nearly 20 years of experience in the property management industry. The team manages over 1,500 multifamily units in Salt Lake City, Utah. Carina Lyons, Vice President, interacts with AppFolio on a daily basis, managing the business and checking reports to measure their performance by the moment.

Interview with Carina

We spoke with Carina to learn how AppFolio Property Manager allows their team to streamline the business and give them a competitive edge in their market.

How do you interact with AppFolio on a daily basis?

At the start of each day, I check AppFolio to look at our different reports and see how we are performing. What does our vacancy look like? How is our leasing is doing? We pull reports daily for these metrics. This is definitely how I end my day as well, because everything is live, it's web-based, it's in real time, so I want to see how we did at the end of the day.

The report I look at the most is the unit vacancy detail report because as we all know that if we're not leasing, we're losing money. If someone on our team isn't capturing as many guest cards as they should be, we can see those things and correct them quickly so that we can lease faster. Overall, the information that's provided in these reports really helps us to know how we're doing, especially knowing the days vacant and if we've marketed the property or not. It's a one-stop shop for us, like a snapshot of how leasing is performing.

We rely heavily on AppFolio's reports to provide us with the metrics on how we're doing with each department, whether it's maintenance, leasing or how we're managing our expenses. Without it, I don't know how we would manage our metrics.

In what areas of your business are you growing more efficient with AppFolio?

From receiving a guest card, to filling out an application, to closing and signing a lease, the whole cycle of online leasing has become more efficient. AppFolio has allowed us to be mobile and work wherever we want to work.

In addition, accepting online payments has been huge for us, especially during rent week. Using the online payments feature saves us time and money, absolutely. With AppFolio, we no longer have to be completely enthralled in taking checks and entering them into a system one by one. By automating those mundane tasks, we can spend more time dedicated to our clients and our residents, for the things that really matter.

We utilize AppFolio's Maintenance Contact Center which has definitely allowed us to continue to scale and grow without having to hire extra staff. We have a built-in department to help handle our maintenance calls, which we get a lot of.

Can you share more about your maintenance experience?

AppFolio's maintenance tech view has been the most exciting release for us. We have taken full advantage of the maintenance features because these days, when tenants submit their work orders, they want it done yesterday. To be able to have mobility with our maintenance teams and to have a work order show up on one of our technician's phones has been really, really big. A technician can close out the work order from their phone immediately, and then we can check in with the resident to see if it was done to their satisfaction. We've even been able to see improvement in our online reviews. Tenants are telling us how happy they are because of how quick it's been for them.

How does using AppFolio give your company a competitive edge?

When we market to new owners, we're toting AppFolio's technology as our own. Here's the service that we can provide, here's our reporting, this is how quickly we're leasing, and so on. AppFolio makes us look really good so it absolutely makes us competitive.

When it comes to training new employees, AppFolio is extremely easy to use. When new features come out, the help and training resources help to facilitate new learnings. We rely heavily on all the material that is provided within the AppFolio Help Center, the videos and the written material. These resources are vital when we have new people come on.

AppFolio's online capabilities have afforded our company the ability to cross-train employees. We will train our customer service managers and our maintenance technicians to know how to approach a prospective resident. If we have a maintenance tech on-site, he can send in an application, or show a unit on the spot. This has definitely allowed us to not have to hire as many staff members despite our continued growth.

Would you recommend AppFolio?

I look at AppFolio as industry experts who provide service, education, training and mentorship, who also have a software. I know that AppFolio will continue to make things easier and more streamlined for us.

I feel a sense of security as we're growing our business. We rely on AppFolio and I have more peace knowing that when we scale and when we grow, we're going to be okay as long as we've got you guys in our back pocket.

AppFolio is the best. I would talk to anybody about AppFolio, any time of the day, who is on the fence. Come and talk to me, we have been with AppFolio since 2009. I will help you see the light. AppFolio is the way to go