The Official AppFolio Blog

As a property management firm, your workers are probably running around all day to make sure your properties are properly maintained and looking good, right? All this oversight makes it very hard to have a central place for your information to be located. So why not try the AppFolio mobile app?

In this day and age, nearly everything is run through a phone, whether it’s managing your stock portfolio or presenting a boarding pass at the airport, our phones now perform a litany of services that make life much easier. It would make sense then that managing your properties should be something that you manage on your phone, as well.

In order to stay ahead of the competition, leverage mobile app features to enable you to get more done anywhere and everywhere you go. Here are three reasons you should look to go mobile with your property management business.

1. Centralization
The AppFolio mobile app provides you with access to centralized contact records for each of your renters, a drastic improvement over carrying around a notebook that can be easily lost and can’t be backed up. Connecting to one centralized information repository with each renter’s information makes it much easier to stay organized and on top of different residents’ respective needs. With your mobile app, you can solve problems, answer questions and take care of customer service needs from anywhere you are.

2. Notes
It can be a daunting task to try and take down every little note, suggestion, or complaint about a property from a tenant. These notes can be easily lost or forgotten. Not with AppFolio’s mobile app! By utilizing your phone, notes can be added easily and work orders can be edited and submitted in the field instead of having to track down everything later on. The mobile app enables your business to be more nimble, getting more done each day.

3. Photos
Instead of going through a process of taking in-the-field photos and then slowly printing or transferring them to where they need to go, these photos can be immediately saved to the corresponding records in AppFolio Property Manager. Instead of traveling around with another camera, adding to your load, the only thing needed is your phone.

As the digital age continues to progress, take the leap and manage your properties with ease on the go!

The financial crisis in the United States has been turbulent the last few years. Many markets and industries are down across the country because of the economic uncertainty.

However, one market that has stayed strong throughout those years is apartments. In the study “The Trillion Dollar Apartment Industry” published in February 2013 by The National Apartment Association and the National Multi Housing Council, it was found that apartment residents in the U.S. contributed $1.1 trillion to the national economy and supported 25.4 million jobs.

So what do those numbers actually mean? Well, a trillion dollar positive impact on the economy is always a good thing. Larger than that, though, the economic ripple effect can impact the way that regions, cities and towns plan their future, as well. For example, city planners can look at the money generated from apartments and may decide that building more apartments in the area would directly and positively impact their communities.

There are currently around 35 million people living in apartments in the U.S., but that number will continue to rise, according to the report, as more people look to rent. In fact, as a nation, the United States could see as many as seven million new, additional rental households in the next decade.

As the market for renters continues to grow, the demographics of renters will continue to shift. Young, single renters continue to be at the top of the list, but the market is growing for older residents as well as. This shift may be because the 50 and older population as well as young adults in their 20s are expected to see the biggest population increases among all demographics. In fact, “by 2015, there will be 67 million people aged 20 to 34— the prime years for renting.”

All the signs point to the fact that the rental market is bursting at the seams with different, potential renters. What it comes down to is the type of renter you specifically are looking for, because the Trillion Dollar Impact has shown that pretty much every type is out there. While some may worry that the market may become oversaturated with new rental units, the report makes it clear that the amount of apartments is not nearly sufficient to keep up with the growing demand.

Owning and operating property is a constant battle to keep units in tip-top shape to make them attractive to current and prospective tenants. Tenants want a unit that feels new. They know they are not the first to occupy a space, but they want to feel like they are.

But where do you start? What renovations will attract good tenants, while also increasing the value of your property? The old cliché, “Kill two birds with one stone,” works perfectly. Focusing your efforts on two rooms will take your unit from average to awesome in no time.

