Double Business with Streamlined Marketing

A Bit of Backstory

We've positioned ourselves as Philadelphia's full service real estate agency. We list properties for rent, buy and sell homes in the area, and provide residential and commercial development services, in addition to our property management services. In the past year, we've nearly doubled the amount of properties that we manage and a lot of that is due to our ability to streamline our systems with AppFolio and reduce the amount of administrative office work we have to do.

We were using Propertyware and after evaluating AppFolio, our office staff found AppFolio much easier to use and more user friendly. With AppFolio we spend significantly less time on administrative, time-consuming tasks. We have more time to focus on branding and communicate with new clients.

Overall we are getting more new business because of AppFolio and it makes it easier to enter and organize new renters and communicate with our property managers.

Guest Cards And Prospect Tracking: More Efficient Marketing

From a marketing standpoint, I really use the system to track and record all of the new and existing leads. We enter all prospect information into AppFolio guest cards, which is so much easier than emailing back and forth! This tracking allows us to call on old leads to fill vacancies and keep in touch with our existing renters to maintain and improve occupancy rates. We use the Guest Card Reports to segment the data so that we can send emails with timely information to our renters in specific neighborhoods. This ranges from neighborhood news and events to widespread emails about renewals and seasonal reminders.

Before we were using AppFolio, our marketing had been very cumbersome and we just weren't able to send targeted emails to specific neighborhoods with ease. Now we have been able to enhance our marketing while maintaining our signature brand and let people know that we are a full service agency. We have the technology and tools to operate like a large corporate office but service people like a boutique shop. This is important to our potential customers.

60% Of Our Residents Pay Rent Online

We have about 60% of our residents paying their rent online. We are anticipating that in the next couple of months we should have almost 100% success rate of renters paying rent online. This is a huge timesaver for us. It is also really nice that the residents can now keep an eye on the maintenance requests through the tenant portal. This definitely improves communication with our renters.

Built-In Screening Saves Us Countless Hours

We use the AppFolio screening feature which is easier than using an external service to screen applicants because all the information is in one place. Instead of entering information twice, the built-in screening service allows us to convert them to a resident with just the click of a button.

I think the built-in screening feature has saved us hours of time. We constantly have prospective residents coming into the office and filling out applications and we need to run their credit on the spot. We have applicants fill out an application online, then we click “run screen” and the report comes back so fast that we can make a decision in minutes.

Bottom Line: We've Almost Doubled Our Rental Business

We've been fortunate in the sense that we have been able to grow the business and at the same time reduce our staff. We've nearly doubled our rental business with AppFolio and are truly able to do more with less. We will be adding more properties this year because of AppFolio and the organization that it has given our business.

I would hate for anyone to be deprived of this software! Overall, the software runs great and the accounting is so organized — I don't think we would be where we are today without AppFolio.