Property management is a physically engaging and time-consuming career, and sometimes makes you feel that you have little time to expand your empire. However, there are many software solutions available, and AppFolio may be the one for you.
Tip: Before buying, make sure to check out your other options, including Yardi, Rent Manager, and Buildium.
What Is AppFolio?
AppFolio is cloud-based property management software. It was created to assist property managers in every aspect of their real estate setup, helping to enhance your operations as you increase your productivity.
This software is versatile. It allows you to streamline aspects of property management such as marketing and finance. The tools it provides can help to boost your working experience at the push of a button on your smartphone.
Plus, AppFolio is designed with flexibility in mind. It can be used to manage any residential or commercial property, regardless of size. If your real estate portfolio contains these types of properties, then AppFolio can really help you:
- Student housing
- Commercial
- Residential
- Community associations
Furthermore, AppFolio allows you to communicate easily with your clients, owners, tenants, and potential clients easily. It also helps you to focus your marketing in the right place, so you don’t waste resources or time on the wrong track.
The Benefits of AppFolio
AppFolio can make your property management life easier by offering these benefits:
Ease of Use and Flexibility
AppFolio was created to make property management operations easier to handle. It’s available in desktop and mobile versions to ensure that you can access it from virtually anywhere, even when you’re darting from one place to another, allowing you to really live up to your full multi-tasking potential.
It can also be applied to help facilitate certain property management functions, from house rentals to the acquisition of properties. The portfolios it provides enables you to manage all types of different properties, from commercial properties such as offices and shops to apartment complexes or house rentals. It even allows tenants to do rent payments online – and you can text your residents directly through the app as well.
Basically, this software gives you the flexibility to automate key elements of your property management process, ensuring you have time to dedicate to other, more important tasks that require you to physically be present. This helps to enhance efficiency, which can then increase your profitability.
Marketing
AppFolio makes marketing your properties easy. It helps you to identify your target markets and prospective clients, which is traditionally quite difficult to do.
It does with this its built-in in-depth screening tool, helping to narrow down potential clients to find the most suitable. Once you identify them, then you can engage them with the marketing tools at your disposal. It helps diversify your marketing with these tools so that more people see you and learn who you are, increasing your client-base in the process.
AppFolio also shines in its ability to make your online presence more optimized. This means that you’ll rank high in online searches that will help bring potential clients directly to you through ads or even by going directly to your website.
It Makes Accounting Easy
Accounting is an essential part of property management and something you have to stay on top of if you want to be successful. AppFolio has some pretty sophisticated accounting functionality that helps you manage your finances. It can help you keep track of everything from revenue generated to outgoing costs.
Appfolio also contains accounting features that make it easy to track your finances, keeping tabs on accounting functions such as tenant charges and debt collection. It saves time and money to help you perform your financial analyses directly on the platform instead of hiring someone else to do it for you – which can get expensive!
It’s Cost-Effective
Speaking of expenses, one of the best things about AppFolio is how it enables you to optimize your time as you work toward set goals. Its integrated platform allows you to carry out the necessary functions your business requires without the use of third-party tools like some other platforms. It’s all built right in.
It also has functions that help you acquire and manage tenants. With features such as rental screening, rental applications, and online portals that your tenants can access, AppFolio allows you to secure tenants that are suitable for your properties, then to communicate effectively and easily with them once they’ve moved in.
AppFolio’s integrated platform helps make the entire leasing and renting process on your properties much easier.
Training and Support
Software isn’t much good to you if you don’t know how to use it to its fullest potential or if you encounter issues when you’re using it. But that’s yet another great feature of AppFolio — it’s training program.
This program is designed in such a way as to help you get a grip on all AppFolio’s functionalities. The developers of the software provide a team of experts to you who are available to answer all your questions and give you guidance until you become an expert yourself.
The training and support are so good with AppFolio, it’s basically like adding a whole other team of property managers to your roster that works for you 24/7 to make sure you get the best experience and the most use out of your system.
A Few Key Features
Now that you know what to expect from AppFolio, here are of the few of the features that help to deliver those benefits:
Online Owner Portal
A few of the tools that come with AppFolio are the “Owner’s Portal and the “Owners and Vendors eCheck,” among others. These tools allow you to perform functions such as sharing of important documents online with the owners of the properties you manage.
The eCheck feature creates a platform that allows property owners to make payments for things like emergency repairs or maintenance costs. You can also make payments to property owners through this feature.
One of the best things about the online owner portal is that it was designed to help managers stay in constant contact with property owners. It creates a unified platform that allows managers and owners to work together and includes the ability to share important files such as financial statements, work orders, and invoices.
Property Maintenance
AppFolio has many tools to help facilitate the maintenance of properties as needed. The main feature in the property maintenance category is service requests.
With the service request feature, you can receive online maintenance requests from our renters and tenants. Plus, it allows you to relay these maintenance requests to the property owners via the “Owner’s Portal” feature. This makes relaying work request easy and fast.
The property maintenance features also give you the ability to monitor the time spent by maintenance professionals onsite to help you generate invoices.
