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I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collecti

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity. - organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. - ...tasks, contacts and more! I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this. - I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech. Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :) - If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer. And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes. ~fin

oojacoboo 16y ago
If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all. I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.
- lrm242 16y ago
  What about the way he's currently doing it? Status-quo is a viable, and often the toughest, competitor.
pkananen 16y ago
I hate to say it, but most of the descriptions you provide about yourself as a landlord typify why people often dislike them.
- DanBlake 16y ago
  Uh, ok. This is a product marketed to land lords, not to tenants. I am giving the opinion for the target. Im sure the same thing could be said about attorneys. Its the way the world works. Tenants like asking for misc bullshit and landlords hate doing them.
  - pkananen 16y ago
    Or, tenants like a nice place to live, and landlords don't like providing that?
    - Vivtek 16y ago
      Landlords love providing that. You'd be aghast how many tenants don't want it - based on the fact that once they've lived in it, it's not a nice place any more. I had a rental house for a couple of years. I had dirt ground into the kitchen floor that took me two days to clean, I had holes punched in the walls, I had the washer stolen, I had the back door broken in when they lost the keys (despite me living five minutes away with another set of keys), I had a shed literally packed full of garbage, I had evictions that took six months (after flat-out non-payment for months before that, and partly because the sheriff "couldn't find them"), I had fleas in the carpet from a dog that was explicitly forbidden in the lease. I had one whole year where I made zero dollars due to three successive deadbeats - still had the mortgage, of course. Rental is hell on Earth. I can't imagine doing only rental as a career. I'd end up in the loony bin or up in the bell tower taking out as many as I could before they got me.
  - oojacoboo 16y ago
    This is also how your units end up with leaking sinks and tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs. It depends on how you want to run your business. Many companies WANT work orders, and with the system you can read over them, prioritize and determine if you need to address or dismiss. You also don't have to take the call or deal with any of that, they just come into your feed.
jacquesm 16y ago
That's as good an advertisement for 'iterate' early and often as we'll see around here. Two years of development and that's the first response you give, I guess either you're not the target market or maybe they should have connected with actual users a bit earlier. So this makes me wonder, was this product developed on the 'they will come' methodology or was there actual end-user involvement and piloting with early adopters during the development phase? If the latter then you're simply not the target market. Where I live if you have a property that is 'to let' you contract out the handling of all the details to an agency that manages a large number of properties and you just pocket the cash every month.
- droz 16y ago
  Take a look through their blog- they had a year of end user involvement- testing, evaluation and so on.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise. What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone to do it for them. Maybe that's the market this is aimed at, agencies rather than DIY landlords?
    - oojacoboo 16y ago
      We're targeting both, landlords are smaller, and property management companies are larger. Their needs a very similar though. To get our base established, we are mostly targeting somewhat tech savvy landlords and small property management companies. We'll grow into larger and larger property management companies over time though.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
theoreticalee 16y ago
Good feedback. Setting up tenants for an online account is optional. Heh, I wouldn't want to create more work either. However, if tenants are setup w/ an online account w/ rental collection online, the amount of paperwork would be slashed to a fraction. Every thing would automatically be digitized and collected, and your staff that normally collects the 800+ checks a month (400 units * 2 tenants) will have more time to sit at the local starbucks and browse hacker news :). Oh, and that is for non 'turn' months. 1000+ unit managers spend weeks during turn. We can turn those weeks into days :)
- pitdesi 16y ago
  I own some units and I LOVE the fact that many of my tenants pay me automatically through their Chase billpay or whatever that automatically deposits money in my account. This is so much better than me collecting checks
  - oojacoboo 16y ago
    Now, what if they were automatically reflected on the tenants account balance and all notifications were handled, etc. Also, if they didn't pay on time, they'd get an automated reminder email letting them know they are late, auto assessment of late fees making the system the scapegoat and in turn increasing your on-time collection ratio, etc. We think that's worth a few bucks a month...
dminor 16y ago
My current apartment complex has a portal where one can pay via eCheck and it's pretty awesome. Do you have a "convenience fee" for paying by credit card? How well do you advertise it? > I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. Kinda sounds like a place where I don't want to live. How are your ratings on ApartmentRatings.com?
