Company Name
1836 Property Management
Door Count
850+
Portfolio Type
Multifamily Single-family
Buildium Customer Since
2019
Company Name
1836 Property Management
Door Count
850+
Portfolio Type
Multifamily Single-family
Buildium Customer Since
2019
When it comes to software, Matt Leshber, founder of 1836 Property Management in Austin, TX, is never looking for the flashiest technology. He wants something that reflects his own company values—reliability and transparency—with solid features that take care of the company’s core business functions.
But he’s also looking for flexibility; software he can tailor to his unique business needs. And if he can’t find it, he’ll build it out himself.
For example, he wanted his workflow and communication tools to integrate with Buildium’s leasing tools to keep staff, tenants, and owners well-informed about the steps in the leasing process, and their responsibilities throughout the process.
To do that, he needed software that allowed those kinds of integrations.
That’s why, when Leschber was looking for property management software to help him manage his growing portfolio, he turned to Buildium’s Open API.
“Buildium was originally, and has been, a foundational piece for us,” says Leschber. “The thing I love about it is that it’s transparent for everyone. . . . I want to be transparent about everything. I want the clients to see what we see. We can upload invoices and they can see everything real time, 24/7 worldwide. And that speaks to integrity for me.”
And when he needed to grow his tech stack, Buildium’s Open API helped him integrate all of his software to manage workflows, communication, and investment KPIs and deliver on the client and tenant experience he envisioned.
Before Leschber brought on Buildium, he was looking for a reliable software solution that could handle core processes.
“We needed management software that we can count on. It [Buildium] has no downtime,” says Lescbher.
Specifically, Leschber was looking for something with an Open API that could integrate his workflow software and, down the road, his communication tools.
For instance, Leschber’s team has built out a customized workflow for each of their leasing processes. They use Monday.com to map out workflows for move-in and move-out, and lease-signing, among others.
There are several steps and multiple points that trigger an automated message to tenants and owners, letting them know exactly where they are in the leasing process, as well as the very specific steps they need to take to move to the next stage.
Because the entire process is highly customized for his owners, Leschber needed a way to accomplish that with a custom integration that would pull owner and tenant data into the workflow.
“It’s not just ‘can you manage properties?’ It’s ‘can you run a business that manages properties?’” says Lescber. “What if you don’t have the processes for your team to follow? It’s fine if you can remember everything on sticky notes, but then you hire someone else. What are they supposed to do? How do you know if they did it? How do you know how quickly they did it? Now scale that.”
Leschber also needed something that could keep up with speed at which he wanted to build out a fully integrated tech stack, and flexible enough to help him tailor it to his company’s goal to stay on the cutting edge in their market.
That included the ability to provide services such as property investment advice to his clients.
“We’ve got to raise the bar for the industry and start talking about the investment potential instead of we clean toilets. It lowers who they think we are, lowers our value. And so we’ve got to rise up,” says Leschber.
To do that, Leschber wanted to build out his own investment software to track asset performance for his owners and make that part of his tech stack.
With Buildium’s Open API, Leschber has been able to integrate Monday.com with his leasing data.
“We’re able to pull in data points, whether it’s the lease start date, the lease end date, the names of tenants, or their contact information. Any data point that we can pull in from Buildium, we can then utilize in Monday as part of that workflow so that we can not only know what we’re doing, but also automate things such as emails,” says Leschber.
Leschber has also added a level of automation to his workflows. At various points in each process, stakeholders—whether they are prospective tenants, current tenants or owners—get a progress update and reminders of steps they need to take.
Those email updates are important for Leschber’s clientele.
“Remember, over 80% of single families are owned by mom and pops,” Leschber estimates. “So they don’t do this all the time. They’re scared, they’re anxious. This is one of the largest investments people will ever make. They live out of state and they’re giving it to you.”
The Open API has also allowed Leschber to build out his own investment software that tracks asset performance, as well, which he has integrated with Buildium. It tracks the performance of investment properties for his clients in real time.
Now, he says, he can make sure everyone—his staff, his owners, and his tenants—is on track, leading to lower attrition and allowing his company to, in his words, “grow better, faster, leaner.”
“Buildium gives us the foundation we need to be able to connect to those other softwares. That foundation allows us to then grow, scale, and add on anything we need,” he says.
Next year, Leschber and his team plan on focusing on a fully integrated communication tool, complete with live chat.
“We’re looking to unify ticketing, messaging, phone calls, and texting all in one software. And so we continue the development of using the API and Monday—that is never going to stop. But our entire next year will be moving all of our communication into one location so that we can monitor our response times, so that we can build databases on answers, so that we can better respond to clients.”
1836 Property Management will be able to accomplish all of this through Buildium’s Open API.
To learn more about Buildium’s Open API, click here, or schedule a demo.