Kitchen
The kitchen is critical in making your unit stand out to would-be renters. While other rooms may serve a variety of purposes depending on preference, the majority of tenants will utilize a kitchen. And according to Remodeling.com, kitchen remodeling projects have a cost value ratio of 74.6%—the highest of any room. The changes do not have to be drastic or cost a lot of money. Small changes like re-facing cabinets or investing in new and stainless steel appliances can make a huge difference. If a larger undertaking is needed, brand new cabinets, granite counter tops, kitchen islands and high quality flooring will transform your unit.

Bathroom
Don’t risk the dreaded “and then we walked into the bathroom” words from prospective tenants. It’s often the last place a potential tenant will walk into. Be sure you leave prospects with a good thought in their heads, that this is where they want to call home. This also does not have to be a huge investment; a new faucet, a refinished bathtub, elegant fixtures, better lighting, or new flooring will instantly give the unit a cleaner and newer feel. Which is exactly what a renter wants to feel when they walk into their potential new home.

A Place To Call Home
Keep in mind the people you are renting to are looking for a new place to call home. What are things you want out of your home? Probably that it is clean, new, and something you are proud of. So when making renovation decisions, see the unit as if it were your own home. Imagine you will need to cook, eat, shower, and sleep there. When it meets your living standards, it will meet your ideal tenant’s standards.

Haven’t invited your neighbors over for coffee and pie? You’re not alone. According to the State of the American Neighborhood survey by Nextdoor, a third of Americans don’t know their neighbors by name. Has the security of our communities fallen by the wayside because of our manners? We take a look at whether knowing your neighbors creates a safer home environment, as well as which celebrities you’d least want next door.

Download the full-size infographic here.

We co-hosted a fantastic webinar with Zillow Rentals, featuring Leonard Baron, Real Estate Professor and writer for Zillow.

In this informative session Leonard shared his straightforward rental property cash flow metrics that help investors spot strong investment properties – the gems from the duds. Leonard also provided tips on how to spot a strong investment property and why prize properties are NO prize at all.

Did you know that less than 5% of investors don’t know how to calculate cash flow on real estate deals? Leonard generously offered to share his Investment Analysis Spreadsheet to help your business determine the total cash to invest and what “cash on cash” rate of return you project to earn. Find it here: http://professorbaron.com/default.asp?Home=CashFlow

Below is the recorded version of the webinar and the presentation slides that Leonard agreed to share with participants so they had access to all of the great content. Stay tuned for our new eBook that we’ll release with Leonard – coming soon!

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HOLY COW! The Sacramento AppFolio Customer Meet-Up on January 24th had an incredible turnout. The final head count was a whopping 90 attendees. These attendees were treated to a wide array of delectable eats from Chop’s Steakhouse, and two AppFolio feature presentations from Brian Deignan, Director of Sales at Appfolio and Ursula Shekufendeh, Associate Product Manager at AppFolio. The presentations were so well received, that many “oohs” and “aahs” were overheard throughout the presentations.

Brian and Ursula’s presentations focused on AppFolio’s upcoming features and new partnerships, such as Pay Near Me.

Pay Near Me is a cash-based payment network that provides AppFolio’s customers the ability to allow their tenants to pay their rent at 7-Eleven or ACE Cash Express Stores. Another example of AppFolio’s continued effort to make collecting rent and managing properties easier for property managers and owners.

AppFolio Meet-Ups are more than just AppFolio team presentations of new features. Meet-Ups are also a chance for property owners and customers to network, share ideas, and most importantly have fun! One customer found the meet-up so useful that he came to the event with his own sign-up sheet to start an AppFolio user’s group in Sacramento, to meet with other customers once a month and discuss AppFolio and property management best practices.

An additional benefit of the Meet-Ups is that attendees are able to meet a few AppFolio team members in-person. Many customers at the event remarked that they were excited to meet personnel that they had worked with in the past, but had never met in person. AppFolio team members at the Sacramento event include Danielle Sandoval, Manager of Website Services and Ursula Shekufendeh, who on-boarded a few of the customers to the AppFolio software.

All in all, the Sacramento Meet-Up was a success! There was a buzz in the atmosphere and customers couldn’t wait to get back to work to try out the new features.