- DanBlake 16y ago
  You might not. Its not about not fixing things when they break or keeping the place clean. Those things are legitimate concerns and are taken care of. Its about when a tenant complains because he wants all new appliances because he thinks they use too much electricity. Its about when a tenant wants to get 100$ off his rent every month because he now has a sick uncle living with him. Its about when a tenant wants to have huge Christmas decorations in the front of his door but his neighbors dont like it. - Its easy for people on here to idealize a perfect "landlord and me are buddies!" dream, but its not how it works in the real world. A apartment building has costs, salaries and other expenses to keep afloat. If we listen to every complaint from a tenant (and as such, make it easier for them to do as such) we start losing money. You might say "Well, it will be a better place to live then!" - Great, great for the tenants. But this is a product to be sold to land lords, NOT tenants. You will have a tough time selling me on "Make your tenants happier and make less money doing it" I'm fine (and they are fine) with the current situation. - This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off. Just doesn't work like that in renting.
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    " This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off. Just doesn't work like that in renting." It could work like that if there was Yelp For Landlords.
rwhitman 16y ago
So basically what you're saying is this tool actually solves the tenant's problems, and not the landlord's...
- DanBlake 16y ago
  Couldn't have said it any better myself. That is really what it all comes down to.
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Thanks for the input! what features would you like to see for a landlord/manager?
axod 16y ago
Offtopic, but why the hell are people still using cash/check to pay bills in this day and age? What country are you in? Do they not have modern banking?
- delano 16y ago
  I'm not sure where DanBlake is from, but paying rent by cash/cheque is still the norm in Canada.
  - axod 16y ago
    Do you send it through the post or drive to a office or something? I just can't see how there could possibly be a less efficient way to pay bills. I'd simply go insane if I had to remember to pay bills.
    - mwarkentin 16y ago
      You just give a year's worth of post-dated cheques.
      - Johngibb 16y ago
        I would shy away from doing this. The bank has no obligation to uphold the post-date that you write. I once sent in a post-dated rent check that was dependent on a deposit clearing, and the landlord (accidentally) brought it in earlier and it was accepted by the bank. Luckily, the bank covered it for me, but I still had to deal with overdraft fees and such. The bank manager explained to me that post-dating is typically honored by a bank.
- flatline 16y ago
  Modern banking, and the expenses that go along with it. I'm not sure that it's actually legal to do this but almost any service like this (particularly rent and school payments) includes a "convenience fee" to offset the service provider fees, or for the middle-tier provider to make a profit, or both. Checks, electronic or physical, don't incur fees beyond whatever your agreement is with your bank.
ryanwaggoner 16y ago
I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad: I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. This is the same kind of disdain-for-customers attitude that leads web developers to build paid services that are really hard to cancel. The marketing and branding in real estate are also a joke, but it's the customer service thing that really gets me. There's a huge opportunity here for someone to do it right. Disclosure: I'm an active real estate investor with three small properties.
- DanBlake 16y ago
  How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business. Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service. What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you to go out of business. Customers will take you to the cleaners if they can get away with it and you need to have boundaries to stay afloat. You can find a great middle ground and keep everyone happy doing it also.
  - pinksoda 16y ago
    I think he was trying to say that you should want to help your customers. You should be happy to receive a work order from them because now they are a satisfied tenant that can praise your apartments to their friends who have been trying to get their sink fixed for a month. My friend is a renter and he has wanted a renters interface like this for years.
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    Again, don't take it personally, but I've been doing real estate for the last six years and I've spent tons of time talking to other investors and landlords. I also still rent because the returns in SF for buying are so abysmal. So I've had plenty of exposure to the way the real estate industry works. And the customer service is almost uniformly terrible. I read your statement as saying that you didn't want to make it easier for customers to contact you, because they would just whine and complain about stupid stuff. What makes real estate different than any other industry in this regard? What company with good service is determined to not "make it easier for their customers to complain"? And there are guys out there doing this right. I've lived in building that had online portals for customers to submit complaints and it didn't seem to be a problem for them. And I've talked to landlords across the country who run extremely efficient operations with low marketing costs, low vacancies, and high rents because they kick ass for their customers.
