How Sunbelt Properties empowers its dispersed team to be best-in-class
Danielle Miner
COO, Sunbelt Properties
Mike Schmansky
CEO, Sunbelt Properties
Location: South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia,
Ohio and Michigan
Why AppFolio:
Managing properties across county lines can be complicated enough, but managing properties in five different states is a whole other ballgame. To keep processes and metrics consistent throughout their portfolio, while enabling employees with easy-to-use software, Sunbelt Properties chose AppFolio as their technology partner.
Portfolio
Multifamily
Units Managed
3,500+
Established
2019
Why property management?
Mike: “I’ve always had a passion for real estate. I started at a private equity group acquiring multifamily real estate. We worked with third party managers. I had a lot of opportunities to see what worked well and what could work better.”
Danielle: “I was in the military and I was a Denver police officer and I retired early due to a service injury. I got into property management because it was a natural transition. A lot of property management is dealing with issues and problems and being a problem solver. It takes someone with objective thinking and task management skills to effectively manage real estate, which all came from the military and being a police officer, and so that translated naturally to property management. I had my own rentals, and eventually I started managing other peoples’ properties. I grew a property management business of 800 single family home homes in the Charleston, South Carolina area, all through using AppFolio.”
The “aha” moment
“The primary challenge that we experienced early on was ‘how can we manage properties in five states? And how can we provide metrics that are the same across the board when you're dealing with multiple property managers, multiple third party companies, and everyone's doing everything different in their business?’ So Mike and I visited a bunch of property managers and we realized that the biggest challenge that they were having was that everything wasn't on the same software. So with that really the only way to fix that was to bring it in-house, on one software, with identical processes and procedures with all the same employees, so that you get the same experience across the board. AppFolio helped us do that.”
A culture to match their operations
“I would characterize the culture at Sunbelt as safe and collaborative. We recognize that we have properties all over, in five different states, so the question early on was, ‘How do we bring all of these people together?’ It’s a fast paced job, but there’s still space to have fun. We’re friends with people that we’ve never met face to face.”
“We try to treat everybody with respect and we try to operate an ethical business where we do everything the right way for the right reasons instead of for profit.”
Living in the future of work
Recent data shows that 69% of satisfied property management employees have greater flexibility, more work/life balance, and less busywork than their non-satisfied peers. Here’s how Sunbelt Properties leverages technology to deliver on those employee needs:
“AppFolio has changed the day-to-day dynamic of our property managers. It's allowed them to be away from their desks more than they usually would be.”
Danielle Miner
COO
Happy employees means happier residents — and better business
To avoid the expenses that come with employee and resident turnover, Danielle and Mike lean on technology to get to the root of the issue.
“AppFolio has helped us attract and retain employees because it's so easy to use. Even If you’ve never used a property management software before, you can pick it up very easily, it's very intuitive. Everything that you do naturally flows. Our employees that come from other places or other industries can't believe how easy it is.”
Making culture a growth multiplier
Sunbelt Properties manages 3,500 units in five different states, with a current headcount of 90 employees. All of their growth occurred between 2019 and today. Mike and Danielle credit much of this growth to their employees feeling connected and empowered.
“At Sunbelt, we strive to make employees feel connected to what we're doing, to care about the spaces we work in. We want them to care about their coworkers and the partners and our vendor relationships. So I feel pride that a lot of our employees come from all walks of life and that they all feel like they fit into a place that they can call their own.”
See Who We ServeOptimizing Sunbelt’s day-to-day operations has created space for Mike and Danielle to be able to serve their communities:
“We do a lot of community events, everything from clothing drives, backpack drives, to being involved in our local chamber of commerce. Our company culture is having the property manager feel like they're empowered to be connected to the residents of their community, for whatever their community needs.”
Learn About Our Software“AppFolio gives us space to pursue the things that we want to pursue. And in our case, that’s giving back. It's important for us to have a connection to the community.”
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