Dennis McCarthy, chief information officer at Florida’s SRI Management, knows that nurses are critical to providing quality care for residents. Keeping clinical staff happy means making sure they’ve got the tools they need to do their jobs as easily and efficiently as possible. That starts with ensuring they have access to the most accurate, up-to-date patient health records. “Satisfying nurses is the number one thing. You don’t want them on a separate system; once you have people on two systems you have all sorts of issues—nurses are trying to figure out which record is current and things like that. Integration to the core software is critical,” McCarthy explained. That’s why SRI, already successfully using several modules in the Yardi Senior Living Suite, adopted Yardi EHR and eMAR last July. “We just had nurses watch it in action,” said McCarthy. Once the staff got their first look, they were hooked. The team began using EHR right away to record resident incidents. Documentation was simple and everything that was logged was immediately appended to residents’ files in the database and kept as part of their permanent record. But the best part was that all the information was readily available after the fact, said Casey Polk, chief nurse and director of resident services. She finds that feature indispensable. “At my fingertips in the Yardi platform, I have easy access to what nurses wrote and charted about each incident and how it was handled. I can quickly pull up the chart and read the notes and have all the information on hand. And I love that the software also has reports on resident activity, new orders and missed medications. It allows me to follow up with my staff based on what has or hasn’t been charted that week,”...

With seventeen communities—and more on the way—each submitting 100-200 invoices a month, Linda Adams was shuffling a lot of paper. As the Accounting Manager for Northbridge Companies, a New England-based senior living provider, much of her time used to be spent digging up receipts or tracking down paper records across various decentralized offices. “When I had questions, I had to call another office and ask them. They’d have to find the invoice, scan it, send it to me for review. It was very time consuming on both ends.” But now, solving a discrepancy is “easy, easy, easy,” thanks to Yardi PAYscan. In 2011, Northbridge adopted Yardi’s Procure to Pay vendor management and electronic invoicing platform to streamline invoicing across all properties. The new system allowed the accounting department to access invoices and check whether payments had cleared without having to pick up the phone to call another office. In other words, team members could self-serve, reducing internal dependencies and churn. But time savings wasn’t the only benefit of a new system. PAYscan eliminates copying, mailing, and storing paper—and minimizes touch points that can lead to lost invoices and data entry errors. “There’s no need for us to use up valuable office space with paper invoices anymore when it’s all right there electronically. Once the tax returns are done, we can throw the documents out,” Linda says. “I can go back and look at invoices from 2012, and it’s right there. Plus, I work from home a few days a week, and it really cuts down on all that lugging paper back and forth.” The Northbridge team appreciates PAYscan’s versatility, too. “You can make the approval process as intricate or as easy as you want, which I love,” said Linda. Customizable workflows, flexible payment options...

At one point, Georgia-based apartment community developer and manager Walton Communities’ mission to provide exceptional residential, affordable and active adult housing at a great value in a friendly neighborhood environment was awash in paperwork. Staff members from 20 Atlanta-area properties had to transport from 25 to 60 invoices each to the corporate office in Marietta every week. “Along with the money spent on paper, gas and car wear-and-tear, this obligation took our staff members away from leasing and resident service,” said Jennifer Price, IT systems trainer for Walton Communities. “As we moved to grow our portfolio by 50%, we knew the process would become even more cumbersome. We quickly realized that we needed a more efficient invoice processing system.” That was Yardi PAYscan Full Service, with which Walton Communities’ vendors send their invoices to a secure, centralized email or physical lockbox monitored by Yardi. The Yardi team scans and enters the account data, and the invoices show in the client’s Yardi Voyager platform as invoice registers, ready for review, approval and processing as payables. All the client’s site teams have to do is review, add details and approve—without driving anywhere. With invoice processing off their hands, Walton Communities’ staff members can focus on their core business of leasing, resident service and property maintenance. Yardi PAYscan Full Service adds even more convenience by automatically attaching purchase orders, a major time-saver for maintenance and procurement teams. Yardi PAYscan Full Service extends the benefits Walton Communities gains from the Yardi Procure to Pay Suite, an end-to-end procurement, vendor management, invoice processing and payments solution. “Leasing and customer service are the core of our business. Yardi PAYscan Full Service lets our staff concentrate on these activities, rather than dealing with invoicing and billing,” Price said. “The process of...