JacobAldridge 16y ago
Having worked, trained and coached property management businesses, I think much of your review is valid - especially the work order elements. It's not about (as some of the other responses say) being a crappy landlord or ignoring a small fix that turns into a ten grand piece of work - many tenants (maybe not you, dear reader, but when you have a rent roll of hundreds or thousands) do make inane requests. These aren't so much maintenance things as requests - now that I've signed a lease for this cheap house, can you install air-conditioning, build a fence, and re-do the bathroom, and I'll approve a $10 rent increase at the next renewal. Your response to other elements contacts, tasks, and automated rent collection says to me that the product isn't designed for you. When I've got a team of 4-5 property managers, 600+ properties, some on fixed leases and some on holiday letting schedules, time lost to paperwork is enormous. Actually, I've not worked with an office that hasn't had some sort of technology for contact and property data; managing work orders, automating payments, assigning tasks to other managers are all fairly common now as well (and I see other key selling points in the product, so that's not to be taken as a criticism for 2 years' work).
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  You make a good point on the work orders. You have full control over deleting, closing out, changing the priority, etc of them. Think of work orders as a support request for an online company. You get a lot of junk support requests as well, but you have to have something, and the tools to organize as needed. And this is WAY more efficient than speaking with someone over the phone or in person, or taking emails!
  - JacobAldridge 16y ago
    It would be a fine line to balance. As we know, it's a lot easier to write a super-critical anonymous comment on Yelp than to say it face-to-face. Closer together in that continuum is placing a work order online v having to make a call (or even send an email). If it's easier, the PM will get more of them AND those extras are unlikely to be the important ones. (If your hot water system blows, you pick up the phone; if you don't like the shade of green in the living room, you send a web message.) And if you're a good manager, you still have to respond to them all. I'm raising this as a genuine fear for a customer reviewing the product. It would be interesting to have some user stats that overcome that fear - eg, "support requests rose by 10% BUT the time taken to respond to all requests actually went down by 20%, saving managers three hours each week, AND this feature was identified by many tenants in their improved satisfaction reports."
LiveTheDream 16y ago
You have an option to allow tenants to pay rent with a credit card?!? I am shocked about two things. First, doesn't it hurt you to lose the processing fee off the top? Second, why on earth are tenants still paying with a check when they could pay with a credit card and reap insane rewards points. Getting airline miles for such a large, regular expenditure is a free flight per year (not to mention charging and paying off rent each month probably would help increase your credit limit and credit score).
- DanBlake 16y ago
  We pass the fee along.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  Yea, the fees would either be passed to the tenant or absorbed by the manager (in order to improve their collections, better to get it with a fee than not)
kin 16y ago
As a tenant to several both tech and non-tech complexes in SoCal I would like to say that because you wouldn't use the product, because you worry about a paper trail, I would rather not live at your complex. The difference in customer service between say, an Archstone community with amazing online customer service from online bill-pay to online maintenance requests to say, a complex that runs by paper and phone calls, is night and day. This service solves such a big problem that I myself have been rough drafting a similar website but looks like these guys are way ahead of the game. Congrats and I hope it does well, I know I certainly would use it as a tenant.
ErrantX 16y ago
I see what you are saying about the use of this system; particularly in terms of complaints/work orders. But if you could get people to use this system surely it would be easy to program (assuming such a system could be added by rentpost) responses to common questions - that surely would save time in the long run (i.e. a 2 minute call turns into 10 seconds selecting the right response). As an ex-tennant and now a home owner I have always thought that the real estate and rental markets need a serious shake up. I realise the problems faced by people renting property in terms of fussy customers and time wasters. BUT that is a problem for "you" to fix, it shouldn't affect me (a hypothetically sensible, non-fussy, customer). I've always thought; if the contract says I can do X, making it a bit hard to do X is just not providing the full service. Random example; when we had a minor wiring issue in one house I lived in it took about 3 days to talk to the landlord properly, and another three for someone to come and do the half hour fix. This was for two reasons; firstly the maintenance system my landlord had was complicated and disorganised (basically, a list he gave his "guys" each day and they did as and when...). And the reason it took three days to get the problem to him was because of the soft blocks he had put between him and his tenants to discourage time wasters. Could this solve all those problems?

