Topic: Looking for software recommendations for a relatively small portfolio.

Looking for software recommendations. I manage two luxury apartment communities in Bowling Green, KY. Not corporate owned or managed. One property has 97 units and the other 197, so a relatively small portfolio. We are currently using PropertyWare software which is not designed for multi family housing, but rather single family home property management. Plus it doesn’t play well with others; eg. does not syndicate availability to 3rd party sites like Apartments.com, etc. We have to update them manually. It also doesn’t integrate with BlueMoon. I prefer BlueMoon over the DocuSign. It also charges high fees for residents to pay online, even by e check, discouraging them from doing so and leaving me with more physical checks to process. I’m wanting recommendations on other software programs that are truly tailored to multi-family that won’t break the budget.

Have you considered Buildium or Appfolio? They work with your unit counts and can do multifamily.

Stacie Tennyson I just spoke to someone with Appfolio and it may be a possibility. I have heard of Buildium, but not done research yet. That’s a RealPage product, isn’t it?

Brooke Mangrum Vinson yes, and we have been using for 4 years. When residents pay with a check or savings account, there are no fees. There are fees when they use debut for credit cards.

Thank you so much. I’ll look into it.

Appfolio hands down would be the best. The integration, automation, user friendly and everything is in one area mostly.Anything Yardi related is the worst. Never use Yardi.

James Shannon Haha! I have used OneSite and Yardi before. I remember thinking OneSite was more user friendly than Yardi.

ResMan and Rent Manager may be a couple others to look into. I hear great things about Appfolio though from my smaller clients!

Yvette Evans Thank you!

Yvette Evans love resman! Easy to use and seems to flow well. Not much of getting out to get information then having to back. Love love

Since it's just two, definitely keep the software platform small. Definitely look at Appfolio first

Bill Szczytko Thank you.

Brooke Mangrum Vinson so much of what's out there is bloatware for a 2 property portfolio.You def need to ditch PropertyWare though. Does it do anything for your needs?

Bill Szczytko Propertyware would do better reporting than say Appfolio, but still the net gain of switching to Appfolio well exceeds that.

resman is amazing! super easy and user friendly.

Rebecca Johnson Thank you!

AppFolio

Buildium is great for small owners. Also you can electrically sign leases, they can pay online as well as one click gets you on 5 online portals all for one cost. I use it for private rentals.

Kimberly Starnes Smith Thank you

You can also email and text your residents from Buildium for great communication with out using personal phone to text

Kimberly Starnes Smith are you able to send out mass text to residents? Like if you were having a resident event or something and wanted to get the word out.

Brooke Mangrum Vinson yes you can one on one or group. You can also set up reoccurring “like don’t forget to pay your rent!” LOL!

Kimberly Starnes Smith that seems like pretty basic functionality that almost all softwares would have…

Miles Scruggs Seems like it, but alas, Propertyware can’t do it

Resman is the way to go, it's very user friendly and will meet all your needs as you grow to multiple properties or multiple regions

Rent Manager

Appfolio is my vote.

I would recommend rentecdirect. I've used it for 3 years and I love it. ACH payments are free and credit card and debit card processing charges can be passed on to the resident. They integrate and take care of the application process, as well. All around, very easy to use.

We use RealPage, Onesite. Love it! It integrates well with Apts.com and is also integrated with our Key texting for residents. 252 units!

Yardi has a platform called Breeze that would be perfect for you. So simple to use(it’s a Breeze). I would be happy to connect you to learn more.

I love Appfolio!!!!!

ResMan is the best I've used and I always highly recommend it! Easy to use and I never had problems.

Lauren Page what else have you used? Also what level in the company are you using it at?

I’m here to recommend Rent Manager. I’m a mom-and-pop with 400 units. I have found Rent Manager to be a great product that helps me accomplish many, many goals. And their tutorial videos are good and their annual educational conferences are amazing.

Appfolio has been great for us! 180 units

I love Appfolio too, except just learned when we sold a sister property that there is a minimum unit count (I think 600?) so my property is now paying more to meet the minimum requirements. Beyond that, it has been by far better than all others I’ve used. Still doesn’t integrate with as much as the bigger platforms but they are always making improvements, you send leases directly through Appfolio so no Blue Moon or Docusign needed, and my favorite feature is that it has an app so I can always access anything I need from my phone.

Angela Ransom are you still able to use the apartment association lease like Bluemoon has?

You probably could but in order for it to pull data from the resident profile, you will have to create a lease template that will require you to copy/paste/type in each section. I’m not sure if that would be a copyright issue with BlueMoon.

Angela Ransom Thank you so much!

Appfolio

One of our switches was from Propertyware to Appfolio. Over the years we’ve done in depth multi hour evaluations of Rent Manager, Buildium, Breeze, Resman etc. because we are always open to switching to a better platform. Most of those platforms are half baked, and they all lack feature parity with Appfolio in the areas we care about. Appfolio’s weakness in my opinion would be its reporting. You just don’t have the ability to generate powerful reports like you do with Yardi, Propertyware etc. you still get lots of reporting but if you are a data nerd then you are going to be pulling stuff into excel and pivoting your way to a solution.

Miles Scruggs Gotcha! That makes perfect sense.