Accounts payable and accounts receivable are traditional hotbeds of activity for property managers, especially for large organizations with many properties and units under management. Boyd Management Inc. (BMI), has streamlined AR and AP by replacing thousands of paper invoices and check payments each month with electronic files that can be processed by staff with the convenience and efficiency of mobile devices. BMI began as a property developer and construction company in the late 1970s. The company built its first property in South Carolina financed under the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development (RD) program. BMI still operates that property today, 40 years later. “We developed a lot of properties in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. As tax incentive housing programs reformed during that period, we got a lot of calls from other RD property owners to buy them out. We grew significantly and are now the largest owners of USDA-financed properties in the country,” says Babbie Jaco, vice president and partner at BMI. Today, BMI oversees more than 350 residential properties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. The regional portfolio adds to the challenge of a centralized accounting team that serves multiple properties, many in rural areas. Subsidies under management include everything from USDA and HUD 50059 to Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Through its affiliate, WWJ, LLC, BMI has also rehabilitated large portfolios of properties with creative financing and partnerships. “In 2008, we teamed up with Greystone Affordable Initiatives, CAHCEC, multiple state Housing Finance Agencies and other groups. Collectively, we developed our trademark housing preservation program, and the results have been phenomenal,” says Jaco. Through tax-exempt bonds and various affordable housing financing tools, the cooperative has preserved and renovated more than 6,000 units, with more than $170 million in...

Pinnacle Property Management Services (Pinnacle) manages a vast portfolio of residential, commercial and mixed use properties. Many of these are affordable housing units, developed under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. The many types of residential properties under management, including senior, student, affordable, luxury, market rate, etc., can present a challenge for leasing agents who must be well-versed in each vertical of the rental property industry. Affordable housing can be particularly challenging given the complexity of requirements necessary to comply with program requirements. Of course, the most basic of those requirements is that residents must qualify based on criteria such as income and assets. Documenting resident eligibility is the most important piece of a successful affordable housing program. Moving from paper-based applicant and resident files to electronic records is one of the ways the affordable housing industry is evolving to work more efficiently. Pinnacle is part of that evolution as it implements RENTCafé Affordable Housing. With RENTCafé Affordable Housing, Pinnacle saves time for leasing agents and ensures compliance with Low Income Housing Tax Credit program requirements. Those benefits result directly from changing to online housing applications and certification processes. “RentCafe Affordable Housing is such an amazing system when it’s used properly. If you haven’t used it, you’ll be surprised at how much time you can save and efficiency you can gain with it,” says Nick Strzelec. One of the biggest challenges of reviewing affordable housing applications is missing information. Using traditional paper forms, applicants can skip over questions they don’t have immediate answers to and forget to go back and fill in the missing data. Reviewers are stuck with an incomplete application and must reach out to the applicant to correct the omission. RENTCafé eliminates incomplete applications, which saves time for Pinnacle staff. “RENTCafé...

Clearwater Living is new to the senior living real estate market, but the Southern California-based developer and owner/operator of new senior communities aims to set standards for high quality resident and employee experiences in every market it enters. As they  opened their first three communities, and prepare to manage more independent senior communities  Clearwater Living wanted to start off with a strong technology platform. After analyzing the options in the marketplace, the Yardi Senior Living Suite was the right choice. Breck Austin, VP Support Services for Clearwater Living, knew of Yardi’s strong reputation in the real estate technology space from his work at prior employers. Though Austin had never been a Yardi user before, he knew that the reputation of the company’s platforms was tremendous for meeting a myriad of business needs, from resident services to the back office. “As we grow our company and the systems we use, one of the questions we faced was how to best support the next generation of senior living residents coming into our communities with robust technology and systems,” Austin said. “We wanted to be able to easily communicate to residents about our lifestyle programs and engage them into enjoying our restaurant venues. We wanted them to see their statements and pay bills, and provide their families access to those resources. We knew that what would provide the highest resident and associate satisfaction was a fully integrated system, so Yardi was our answer.” The RentCafe Senior Living resident portal for family and resident provides access to records, statements and care details which was one of the main factors that led Clearwater Living to pick Yardi as its software provider. “To have your medical records, your electronic health care records, all housed in one place with your accounting...