oojacoboo 16y ago

If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all. I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.

lrm242 16y ago
What about the way he's currently doing it? Status-quo is a viable, and often the toughest, competitor.

pkananen 16y ago

I hate to say it, but most of the descriptions you provide about yourself as a landlord typify why people often dislike them.

DanBlake 16y ago
Uh, ok. This is a product marketed to land lords, not to tenants. I am giving the opinion for the target. Im sure the same thing could be said about attorneys. Its the way the world works. Tenants like asking for misc bullshit and landlords hate doing them.
- pkananen 16y ago
  Or, tenants like a nice place to live, and landlords don't like providing that?
  - Vivtek 16y ago
    Landlords love providing that. You'd be aghast how many tenants don't want it - based on the fact that once they've lived in it, it's not a nice place any more. I had a rental house for a couple of years. I had dirt ground into the kitchen floor that took me two days to clean, I had holes punched in the walls, I had the washer stolen, I had the back door broken in when they lost the keys (despite me living five minutes away with another set of keys), I had a shed literally packed full of garbage, I had evictions that took six months (after flat-out non-payment for months before that, and partly because the sheriff "couldn't find them"), I had fleas in the carpet from a dog that was explicitly forbidden in the lease. I had one whole year where I made zero dollars due to three successive deadbeats - still had the mortgage, of course. Rental is hell on Earth. I can't imagine doing only rental as a career. I'd end up in the loony bin or up in the bell tower taking out as many as I could before they got me.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  This is also how your units end up with leaking sinks and tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs. It depends on how you want to run your business. Many companies WANT work orders, and with the system you can read over them, prioritize and determine if you need to address or dismiss. You also don't have to take the call or deal with any of that, they just come into your feed.

jacquesm 16y ago

That's as good an advertisement for 'iterate' early and often as we'll see around here. Two years of development and that's the first response you give, I guess either you're not the target market or maybe they should have connected with actual users a bit earlier. So this makes me wonder, was this product developed on the 'they will come' methodology or was there actual end-user involvement and piloting with early adopters during the development phase? If the latter then you're simply not the target market. Where I live if you have a property that is 'to let' you contract out the handling of all the details to an agency that manages a large number of properties and you just pocket the cash every month.

droz 16y ago
Take a look through their blog- they had a year of end user involvement- testing, evaluation and so on.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise. What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone to do it for them. Maybe that's the market this is aimed at, agencies rather than DIY landlords?
  - oojacoboo 16y ago
    We're targeting both, landlords are smaller, and property management companies are larger. Their needs a very similar though. To get our base established, we are mostly targeting somewhat tech savvy landlords and small property management companies. We'll grow into larger and larger property management companies over time though.
    - jacquesm 16y ago

theoreticalee 16y ago

Good feedback. Setting up tenants for an online account is optional. Heh, I wouldn't want to create more work either. However, if tenants are setup w/ an online account w/ rental collection online, the amount of paperwork would be slashed to a fraction. Every thing would automatically be digitized and collected, and your staff that normally collects the 800+ checks a month (400 units * 2 tenants) will have more time to sit at the local starbucks and browse hacker news :). Oh, and that is for non 'turn' months. 1000+ unit managers spend weeks during turn. We can turn those weeks into days :)

pitdesi 16y ago
I own some units and I LOVE the fact that many of my tenants pay me automatically through their Chase billpay or whatever that automatically deposits money in my account. This is so much better than me collecting checks
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  Now, what if they were automatically reflected on the tenants account balance and all notifications were handled, etc. Also, if they didn't pay on time, they'd get an automated reminder email letting them know they are late, auto assessment of late fees making the system the scapegoat and in turn increasing your on-time collection ratio, etc. We think that's worth a few bucks a month...

dminor 16y ago

My current apartment complex has a portal where one can pay via eCheck and it's pretty awesome. Do you have a "convenience fee" for paying by credit card? How well do you advertise it? > I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. Kinda sounds like a place where I don't want to live. How are your ratings on ApartmentRatings.com?