There is a mobile inspection function as well that allows you to make service requests right from your smartphone after a walk-through inspection has been done and you can even attach photos to the orders. This allows you to get your properties repaired faster and back on the market.
Leasing and Resident Management
The leasing process and managing residents once they’ve signed leases can be a huge drain on your already precious time. AppFolio can help you manage that through functions designed to make renting and leasing of your properties easier.
The software includes functions such as:
- Online rental application
- Online lease
- Resident’s portal
- Tenant screening
Through these features, prospective clients are able to register what properties they’re interested in online. The screening tool also enables you to do a background check to determine if a prospective tenant is suitable and then to have them sign a lease – all on one platform.
The resident’s portal streamlines things for your tenants and you by offering them a way to contact you to spell out exactly what they need. No more wasted time on the phone or in person – it can all be done right through AppFolio.
Marketing
Marketing your properties is essential to the success of your property management business and AppFolio can help you excel in that area.
Their unique features are designed to ensure your advertisements reach the intended audience and also make your property listings online more searchable and more visible. You can post your vacancies, manage marketing campaigns, and create a professional looking website with AppFolio – find premium leads, too.
Tip: Want to maximize your business exposure? Check out our guide on marketing for real estate professionals.
More and More Features
You can find these features and sub-features on AppFolio software:
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- Activity management
- Accounting management
- Automated late fees
- Activity dashboard
- Bulk tenant charges
- CAM tracking
- CAM reconciliation
- By-the-bed rental management
- Electronic signature capture
- Holding deposits
- Guest card tracking
- Insurance
- Inspection management
- Online rent collection
- Online applications
- Maintenance scheduling
- Real-time reporting
- Website integration
- SMS integration
- Rent comparison tool
- Vacancy posting
- Tenant screening
- Task management
- Prospect tracking
- Work orders
What AppFolio Costs
You’re probably expecting software that does this much to cost an arm and a leg, but the truth is that AppFolio is very reasonable. It has four distinct packages for potential users.
Their pricing plans under 1,000 units are:
- Residential Plan: $1.25 per month per unit
- Commercial Plan: $1.50 per month per unit
- Student Housing Plan: $1.25 per month per unit
- Community Association Plan: $0.80 per month per unit
With these plans you receive:
- Resident communication and management
- Owner communication and management
- Marketing tools
- Board member communication and management
- Leasing management
- Customizable reporting
- Online maintenance
- Online payments
- Custom onboarding, training, and support
If you manage more than 1,000 units, then pricing is:
- Residential: $3.00 per unit per month
- Commercial: $1.50 per unit per month
- Student Housing: $3.00 per unit per month
- Community Associations: $0.85 per unit per month
The 1,000+ unit plan is called AppFolio Plus. It includes a few special features the other plan doesn’t such as:
- Strategic account management
- Configurable workflows
- Data export capabilities
- Revenue management
- Advanced performance insights
AppFolio requires a minimum portfolio size of 50 units with a $250 minimum monthly fee. If you manager more than 3000 units, you can contact the AppFolio sales team for a custom price.
A La Carte Features
They also offer additional services on top of the monthly fee per unit that can help improve your profitability and efficiency. These include:
Professional Websites
AppFolio’s team can design a professional website or blog and mobile versions of each for an additional $50 per month with a one-time $2,000 onboarding fee.
Tenant Screening
You can perform screenings on potential clients easily and quickly with this feature. It’s $12 per screen for credit and eviction screenings and $17 per screen for criminal, credit, and eviction screenings.
Rental Liability Insurance
This insurance can help to protect you financially if a tenant or guest tries to sue for damages. If you’re interested in adding this feature, this will cost an additional $9.50 per month per unit you have enrolled.
Premium Leads
AppFolio can help you expand your reach to help propel your marketing to the next level to help more renters find you via pay-to-list sites. This feature costs an additional $10 per month.
Maintenance Contact Center
If you want someone available to handle maintenance requests 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, then this feature may be for you. For a minimum of $200 per month, AppFolio can handle your maintenance calls and dispatch approved vendors to take care of the problems – even log it into your database so you won’t be surprised by any charges.
What Property Managers Are Saying
Reading about AppFolio is all well and good, but what do people working with it in the real world think? Overall, AppFolio is one of the best property management software products on the market today, all you need to do is read a few AppFolio reviews to understand how much people like it.
Sherrie W. writes on getapp.com, “I am very happy with AppFolio. I use it to put out little fires with owners and tenants. It has reduced my workload and gives me more time to focus on the more important aspects of my job. Being able to email and text owners and tenants and using it for ACH’s is amazing. End of month statements used to take me two days, now it only takes me a few hours. I truly can’t think of any particular problems or complaints I have with AppFolio – so far, I love it!”
Should You Buy AppFolio?
If you’re a property manager looking to streamline your workload and complete aspects of your job on the go, then AppFolio is a software solution that can be a great investment for you. It also boasts a lot of customer success.
It’s award-winning support and A+ BBB rating are just the icing on the property management software cake. We think AppFolio cloud-based software can take your property management company to the next level!