“We use our Yardi platform to accomplish everything. It works for us,” said Joenita Turner, senior application support specialist at Silver Sky Assisted Living. Silver Sky Assisted Living and Silver Sky at Deer Springs are Nevada HAND’s two communities for seniors who need some extra help. The communities offer comprehensive services including meals, onsite caregivers, 24-hour nursing and medical support along with a full calendar of activities. To ensure the most efficient operations so that its residents get the best care possible, Silver Sky relies on fully integrated and cloud-hosted software solutions from the Yardi Senior Living Suite including Yardi Voyager Senior Housing, RENTCafé Senior Living, Yardi Senior CRM and Yardi EHR along with Yardi Maintenance and Yardi eLearning. Turner started out as a property manager before switching over to her applications role at Silver Sky. “I know how things work from the front office to back end administration,” she said. The company recently went through a rebrand, which included adding RENTCafé Senior Living to offer a range of convenient online services to its residents and their families. Succeeding with online services RENTCafé Senior Living is built into the Voyager platform and through online portals it allows residents and their families to manage healthcare information, make payments, communicate with staff and submit service requests. “Out of state family members can log in to make payments, view health records and submit maintenance requests — which saves them time so that when they visit, they can focus on being with their loved ones. Our residents have been excited to enroll for online services, and we’re expecting an at least 80% adoption rate,” Turner said. Silver Sky’s staff is also enjoying the benefits of online services and electronic transactions. Turner added, “Our accountants love it, because it...

“Yardi Orion is the tool that helps us create value for our clients,” said Jeanette Ruscitti, vice president of operations for The REMM Group. REMM is a third-party fee manager with more than 5,000 multifamily units and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space across Southern California. REMM takes a hands-on approach, working with its executive and onsite teams to go “above and beyond” for its clients — and investing in technology is key to the company’s success. Yardi Orion Business Intelligence is a mobile-enabled platform that combines financial, operational and ancillary services data from Yardi Voyager to deliver holistic portfolio insight. With configurable dashboards and more than 200 key performance indicators, Orion provides flexible reporting that enables REMM and its clients to make fast and informed business decisions. Shawn Conerty, REMM’s chief financial officer, said, “We have used Yardi Voyager software for years and find it is the most advanced property SaaS platform available. Our teams are empowered by the centralized source of data and automated workflows that simplify operations from leasing through move-ins and move-outs, work orders, purchase orders, check writing and more. Yardi’s marketing and leasing tools, including RentCafe, make life easier for our prospects, residents and staff with online leasing, rent payments and maintenance requests.” Conerty commented that REMM came to the table to analyze Orion with these previous Yardi successes in mind. “Orion draws from all the flows of information that go through those Yardi systems: occupancy, delinquency, exceptions, marketing, financials, etc.,” he added. Built right into its Voyager platform, Orion has proven to be the right choice for REMM to serve its clients and meet business goals, with mobile access that makes it easy for REMM’s executives to utilize the system on the go. Real-time tracking of rental...

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” says Gino Gentile, VP of sales and customer service for senior living provider Providence Place of Pennsylvania. Providence Place needed integrated software to handle lead management at its five senior living properties. It became clear to Gentile that streamlining Providence Place’s operations on a centralized platform would help the company further enhance its marketing and sales performance. The solution was Yardi Senior CRM, part of the Yardi Senior Living Suite. Yardi Senior CRM enables senior living providers to increase occupancy and boost resident retention with mobile-friendly sales and marketing tools specially designed for senior living. With Yardi Senior CRM, senior living providers can enhance lead management and improve the marketing and sales process with customized dashboards and comprehensive reporting. Integration with the entire Yardi Senior Living Suite ensures data accuracy and lead tracking from initial point of contact through resident activity. According to Gentile, Providence Place has achieved substantial occupancy gains while using Yardi Senior CRM at all five of its senior living communities. Gentile elaborated that the addition of Yardi Senior CRM to the company’s Yardi Voyager platform has been a breakthrough, helping to increase sales. In addition to higher tour to close ratios and faster lead conversion, Gentile points to the software’s reminder features, customized dashboards and comprehensive reporting as essential to the company’s invigorated performance. Gentile said Yardi Senior CRM has helped the company achieve impressive occupancy gains — that have exceeded its goals — along with phenomenal sales growth. “Occupancy is up at all our communities.” Gentile added that the company’s improved resident retention is supported by the tools and solutions provided by its entire Yardi platform. Providence Place also received great implementation support from Yardi and was up and running quickly which...