Interested in attending a Meet-Up? Check out the AppFolio events page for the next event in your area.

Slides

One of the biggest challenges of property management is dealing with vacancies. When one or several of your units are vacant, revenue is severely limited. Prevention with long-term tenants is an ideal situation. But no matter how loyal your tenants are, vacancies will happen.

So the question becomes: how do you fill vacancies as quickly as possible? The answer is simple, right? Just make many people aware.

But how? Paid search marketing can be a highly effective way to connect with a large number of individuals precisely at the time that they are looking for a new apartment. But done the wrong way, paid search marketing can be costly and ineffective.

So, is it right for your properties? And if so, how can you make it profitable?

In order to decide whether search marketing is right for you, two important things must be in place first:

A Technically Sound Website
This is the prospective tenant’s first impression of your property. Make sure that it is simple for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for. And have fast load times. People are impatient. They want to easily find what they are looking for in seconds. Seconds, not minutes. If they click on your ad, but find your site clunky or slow, they will leave immediately. This leads to wasted dollars. Ways to make it easy for them to find what they want for is through a sophisticated filtering system or search capability. For example, allow your prospects to filter by location, price, number of bedrooms, etc. Without finding what they want fast, they are bound to leave. So before you spend time and resources building a PPC campaign, make sure you have a user-friendly site.

An Attractive And Informative Site
Again, this is your property’s first impression, and maybe the only chance for your property. So show it off! Include visually appealing photos or videos of your units. Make sure the photos or videos are high resolution and clear, no blurry shots! Invest in quality photographs or videos, whether that means buying a great camera or hiring a professional photographer. Either way, these photos maybe the only time a prospect sees your property, so make their potential new home look awesome!

Also, include relevant and attractive content about the property. For example, list property amenities like washer/dryer in unit, proximity to popular locations, and parking if applicable. Include any differentiators about the property. This will help sell the unit beyond what a picture can capture.

Do you have these two items in place? Then search marketing may be right for you, and here are a few key items to know before getting started:

Create A Locally Targeted Campaign
Google is international. Without proper campaign configuration, you could be accidentally targeting people halfway around the world with your paid search marketing efforts. Or even if you correctly target the U.S., you may be accidentally targeting the entire country rather than your local community.

But Google and the other search engines offer great location-based targeting capabilities, which will allow you to target your specific local audience. Location-based targeting can be done at many levels, including country, state, city, or even zip code. You can even identify an address and define the radius from that point for your target market, whether one mile or ten from your building’s location. If you know your tenants most often come from certain cities or zip codes, you can specify to Google to show your ads only in these specific locations.

Targeted Keyword Set
Set up different campaigns in your paid search account for broad terms like “apartments” and more targeted terms like “one bedroom apartment in santa barbara.” Many people will search on the broad terms, but this will include some unqualified traffic and those seeking a different type of apartment than perhaps what you are currently offering. Your campaign with targeted keywords will help you connect with more qualified apartment seekers, yet the volume of searches will likely be much lower than for broad terms. It’s the combination of getting in front of broad term searchers and targeted term searchers that will provide your paid search campaign with a powerful one-two punch.

Note, if you are in a major metropolitan area such as NYC, Chicago or San Francisco, allocating too much budget to broad terms may exhaust your budget rather quickly. Depending on your location, you may need to overweight your targeted terms campaign. And in the case that your targeted terms are providing more than enough leads for you, you may want to pause your broad terms campaign altogether to ensure your campaign is performing efficiently.

In the end, search marketing can be a powerful tool to increase visibility for your properties. Just make sure to optimize your campaigns across both broad and targeted terms, directing prospective tenants to a technically sound and attractive site.

Knowing your target market is important to any business. Renting your property is no different. It is critical to not only know whom you want renting your property, but to also understand the variety of things they deem important in a rental property.