DanBlake 16y ago
You might not. Its not about not fixing things when they break or keeping the place clean. Those things are legitimate concerns and are taken care of. Its about when a tenant complains because he wants all new appliances because he thinks they use too much electricity. Its about when a tenant wants to get 100$ off his rent every month because he now has a sick uncle living with him. Its about when a tenant wants to have huge Christmas decorations in the front of his door but his neighbors dont like it. - Its easy for people on here to idealize a perfect "landlord and me are buddies!" dream, but its not how it works in the real world. A apartment building has costs, salaries and other expenses to keep afloat. If we listen to every complaint from a tenant (and as such, make it easier for them to do as such) we start losing money. You might say "Well, it will be a better place to live then!" - Great, great for the tenants. But this is a product to be sold to land lords, NOT tenants. You will have a tough time selling me on "Make your tenants happier and make less money doing it" I'm fine (and they are fine) with the current situation. - This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off. Just doesn't work like that in renting.
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  " This is not a restaurant. We do not depend on referrals, walkins or other methods. Dont apply the restaurant methodology to owning a building because it doesn't work. In a restaurant, you keep everyone happy so they come back again. Spilled something on you? Free meal. Steak was cold? Come back for half off. Just doesn't work like that in renting." It could work like that if there was Yelp For Landlords.

rwhitman 16y ago

So basically what you're saying is this tool actually solves the tenant's problems, and not the landlord's...

DanBlake 16y ago
Couldn't have said it any better myself. That is really what it all comes down to.
theoreticalee 16y ago
Thanks for the input! what features would you like to see for a landlord/manager?

axod 16y ago

Offtopic, but why the hell are people still using cash/check to pay bills in this day and age? What country are you in? Do they not have modern banking?

delano 16y ago
I'm not sure where DanBlake is from, but paying rent by cash/cheque is still the norm in Canada.
- axod 16y ago
  Do you send it through the post or drive to a office or something? I just can't see how there could possibly be a less efficient way to pay bills. I'd simply go insane if I had to remember to pay bills.
  - mwarkentin 16y ago
    You just give a year's worth of post-dated cheques.
    - Johngibb 16y ago
      I would shy away from doing this. The bank has no obligation to uphold the post-date that you write. I once sent in a post-dated rent check that was dependent on a deposit clearing, and the landlord (accidentally) brought it in earlier and it was accepted by the bank. Luckily, the bank covered it for me, but I still had to deal with overdraft fees and such. The bank manager explained to me that post-dating is typically honored by a bank.
flatline 16y ago
Modern banking, and the expenses that go along with it. I'm not sure that it's actually legal to do this but almost any service like this (particularly rent and school payments) includes a "convenience fee" to offset the service provider fees, or for the middle-tier provider to make a profit, or both. Checks, electronic or physical, don't incur fees beyond whatever your agreement is with your bank.

ryanwaggoner 16y ago

I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad: I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. This is the same kind of disdain-for-customers attitude that leads web developers to build paid services that are really hard to cancel. The marketing and branding in real estate are also a joke, but it's the customer service thing that really gets me. There's a huge opportunity here for someone to do it right. Disclosure: I'm an active real estate investor with three small properties.

DanBlake 16y ago
How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business. Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service. What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you to go out of business. Customers will take you to the cleaners if they can get away with it and you need to have boundaries to stay afloat. You can find a great middle ground and keep everyone happy doing it also.
- pinksoda 16y ago
  I think he was trying to say that you should want to help your customers. You should be happy to receive a work order from them because now they are a satisfied tenant that can praise your apartments to their friends who have been trying to get their sink fixed for a month. My friend is a renter and he has wanted a renters interface like this for years.
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Again, don't take it personally, but I've been doing real estate for the last six years and I've spent tons of time talking to other investors and landlords. I also still rent because the returns in SF for buying are so abysmal. So I've had plenty of exposure to the way the real estate industry works. And the customer service is almost uniformly terrible. I read your statement as saying that you didn't want to make it easier for customers to contact you, because they would just whine and complain about stupid stuff. What makes real estate different than any other industry in this regard? What company with good service is determined to not "make it easier for their customers to complain"? And there are guys out there doing this right. I've lived in building that had online portals for customers to submit complaints and it didn't seem to be a problem for them. And I've talked to landlords across the country who run extremely efficient operations with low marketing costs, low vacancies, and high rents because they kick ass for their customers.