Actionable information on which multifamily markets offer the best prospects of penetration has fueled Valet Living’s rapid growth. For three years, Valet Living has used Yardi Matrix, a business development and asset management tool for underwriting and managing real estate investments, to identify the number of Class A, Class B and garden-style properties in a market, unit mixes and the construction pipeline. Thanks in part to Yardi Matrix, Valet Living now serves 1 million apartment homes in 38 U.S. states. Valet Living’s services include trash collection, recycling, turns (preparing units for new residents), pet care and maintenance. The company will soon announce additional resident-facing amenities. “Yardi Matrix data, from the individual property level all the way to overall industry market conditions, drives our sales,” said Bruce Tokarski, senior financial analyst for Valet Living. “Apartment community attributes generate a scorecard that identifies the most promising communities to penetrate. This creates leads for our sales team. Before Yardi Matrix, we just walked up to a property and hoped for the best.” He added, “Yardi Matrix research also helps our operations team. We can estimate the volume of trash generated per unit mix and therefore how much money and resources we need to budget for a community. In addition, new construction reports help us understand a market’s pipeline. All these reports are customized to our needs and make our lives easier.” Valet Living of Tampa, Fla., has been setting the standard for doorstep collection and recycling since 1995. Servicing more than 1 million apartment homes in 38 states, Valet Living is the only national provider of doorstep collection and recycling services and the only nationally recognized full service amenities provider to the multifamily industry. In addition to doorstep collection, Valet Living’s turns, maintenance and pet station solutions...

After 184 years in business, Irish life assurance company Friends First knows how to provide high-quality service and meet emerging business challenges. Established in 1834 to provide life assurance to the Society of Friends (Quakers), Friends First now offers a wide range of life protection, investment and pension products to more than 281,000 customers. It is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Friends First, which has €4 billion ($4.93 billion) of assets under management as of December 2016, operates a number of complex property investment structures that split properties across different funds and receive data from multiple external sources. Seeking a New Foundation The challenge Friends First faced in 2015 was finding a single connected platform that could house financial and operational data from all of the investment structures and execute portfolio-wide accounting, management and performance reporting. The company found the solution it needed in Yardi Voyager. “Yardi Voyager is the foundation of Friends First’s interactions with property accounting, fund management, property management and external agents,” says Alan Pollard, senior investment specialist for Friends First. For example, performance reports generated from Yardi Voyager data allow the company’s property and fund managers to monitor and manage portfolio and fund performance. Automated accounting for complex split property ownerships and non-standard investment structures relieves Friends First staff of manual data entry and processing, significantly reducing risk. Another key benefit Friends First receives from Yardi Voyager is the ability to map the general ledger to another system’s account codes. “This allows us to extract the data from Yardi Voyager easily and post it to another system. It also simplifies reconciliations and audit trail tracking between systems,” Pollard says. The platform also gives Friends First new capabilities for system-based accruals, which accrue charges collected as a percentage of...

According to a market study carried out by the analysts at Technavio, a business reporting service, the retail market in Saudi Arabia will grow steadily at a rate of above 7 percent by 2020. The recent influx of global retailers in Saudi Arabia will result in the steady growth of the market for the next two years, the report projects. To prepare to meet the local, regional and international retail development trends, the Red Sea Mall’s owners chose to adopt the leading cloud-based retail real estate management solution from Yardi, a global technology company with a strong presence in the Middle East. The intent of purchasing the software is to optimise shopping centre operations by managing the asset efficiently and preparing for future growth. Red Sea Mall is one of the biggest shopping centres at Jeddah City, it is located at the northern suburbs on Malik Road. The mall includes 242,200 square meters built area, with a five-star hotel, seven story office building, and both external and undercover parking areas, all of which are linked to the 18 mall entrances. “Among various investments, the retail sector is a major contributor to the increased economic diversification regionally. Accordingly, to enhance the operation of the Red Sea Mall, we invested in the Yardi Commercial Suite,” said Aidrous Al Bar, Executive Member of Red Sea Markets Limited, owning company of the Red Sea Mall. Yardi is a leading, full-business solution for retail property management that centralizes data and automates workflows to help property managers work more efficiently, reduce costs and achieve successful retail center operations. “The software platform will not only allow management to streamline core property management operations, it will also enhance its marketing of rentable spaces, enhance retailer on-boarding and relations, and gain deeper insight...