For example, is your ideal tenant looking for a well-manicured landscape, a renovated kitchen, or do they want to be closer to public transportation? Knowing these types of priorities in the minds of your renters will guide many of your decisions, from your marketing messaging to your budget allocations. By knowing your ideal tenant for a specific property, you will be able to find and keep tenants that are a perfect match for the property, and to grow your business significantly.

Building And Maintaining Relationships
The key to any great relationship is communication, and this is no different than the relationships with your tenants. Regular communication builds trust with your tenants. Whether it is a quick response to their apartment issues, providing safety information about severe weather threats, or updates on new rental agreement laws. If your tenant feels that you care about them, then they are more likely to remain long-term in your property.

In addition, as social media and review sites continue to gain popularity, every single customer becomes more important. If your tenants feel welcome and comfortable in your property, they are much more likely to recommend your property or your business.

And these social media sites provide yet another channel of communication. By connecting with your tenants online, you can begin to understand the characteristics your ideal tenants want from your property. Do they want your property to be pet-friendly? Are they environmentally conscious, and would they appreciate the steps involved in making the building more energy efficient? After learning these things about your tenants, you’ll be able to build and maintain better relationships because you can take steps to make your property their “ideal home.”

Utilizing Amenities
Work with your tenants to identify the amenities they desire and appreciate the most. For example, do they want a renovated kitchen, well-manicured landscaping, or laundry in the building? Think outside the box – maybe they would greatly appreciate dry-cleaning pickup and delivery, etc. With this information, you’ll be better equipped to budget your time and expenses accordingly. You’ll avert wasting money on things your ideal tenants don’t really want or need, and instead spend more wisely on amenity upgrades. Also, by knowing your ideal tenants’ most valued amenities, you’ll be able to promote them upfront in your rental ads, and in turn, rent units faster, to the types of renters who tend to work out best in each property respectively.

Not everything is about succeeding in the now. By recognizing what your ideal tenants want from a specific property, it will make it easier for you to make good investments. So get out there and start getting to know your tenants!

Marketing is the engine that fuels the growth of your property management business. To that end, it’s critical that you take the time to define your marketing plan and to ensure you are allocating your marketing dollars efficiently and effectively in order to secure new properties for your services.

There are many options for allocating your marketing dollars. Do you take the traditional route of newspaper ads or go online with Facebook? We’ve seen over the past couple years how valuable online visibility can be, however, it’s always important to have a balanced, diversified approach in order to maximize your marketing return on investment (ROI).

Here are nine suggestions for where to spend your marketing dollars in 2013:

1. Content Marketing
Content marketing involves the delivery of high-quality information to your most important audiences. Build out your website, write articles, create a blog, produce videos, hold webinars, etc. to establish your credibility and authority in the eyes of your property owner audience.

2. SEO
One of the benefits of content marketing is that more prospective clients can find you online in the case that you optimize your content for the search engines. Be sure to include a few targeted keywords in your content and talk to a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) pro to learn about all that you can be doing to raise the visibility of your content online.

3. Publicity
Start building a relationship with relevant members of the media in order to raise your profile and to be recognized as an authority in the industry. You can target industry and local newspapers, as well as larger magazines, websites and influential bloggers. Offer them valuable information that they will want to pass along to their audience. If you make their jobs easier, they may start looking to you as a reliable resource.

4. Print Advertising
Although there’s a lot of talk of the death of print publications, the reality is that newspapers still represent a $30 billion+ industry. Be selective in your print advertising, though. For example, Sunday papers are proving to be special performers for newspapers, representing 35% to 50% of advertising revenue for many publications.

5. Email Newsletter
Distribute a regular email newsletter to your property owner clients. Keep them up-to-date on all that you are doing to better manage their properties.

6. Online Reviews
A remarkable 62.5% of renters would post a positive comment online if asked. So go ahead and ask your tenants to post their reviews to Yelp, Citysearch and other review sites to help build your credibility and trustworthiness.

7. Referral Program
Building owners tend to know other building owners. Start a referral program to encourage more word of mouth about your property management business.

