AppFolio Property Manager is a cloud-based property management software that allows multifamily and single-family, commercial, student housing, homeowners and condo association, and mixed portfolio property managers to market, manage and grow their business. AppFolio includes accounting and property management functionality, including the ability to: provide instant access to reports & statements, post & market vacancies, apply & lease online, screen residents, streamline rent collection, and…
$0.85
per unit/per month
VTS
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
VTS is an asset management and leasing platform built to provide real-time portfolio analytics to landlords and brokerage firms. VTS allows brokers and landlords to manage deal activity, a desktop or mobile device.
We have 6 apartment buildings that we manage. Every month we were having to drive to each location to collect rent checks. Since using appfolio, we only have a couple of renters that still send in a paper check, the rest pay online, so we are ensuring that our renters are paying on time. Once we have an applicant apply, the old way was to take their scanned application, review, and then pay to have a background check conducted. Now, with appfolio, we are able to have them apply, sign off on the background check, and pay their deposit all in one shot. It has allowed our property managers to focus on other property items rather than conducting background checks.
Checking printing: We have multiple bank accounts tied to our account and utilize blank check stock. Appfolio automatically prints the routing numbers and account numbers at the bottom of the blank checks based on which property we are paying a bill from.
Tie-in with their Investment Management tool gives our investors a great resource while keeping our investments in sync with our accounting software.
Only a few very technical items that wouldn't necessarily make sense to non-users and I haven't even cared enough to submit requests on the issues. It'd be nice if parking was easier to keep track of on the system. Right now, if you run a report it doesn't show all the information our company requires for the vehicles and therefore we have to keep track of it elsewhere.
Another obstacle we've encountered is that the program charges "by door" so if you have multiple units and properties you can really rack up pricing. That's especially true for large multi-unit buildings with parking.
VTS is still growing in its features on retail properties. As a product that originated in the office and broker world, it has had a learning curve for shoppiong centers. It has made great progress in the 2+ years we've been on the system, and there is more to come.
The defaults for the dashboards go into a longer time frame than how we look at production and leasing activity. We are year-to-date driven, and that view isn't readily available on the dashboards.
We are still working on getting Deal Approval flow active in our organization. We have a two-round approval process, and VTS currently is structured for a single approval round. We are finding ways to make it work, but it's still a workaround.
The system is so intuitive and easy to use. There’s almost nothing in the system that can’t be undone if you make a mistake. Important things also have their own tabs. It’s also easy to use from the resident side which is helpful for in a world where everyone is not tech-savvy.
In our experience, customer support consists of submitting questions to a bot. When the bot can't answer the question it repeats your question back to you. When you ask for customer support, someone says they will email you with an answer. The answer never comes and then your question is closed out. In my experience, customer service reps then direct you to go to the suggestion boards where you realize there are thousands of frustrated AppFolio Property Manager users who are receiving no help. On our particular hot-spot issue, other customers have submitted requests for help since 2015, but no help is forthcoming
Before we used AppFolio Property Manager we used Skyline. Skyline Property Management was super outdated. The tenants did not have access to that program so we had to purchase another program for them to make their payments through. We would then have to manually enter every single payment. Onboarding and transferring data to AppFolio from Skyline was a nightmare and took us several months. AppFolio is so much easier for tenant use.
We looked at a number of products when making the decision to go with VTS. What we found was that most of the other products in the space were either real estate addons to SalesForce, or an additional module to a software that was focused on another use, like accounting or property management. VTS was the only product we reviewed that was born, bred, and focused on commercial real estate. It became apparent that it was best in breed at the time, and they have been aggressive at making product enhancements and continuous improvement to stay the leader in their space.
Wonderful to see how much rent we are drawing in, so we can base budgets off of that. It is a great way to retain that rent and put towards future improvements.
Wonderful way for tenants to pay their rent without us using a separate payment system or ACH payment. They can set up an account with a credit or debit card, or checking account and it drastically helps us with time management!
The help that the AppFolio staff is willing to do, saves time on us trying to troubleshoot.
It allows a small leasing team for the owner to quickly look over the entire portfolio and approve/alter proposals with a variety of brokers in a very efficient way.
It allows us to track space encumbrances and availability easily.
We've given access to our JV partners, and that has cut the number of conference calls sucking away time from our day by about 70%.