For every property management company, success often hinges on selecting — and keeping — quality residents. “With screening technology, we no longer lose our best applicants to the competition due to lagging on approvals or digging through paperwork, and we have reduced our vacancy rate from 13 percent to under 3 percent,” says Jason Roblin, CEO of Canadian-based Vionell Holdings Partnership (VHP). Having tools to not only ensure that operations including leasing run smoothly, but also to make its customers happy, was a big incentive for the company to put the right technology in place. Meeting the challenges of growth Now in its second year as a Yardi client, Vionell Holdings Partnership is a multifamily and condominium property management firm with operations in Brandon and Thompson, Manitoba. The company specializes in leasing, maintenance, budgeting and financial reporting services for its clients. With 1,250 multifamily and 1,500 condo units in its portfolio (along with 100,000 commercial square feet), VHP’s business continues to grow. The thriving company is adding to its Yardi software platform to achieve seamless processes across its business including better reporting and online services for customers that engage more applicants and improve resident retention. VHP uses the Yardi Voyager property management and accounting platform, Yardi Resident Screening, and RentCafe for online marketing, leasing and resident services. Soon, the company will start using Yardi Payment Processing to accept convenient online payments that residents have come to expect for fast deposits that maximize cash flow. Using tech to make customers happy Answering applicant phone calls and processing paper applications with manual background and credit screening was time consuming and exposed VHP to missing out on its best prospects. With Yardi Resident Screening as part of its Voyager leasing workflow, VHP’s applicants are screened and qualified...

Are you feeling energized for 2018? It’s a new year, bringing fresh challenges and opportunities. And while every January can inspire a list of resolutions, for every real estate business one goal is likely to top the list year after year: reduce costs. When it comes to lowering operational expenses, going paperless for as many tasks as possible is smart. And here’s some great news: it’s easier to do than you might think, and the benefits are big. For Dallas-based apartment manager LumaCorp, centralizing and automating procurement and payables processing on its mobile Yardi property management platform using Yardi Procure to Pay has not only reduced costs for the company, but also saves its staff valuable time (in addition to sparing more than a few trees). And in just three months, by eliminating the cost of transporting invoices by courier, Procure to Pay paid for itself. Better Buying and Bigger Discounts LumaCorp manages 24 apartment communities with more than 6,000 units. According to Larry Orth, LumaCorp’s controller, the company’s maintenance, repair and operating supply costs fell by 4 percent the first year after adopting Yardi Procure to Pay, an end-to-end, paperless procurement and invoice processing system that’s part of the Yardi Multifamily Suite full-business platform. Orth said, “For me, the great thing about it is the time efficiency, both at the properties and in the accounting department. We are a full service Procure to Pay client, so the processing is handled by Yardi, which takes a lot off our onsite people’s hands. All told, Procure to Pay has reduced by up to 40 percent the time our team spends on the payables process. And it’s a paperless system, which obviously also benefits the environment.” LumaCorp has also gained savings from the negotiated pricing across...

“We wanted innovation and efficiency,” Sandeep Manak, chief financial officer for Wesgroup Properties LP, said in November 2016, when his company announced its adoption of products from the Yardi Commercial Suite.  “We wanted a platform that integrated various departments so they could work more collaboratively.”  Other priorities included lower operational costs, more accurate budgeting and efficient management of an existing commercial and growing multifamily portfolio. One year later, how has that plan played out for Vancouver, British Columbia-based Wesgroup, a fully integrated real estate owner, operator and developer with 61 commercial and residential income-producing assets? “We have made good progress,” Manak says, starting with better access to lease and portfolio data. “Centralizing all lease and financial records in Yardi Voyager gives us a holistic repository of information that is easily accessible. We don’t have to look at different places or worry about version control or broken links.  We can drill down to lease clauses and very quickly understand an asset’s performance.” Wesgroup reduced costs by simplifying invoice processing with Yardi Procure to Pay, which automates the process all the way to vendor payment. “We pay several thousand dollars every month for document storage.  Storing images in Yardi Voyager significantly reduces these expenses in the long-term,” Manak says. Besides that, he adds, “approvers have immediate accessibility to vendor relationships by being able to review a vendor’s account and approve invoices for payment from the convenience as they are always out and about.” Meanwhile, Yardi Fixed Assets helps Wesgroup track assets that have varying amortization schedules.  “Previously each property had its own schedule —  for example, roofs amortized differently at different properties when the materials used to build them were identical, in the same geographical environment and were installed by the same builder. Fixed Assets automates...