JacobAldridge 16y ago

Having worked, trained and coached property management businesses, I think much of your review is valid - especially the work order elements. It's not about (as some of the other responses say) being a crappy landlord or ignoring a small fix that turns into a ten grand piece of work - many tenants (maybe not you, dear reader, but when you have a rent roll of hundreds or thousands) do make inane requests. These aren't so much maintenance things as requests - now that I've signed a lease for this cheap house, can you install air-conditioning, build a fence, and re-do the bathroom, and I'll approve a $10 rent increase at the next renewal. Your response to other elements contacts, tasks, and automated rent collection says to me that the product isn't designed for you. When I've got a team of 4-5 property managers, 600+ properties, some on fixed leases and some on holiday letting schedules, time lost to paperwork is enormous. Actually, I've not worked with an office that hasn't had some sort of technology for contact and property data; managing work orders, automating payments, assigning tasks to other managers are all fairly common now as well (and I see other key selling points in the product, so that's not to be taken as a criticism for 2 years' work).

oojacoboo 16y ago
You make a good point on the work orders. You have full control over deleting, closing out, changing the priority, etc of them. Think of work orders as a support request for an online company. You get a lot of junk support requests as well, but you have to have something, and the tools to organize as needed. And this is WAY more efficient than speaking with someone over the phone or in person, or taking emails!
- JacobAldridge 16y ago
  It would be a fine line to balance. As we know, it's a lot easier to write a super-critical anonymous comment on Yelp than to say it face-to-face. Closer together in that continuum is placing a work order online v having to make a call (or even send an email). If it's easier, the PM will get more of them AND those extras are unlikely to be the important ones. (If your hot water system blows, you pick up the phone; if you don't like the shade of green in the living room, you send a web message.) And if you're a good manager, you still have to respond to them all. I'm raising this as a genuine fear for a customer reviewing the product. It would be interesting to have some user stats that overcome that fear - eg, "support requests rose by 10% BUT the time taken to respond to all requests actually went down by 20%, saving managers three hours each week, AND this feature was identified by many tenants in their improved satisfaction reports."

LiveTheDream 16y ago

You have an option to allow tenants to pay rent with a credit card?!? I am shocked about two things. First, doesn't it hurt you to lose the processing fee off the top? Second, why on earth are tenants still paying with a check when they could pay with a credit card and reap insane rewards points. Getting airline miles for such a large, regular expenditure is a free flight per year (not to mention charging and paying off rent each month probably would help increase your credit limit and credit score).

DanBlake 16y ago
We pass the fee along.
oojacoboo 16y ago
Yea, the fees would either be passed to the tenant or absorbed by the manager (in order to improve their collections, better to get it with a fee than not)

kin 16y ago

As a tenant to several both tech and non-tech complexes in SoCal I would like to say that because you wouldn't use the product, because you worry about a paper trail, I would rather not live at your complex. The difference in customer service between say, an Archstone community with amazing online customer service from online bill-pay to online maintenance requests to say, a complex that runs by paper and phone calls, is night and day. This service solves such a big problem that I myself have been rough drafting a similar website but looks like these guys are way ahead of the game. Congrats and I hope it does well, I know I certainly would use it as a tenant.

ErrantX 16y ago

I see what you are saying about the use of this system; particularly in terms of complaints/work orders. But if you could get people to use this system surely it would be easy to program (assuming such a system could be added by rentpost) responses to common questions - that surely would save time in the long run (i.e. a 2 minute call turns into 10 seconds selecting the right response). As an ex-tennant and now a home owner I have always thought that the real estate and rental markets need a serious shake up. I realise the problems faced by people renting property in terms of fussy customers and time wasters. BUT that is a problem for "you" to fix, it shouldn't affect me (a hypothetically sensible, non-fussy, customer). I've always thought; if the contract says I can do X, making it a bit hard to do X is just not providing the full service. Random example; when we had a minor wiring issue in one house I lived in it took about 3 days to talk to the landlord properly, and another three for someone to come and do the half hour fix. This was for two reasons; firstly the maintenance system my landlord had was complicated and disorganised (basically, a list he gave his "guys" each day and they did as and when...). And the reason it took three days to get the problem to him was because of the soft blocks he had put between him and his tenants to discourage time wasters. Could this solve all those problems?