8. Social Media
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest may not necessarily be the way you’ll land your next property management client, however, chances are your prospective clients will check out your social media profiles when considering you vs. competitors. Being current and up-to-date with your social marketing gives them greater assurance that you are on top of the latest technologies and trends. It also gives you the opportunity to show off impressive photos of the properties under your management.

9. Local Marketing
Sponsor or host local events in your most important target cities and towns to gain greater visibility among important community members.

Your marketing is what delivers more clients and greater revenue for your property management business. Remember to develop a diversified plan in order to maximize your results!

We hosted a great webinar yesterday with Grace Hill and AppFolio, featuring Charity Zierten (Socially Engaged Marketing) a leading expert on social media for property management. This webinar covered everything you need to know about Pinterest: how your community can use a Pinterest Board, the types of boards and images that get the most views, and Pinterest etiquette best practices. Charity gave the audience several great tips on how to run successful Pinterest campaign including free online resources you can use to maximize your branding opportunities.

Below are the recorded webinar and the presentation slides with several questions we didn’t have time to answer.

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Are we able to delete a Pinterest board if it doesn’t work out for our company?
Absolutely! Go here https://pinterest.com/settings/ and click Deactivate Account

Can you pin from Facebook pictures and posts?
You cannot pin from Facebook, but you can share pins on Facebook. Here’s more info from Pinterest on that: https://help.pinterest.com/entries/21922987-How-do-I-pin-to-Facebook-and-Twitter-

How could a person find our apartment community on Pinterest?
By using tags and sharing interesting content, people will naturally find your pins. It is a great idea to utilize your current social networking and email marketing campaigns to promote your new Pinterest page. When residents and prospects enter your office, be sure to let them know you have a Pinterest page and invite them to share pins and follow your page!

How can I see if my competition is posting on Pinterest?
The search feature is pretty easy to use. In the upper left hand corner of Pinterest, enter the community name or keywords the community could be using. Try the property management group name. Perhaps the community is only a board on a Pinterest page. If that doesn’t bring anything up, you can always search by the community name + Pinterest in Google.

Are we able to remove comments by others on our pins if we don’t like them?
You can flag comments and delete comments on your pins. Just click the X on the right side of the comment when you mouse over it.

How do we know if our customers use Pinterest?
The only way to know is to ask! You can do this when they visit your leasing office, create a survey they complete, or you can search for keywords about your community and local area to determine if there are current users you can connect with.

Can you explain what a hash tag is used for and what it means?
A hashtag (#) is a commonly-used way to highlight a topic or a phrase. For example, if I am pinning something about fashion, I may put in the description, “This is the best #fashion tip for a quick #hairstyle!” Hashtags are used on many social networking sites to make searching for a particular topic of interest easier. When you click on a hashtag, you are immediately taken to search results.

What is the best way to gain followers?
The best way is to share interesting content and then comment, like and repin other peoples interesting content. Reciprocity lives and breathes online!

How do you upload an image to Pinterest and link it back to your website?
Check out this tutorial from Pinterest on how to pin: https://help.pinterest.com/entries/22980352

When you delete a pin, does it remove it from everyone else’s boards who repined it?
Yes, it will remove the pin from everyone’s page that repinned it. However, it will not remove pins from those who may have downloaded and re-uploaded the pin. Once it is online, assume it will always be online.

How often should I pin content?
Pinterest pins have a half-life of about a week, compared to Facebook’s 80 minutes. Start with 10-12 boards and schedule seven regular posts using Pingraphy.com. Saturday mornings and weekday evenings are the best times to pin for maximum exposure. Test that for a couple of weeks and increase or decrease your activity based on the response-level you receive.

For everyone interested in learning more, Pinterest offers resources for business page owners here: http://business.pinterest.com.

Click here to register for our next webinar, The Keys to Cash Flow Investment Analysis, Leonard Baron, real estate professor and writer for Zillow.