For many residents, the Great Flood feels like it was only yesterday. In October 2015, the state of South Carolina received record-breaking precipitation. More than 25 inches of rain fell across the coastal region in less than 20 hours. Additional water spilled into the devastated communities when 13 dams failed. Homes flooded, ousting residents into the streets or crowded shelters. Businesses closed, adding to the economic strain of the struggling region. Even 74 miles of I-95, a major thoroughfare for relief and supplies, became impassible. “Our state was devastated,” recalls Babbie Jaco, vice president of Boyd Management, a Yardi client.  “Meadowfield Apartments, a USDA 515/Section 8 property in Summerton, SC–a very poor area–had more than 40 inches of water. There was water up to the windowsills for weeks. The water just wouldn’t recede.” The deluge of water saturated the soil and overwhelmed runoff infrastructure. To make matter worse, a ply board and other debris prevented a local storm drain from functioning. Local authorities would not discover the root of the problem until the DOT ditch had become a small lake. As the water lingered for weeks, residents of Meadowfield Apartments could not return home. Local Boy Scouts hosted a temporary camp for the residents. Yet as the fall pressed onward, the 150 displaced residents needed a place to call home. A Community United Many residents of the community, including the property owners, did not have flood insurance. As the property fell further into disrepair, with repair costs estimated to be more than $1.4 million, HUD prepared to remove its subsidy. News of the displaced families spread throughout the region. Then the volunteers arrived. Community members provided the manpower to clear the site and prepare it for renovation. Summerton Baptist Church joined forces with Southern Baptist Disaster...

Arabian Centres Company Ltd (ACCL) became Saudi Arabia’s largest developer, owner and operator of retail malls by offering international-standard quality shopping and entertainment. In formulating a strategy to build on that success, ACCL’s executive team came to realize that expanding its portfolio across the Kingdom depends as much on harnessing new technology as on providing high-quality retail and leisure offerings. The task of keeping ACCL’s property management software in tune with the company’s strategy lies principally with Rashed Alothman, ACCL’s chief information officer. “A desire to take on new challenges and drive improvements and achievements for the business is my primary motivation,” Alothman said. ACCL, a subsidiary of Fawaz Al Hokair Group, has grown to encompass 19 shopping centers in 10 cities since its founding in 2001.  Its more than 1 million square meters of total gross leasable area (GLA) represent a quarter of all organized GLA in the Kingdom.  ACCL transformed the Kingdom’s retail sector with a commitment to create unparalleled destinations for shoppers, leisure seekers and retailers. ACCL has embraced an aggressive strategy designed to reinforce its position as the Kingdom’s premier mall operator. Eight developments in the pipeline will nearly double its portfolio to approximately 2 million square meters of GLA.  The growth plans are part of a larger goal.  “We seek to advance beyond developing mere functional properties.  We aspire to create living, vibrant and integrated communities and enhance the quality of life for tenants and customers alike,” Alothman said. To achieve that goal and make sure ACCL properties remain the destination of choice for 132 million annual visitors and 3,600 retail outlets, Alothman is spearheading a digital transformation program.  The initiative emphasizes expanding technology capability and utilization in such areas as business-to-business communication, social media and numerous operational procedures. ...

With 4,200 units of owned multifamily housing, MACC Venture Partners is on a mission to more than double in size, according to managing partners Tony and John Azar. Based in Gastonia, N.C., MACC Venture Partners is a private equity owner operator of commercial real estate engaged in active pursuit of capital preservation and appreciation. With over 4,200 owned apartment units and over 5,000 under management, the family owned and operated firm is currently pursuing an aggressive growth strategy of Class B and C properties in the Southeast U.S. To identify the best deals to augment its portfolio, MACC Venture Partners chose Yardi Matrix as its source of dependable real estate data. Matrix offered the most complete information for the most reasonable price point, and covered all the markets required, John Azar said. Yardi Matrix is the real estate data provider of choice for MACC Venture Partners because of its comprehensive market analytics, including for secondary and tertiary real estate markets. Many of the properties that MACC Venture Partners considers for acquisition are often located outside of major cities, so coverage of these markets is important for the company. “The granularity of the data was important to us and not only from a primary market perspective. We don’t operate just in major metro areas, we operate in first, second and third tier areas. Yardi Matrix has the data we need,” said Azar. Matrix was instrumental during MACC Venture Partners’ recent acquisition in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where the company purchased a 168-unit garden apartment community in partnership with Legacy Capital Partners. “(Matrix) was very relevant to this transaction because North Myrtle Beach area had less available data than Myrtle Beach. This was a situation where Yardi gave us good data not just about the...

Little makes us happier than hearing about a client’s success with one of our products. Unless that same client is experiencing success with three of our products! We recently had exactly that happen when we sat down to chat with Belinda Torres and Heather Palmer of Continental Realty Corporation (CRC) about their experience with RentCafe. It turned out that CRC wasn’t just getting positive results and feedback from using RentCafe, the company was also seeing measurable returns by extending its marketing platform with both RentCafe CRM and RentCafe Reach. Keep reading to see how CRC improved their online presence, lead tracking and organic traffic with a suite of integrated marketing solutions. Meet CRC CRC was founded in 1960. Headquartered in Baltimore, it’s a full-service multifamily and commercial real estate investment and management company. It uses Yardi software to manage a diversified portfolio featuring nearly 10,000 apartment homes and retail centers consisting of more than 3.5 million square feet of space. Better Websites Before adopting RentCafe, CRC had a corporate website that hadn’t been redesigned in a decade and didn’t have individual property websites. “There wasn’t any SEO value,” said Torres, corporate marketing director at CRC. “Keywords and alt tags weren’t being utilized. There was nothing to help a prospective resident find us.” CRC used RentCafe to create marketing websites for every multifamily property in its portfolio. CRC also uses COMMERCIALCafé to create websites for its commercial properties. “The websites that we have now are attractive. Photos and tours are what people want to see, and we’ve been able to give that to them with RentCafe,” said Torres. The sites are mobile-friendly and allow the marketing team to upload videos and custom content for each community. Applicants can apply online and receive and submit all...

“Information technology is the core of your business and every business,” states Brian Turpin, vice president of information technology for Greenwin, one of Canada’s largest privately owned residential property management companies. Headquartered in Toronto, Greenwin has a combined staff of over 500 employees. The company professionally owns and/or manages more than 1,000,000 square feet of commercial space and 15,000 residential units throughout central Canada. Greenwin is currently using integrated software solutions for accounting, construction management, budgeting and forecasting, procurement, inventory control, and maintenance management — operating on a single platform. Turpin’s role over the past four and a half years has been to work with Yardi, Greenwin’s software vendor, to meet the company’s evolving needs as it seeks to do more digitally. Part of this rewarding relationship includes beta testing Yardi’s latest innovative products. Currently, Greenwin is testing VENDORCafé, the one-stop-shop for vendor management. Changing the Way People Work Turpin describes the way he looks at new technology as “digital transformation” and is always asking himself and his team, “what challenge does this product solve for us?” Usually, the answer to that question includes the ability to untether Greenwin’s staff with the option to use mobile devices and leave their laptops behind.  Turpin further elaborated on this line of questioning, “How can we do what we’re doing every day better, and where can technology take us? Are we at risk for falling behind, and do we need to automate more manual tasks and digitize our paper-based resources to create greater efficiencies?” For help with answering these questions and more, Turpin reaches out to Yardi. “Why not be the first to ask for something that maybe no one else is asking for yet? Yardi will endeavor to make it happen — and that close collaboration...

With 30 senior living communities across six states, Merrill Gardens provides a lifestyle approach to senior housing that’s unique to each locale they inhabit. By designing each community with characteristics unique the area in which they reside, Merrill Gardens creates a comfortable and welcoming environment for residents so they can relax and feel at home. “We take great pride in the fact that we spend a lot of time making sure that our communities, especially the senior side have a place to live that is like a home,” says David Wiedeman, Business Systems Analyst for Merrill Gardens. “It’s a place you want to be. With activities integrated into the community, our residents aren’t living on an isolated island but are going to events and participating in clubs and other activities. This keeps everyone active and connected.” Making the switch to an integrated platform allows Merrill Gardens to avoid missed billing opportunities and increase revenue. Previious a CFO for a property management company, David was once a third party consultant for Yardi. When Merrill Gardens began implementing the Yardi platform, David and his team worked side-by-side with Yardi to ensure the switchover went smoothly. “If you have the vision of what you want, Yardi can build it,” says David.  “Yardi has a good knack of hiring people who are really good in their fields, they are specialized but can also be creative and help us meet our needs across different channels, including the residential and senior sides of our portfolio.” As part of his role as Business Systems Analyst, David spearheads software infrastructure and administration for Merrill Gardens, overseeing all Yardi modules as well as software implementations throughout the company. A big supporter of the single stack solution, David feels Yardi provides an unmatchable combination...